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Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees
Classified Signal Leak Report Sent to Lawmakers as Hegseth Faces Scrutiny Over Follow-up Boat Strike; Interview with Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA); Interview with Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT); Photos and Videos from Epstein's Private Island; House Dems Release Pictures and Video of Epstein Island; Trump Targets Somali Immigrants; Immigration Crackdown Underway in New Orleans; Ex-Honduran President Thanks Trump for Pardon; Thunderbird Pilot Ejects From Jet During Training Mission. Aired 8-9p ET
Aired December 03, 2025 - 20:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ISA SOARES, CNN ANCHOR AND CORRESPONDENT (voice over): ...but the main route, not the Caribbean. As President Trump's campaign against Venezuela seems to suggest.
EDGAR FALLA VARGAS, COLOMBIAN AIR FORCE MAJOR GENERAL (through translator): From my perspective, we have an increase in the Pacific Corridor; however, activity in the Caribbean is not zero.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ERIN BURNETT, CNN HOST: Thanks to Isa Soares.
And earlier I suggested former Congressman Matt Gaetz was the only person in the Hegseth-friendly Pentagon briefing yesterday. There were other members of right leaning outlets present but only ones that had agreed to Hegseth's media pledge which exposed reporters to legal jeopardy if they published material not expressly authorized by the Pentagon.
Thanks so much for being with us. Anderson starts now.
[20:00:45]
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST, "ANDERSON COOPER: 360": Tonight on 360, a new report finds Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth risked endangering troops by sharing sensitive war plans on Signal. That's according to the Pentagon's own Inspector General. We'll bring you the exclusive reporting tonight.
Also ahead, never before seen video and photos of Jeffrey Epstein's infamous private island. We'll talk to one of the lawmakers in Congress helping to lead the charge to get the full Epstein files released.
And later, as ICE operations are launched in New Orleans and Minneapolis, continue to fallout over President Trump calling Somali immigrants "garbage" in part over charges of fraud against a group there. We'll talk to Minnesota's Attorney General about those investigations.
Good evening, thanks for joining us.
We begin tonight with an exclusive reporting about an Inspector General's investigation into Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. The findings of which could threaten his very future as the top man at the Pentagon. Now, the Inspector General reports that Hegseth risked compromising sensitive military information, which could have endangered American troops and mission objectives when he used Signal to share highly sensitive attack plans, and that is according to four sources familiar with the contents of this classified report.
Now, you recall back in March after this U.S. attack on Houthi rebels in Yemen, an article was published by "The Atlantic's" Jeffrey Goldberg that sent shockwaves across Washington, the National Security community. The headline, the Trump administration accidentally texted me its war plans. U.S. National Security leaders included me in a group chat about upcoming military strikes in Yemen. I didn't think it could be real. Then the bombs started falling.
Goldberg went on to explain that four days before this attack, on March 11th, he received a connection request on Signal from someone claiming to be Mike Waltz, President Trump's National Security advisor at the time.
Now, Goldberg wasn't sure it was the real Mike Waltz, but accepted the invitation, he says, in the hopes that it was. Two days later, he was added to a group chat called Houthi P.C. Small Group. P.C. stood for Principals, which included Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, the Vice-President, J.D. Vance, the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, the Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, the CIA Director John Ratcliffe, Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, Steven Miller and National Security Adviser Michael Waltz.
Now, a debate ensued on the chat, which culminated in two days later on March 15th, the attack being launched. Goldberg writes that before the missile strikes, the group received updates from Hegseth that Goldberg did not want to quote directly because, in his words, the information contained in them, if they had been read by an adversary of the United States, could conceivably have been used to harm American military and intelligence personnel, particularly in the broader Middle East, Central Commands' area of responsibility.
The Hegseth post contained operational details of forthcoming strikes on Yemen, including information about targets, weapons the U.S. would be deploying, and attack sequencing.
Now, Hegseth was asked about the article the day it was published. And in a strategy we've seen again with the reported killing of survivors on that alleged Venezuelan drug boat, he attacked the reporter and the reporting.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) REPORTER: Can you share how your information about war plans against the Houthis in Yemen was shared with a journalist in the Atlantic? And were those details classified?
PETE HEGSETH, U.S. DEFENSE DEPARTMENT SECRETARY: So you're talking about a deceitful and highly discredited so-called journalist who's made a profession of peddling hoaxes time and time again to include the, I don't know, the hoaxes of Russia, Russia, Russia or the fine people on both sides hoax or suckers and losers hoax. So this is a guy that peddles in garbage. This is what he does.
REPORTER: Why did those details shared on Signal and how did you learn that a journalist was privy to the targets, the types of weapons used?
HEGSETH: I've heard -- I've heard that was characterized. Nobody was texting war plans. And that's all I have to say about that. Thank you.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: Well, because of Hegseth's response there and others by the President, the CIA director and the director of National Security saying there was no classified material in the Signal chat, Jeffrey Goldberg wrote another article. This one was titled, here are the attack plans that Trump's advisers shared on Signal. Now, this is one of the messages from Hegseth reviewed by the Pentagon's Inspector General. It included precise information about timing and weapons, including, "This is when the first bombs will definitely drop".
The Inspector General found that the military plans disclosed by Hegseth were taken from a U.S. Central Command document that was marked classified at the time, sources said.
It remains unclear if Hegseth properly declassified that information before sharing it with other top Trump officials and of course, reporter, Jeffrey Goldberg. As to how Goldberg was added to that Signal chat in the first place, then National Security Adviser Mike Waltz was asked about that on Fox News at the time.
[20:05:37]
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MIKE WALTZ, THEN NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: Have you ever had somebody's contact that shows their name and then you have, and then you have somebody else's number there?
LAURA INGRAHAM, FOX NEWS CHANNEL HOST, "THE INGRAHAM ANGLE": Oh, I never make those mistakes.
WALTZ: Right, you've got somebody else's number on someone else's contact. So of course I didn't see this loser in the group. It looked like someone else. Now, whether he did it deliberately or it happened in some other technical mean is something we're trying to figure out.
INGRAHAM: I mean, I'm not an expert on any of this, but it's just, how does the number on your phone -- WALTZ: Well, if you have somebody else's contact and then it and then somehow get sucked in --
INGRAHAM: -- if someone sent you.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: Get sucked in, he said. About a month after that interview, Waltz was ousted as National Security Advisor and moved over to be the U.N. Ambassador.
Also, during that time, the Pentagon's Inspector General launched this investigation into so-called Signal-gate. The release of his findings is coming at another perilous time in Pete Hegseth short tenure as Defense Secretary. As lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are moving to investigate what they see as a potential war crime. Perhaps sensing that vulnerability, the response from the Pentagon spokesman sounds like a victory lap. "The Inspector General review is a total exoneration of Secretary Hegseth and proves what we knew all along. No classified information was shared. This matter is resolved and the case is closed".
For more on all this, let's go to CNN's Natasha Bertrand. So, is it clear what impact, if any, this report is having at the Pentagon or what the next step in this is?
NATASHA BERTRAND, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Well, the secretary and his team are showing absolutely no remorse, no regret over their role in the Signal-gate fiasco. In fact, they're saying that the report, "completely exonerates them." Secretary Hegseth just posted moments ago saying that the report shows there was no classified information shared. Total exoneration, case closed. Houthis bombed into submission. Thank you for your attention to this I.G. report.
So what they seem to be fixating on here is the notion that the Inspector General could not definitively say that he shared classified information on Signal because technically, the Defense Secretary has original classification authority, and he is able to declassify information as he wants.
Now, the problem with that is that the Inspector General essentially had to take Hegseth's word for it in writing, because Hegseth would not sit for an actual interview with the I.G. because there was no documentation at the time that Secretary Hegseth actually declassified this information prior to posting it on Signal.
But when it comes to the personal ramifications for Secretary Hegseth, it doesn't seem at this point like there will be any, again, because the I.G., while it did fault him saying that he could have put service members at risk here, there was no penalties involved, right? And it doesn't seem like members of Congress are going to be able to fault him either on that level, just given the sheer, you know, handling of classified information aspect of this.
Republicans are saying that it's time to move on, that he learned his lesson. And I think, you know, while the report does say that Secretary Hegseth should not have used Signal for this purpose, essentially saying that you shouldn't be using an unclassified network to share this kind of stuff. It also, again, cannot say one way or the other whether he improperly handled classified information.
So, I think that at this point, the Defense Department is grappling with how it's going to be using this app moving forward, because it's important to note also in this report, Hegseth has this app installed on his desktop computer in his office in The Pentagon. He had it hardwired so that he could continue to use it.
So, the question is going to be, is he still using it? Is he still using it for discussing sensitive military operations? We simply don't know. And as of right now, they don't seem to be deterred by the result of this report -- Anderson.
COOPER: Natasha Bertrand, thanks.
I want to get some perspective from Democratic Congressman Jim Himes, ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee. He's also seen the classified Inspector General report. So, Congressman, The White House says the President is standing by Hegseth. The Secretary himself saying, case closed. You read the classified report. How do you see it?
REP. JIM HIMES (D-CT): Well, you know, I hope it's not case closed, Anderson, because, you know, and you can get into a lot of different elements of this report about using the device that he shouldn't have used and the fact that the information was secret until he personally declassified it. The really important thing here, though, is what America is going to see tomorrow in the redacted version of this, which is that the Secretary of Defense put his people and the mission at risk for the purpose of sounding like a tough guy with a bunch of his friends on a Signal chat, number one.
And number two, people need to think about this. He also chose not to cooperate with the Inspector General's investigation. He wouldn't sit for an interview and he would not give them their phone. In the military, I think, as you know, Anderson, there is a -- there is this idea that, you know, you would never do the equivalent of pleading the fifth, that you will always cooperate, you know.
And so, I guess my point is this, I hope it's not a dead letter, because the man who has, you know, control of our nuclear weapons, who sends young men and women to their deaths, is a guy who put his own people at risk and who didn't cooperate in an investigation. He does not have either the character or the disposition to have the position that he holds.
[20:10:31]
COOPER: Is that common? I mean, I don't know if there's other examples of Secretaries of Defense who have been investigated by Inspector Generals or other officials, but is it common for somebody not to cooperate at his level and not hand over his phone in this case? HIMES: Yes, I don't have an inventory of these investigations either. But again, this isn't a complicated legal topic, right. Why would he not cooperate? If the point here is to find out whether he put people at risk or broke the law, does he not have enough respect for his own people to be able to look them in the eye and say, look, this was a mistake and I'm going to do everything in my power to cooperate and to learn from it.
Instead, he lied about it, right. And you -- in the little clip you ran before, Mike Waltz, my friend Mike Waltz, his response was to call Jeffrey Goldberg, the reporter who was inadvertently put on the Signal chat, a loser, right?
I mean, anybody in the military who is steeped in the traditions of leadership and character would look at that kind of behavior and say, I don't want this person reporting to me, much less being, you know, reporting to this person.
COOPER: Do you think, I mean, the pushback on this is that Hegseth has the power to unilaterally declassify information, though, again, classified or not, any information about a pending strike, presumably would be closely held. How much does the classification status, I guess, matter?
HIMES: Well, as a legal matter, and you'll see this in the report -- as a legal matter, the Secretary of Defense is an original classifying authority. That means that he can make the decision about what is classified and what is not.
Now, you'll also see in the report that there's a whole set of procedures that when you declassify something, you change the markers on the piece of paper that says secret. You change it to declassified, right?
None of that happened. So, what he has is he has a very convenient excuse to be able to say, because I'm an original classifying authority when I say its declassified, it's declassified. But, Anderson, we're talking about before an attack describing the airplanes, describing the munitions, and describing the timing. You don't need to be a military expert to know how damaging that could have been.
COOPER: Hey, listen, I know you're expecting to meet with Admiral Frank Mitch Bradley tomorrow, who Hegseth has said gave the order for the secondary strike. I want to play some of what the President had to say about the strikes today and ask you about it.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REPORTER: You released video of that first boat strike on September 2nd, but not the second video. Will you release video of that strike so that the American people can see for themselves?
DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: I don't know what they have, but whatever they have would certainly release, no problem. REPORTER: If it is found that survivors were actually killed while clinging on to that boat, should Secretary Hegseth, Admiral Bradley or others be punished?
TRUMP: I think you're going to find that this is war, that these people were killing our people by the millions, actually, if you look over a few years.
I support the decision to knock out the boats and whoever is piloting those boats, most of them are gone. But whoever are piloting those boats, they're guilty of trying to kill people in our country.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: How do you see this and what do you plan on asking the Admiral tomorrow?
HIMES: Well, it was sort of interesting that the President said that it's a war, right? Because the President's people came to us and said, you know, hey, Congress, it's not a war. If it were a war, we'd need not to seek permission. The President just said, it's a war. Even if it's a war, there are laws of war, right? And one of those laws of war which is inviolable, in which every soldier, sailor, airman and Marine in the United States military knows is that you cannot kill somebody who is in distress, somebody who has ceased to be a combatant.
So just because you were taking a lethal strike, which was the Secretary's first defense, it was meant to be lethal. How you do that really matters. And, you know, I expect to see the video tomorrow. And if, in fact, this was a go around to kill people who were in distress, that is a war crime. And, you know, do I expect the administration to acknowledge that? Of course not. They won't acknowledge that.
But there's a reason we care about this apart from ethics, Anderson, and that is that there are times when our people are captured or our people are wounded, and the American people need to ask themselves, when a Marine is wounded on a beach somewhere and there's a Syrian who has that, or a Russian or whoever, it might be a Chinese person who has that Marine in their sights, and the Marine is wounded and needs assistance. Do you want the Chinese or the Iranians or the North Koreans to make the make the defense that the Pentagon is making? Yes, we could kill him, murder him, essentially. I don't think people want that for our military.
COOPER: Congressman Jim Himes, appreciate it. Thank you.
Up next, a number of images of Jeffrey Epstein's infamous home on his private island, photographs and some videos now public, Congressman Ro Khanna is here. He and a GOP colleague, Massey, led the fight to get the Epstein files released.
And later, what the former President of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernandez, convicted in a U.S. federal court of drug trafficking, is saying tonight after his pardon by President Trump. What a former U.S. attorney has this to say about the case at the time.
[20:15:33]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DAMIAN WILLIAMS, U.S. ATTORNEY: Hernandez declared that he wanted and I quote, "to stuff the drugs right up the noses of the Gringos."
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[20:20:06]
COOPER: Tonight, we're getting an inside look at some of the rooms in Jeffrey Epstein's notorious home on a private Caribbean Island, where underage girls and young women were trafficked and sexually abused. Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released these photos, as well as videos they say have not been made public before.
One of the images shows what appears to be a dentist chair in one room with masks on a wall. Another shows a blackboard with some words scribbled on it power, deception, plots -- political. There's also this video showing the manicured grounds of the estate with palm trees and winding paths, and a large pool.
The Department of Justice has 16 days before they have to release documents related to its investigation of Epstein, as required by the bill that Congress passed and President Trump recently signed into law. Now, we learned today that Epstein's accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, is planning to file a petition asking a judge to release her from prison. She's serving a 20-year sentence for her sex trafficking conviction.
Joining us tonight, California Congressman Ro Khanna, a member of the Oversight Committee who along with Republican Congressman Thomas Massie, led the fight to pass that bill, forcing the release of Epstein files.
So, congressman, I mean, do these video images fill in any blanks for you, raise any new questions? I'm wondering if what stands out to you.
REP. RO KHANNA (D-CA): Well, the dentist chair was concerning to me. Obviously, we need to know the facts, but what we need to know is, were underage girls abused on that chair? What happened there? What we do know from the survivors is there are many such photos in the Epstein files. We know that from the survivors and their lawyers. All of those need to be released. Every file, every photo, every interview memorandum while protecting victims need to be released by federal law in the next 16 days.
COOPER: And do you expect, I mean, do you know what to expect in 16 days in terms of what level of redaction there's going to be? Have you gotten any word from the Department of Justice how they are handling this?
KHANNA: Congressman Massie and I have requested to meet with Attorney General Pam Bondi or someone on her team handling the investigation. So far, we have not heard back. We're going to continue to pursue it. Of course, Congressman Massie is on the Judiciary Committee, so Pam Bondi will be coming before that committee.
But now, every person at the Justice Department who does not cooperate in releasing these files would be violating federal law, they would be subject to federal penalties. So, we expect that there will be a release, and we're going to continue to fight to make sure that it is transparent and complete.
COOPER: Your committee says it's also received about 5,000 documents in response to subpoenas to JPMorgan, Deutsche Bank for Epstein's financial records. I don't know how much of those the committee has been able to review, but do they -- I mean, what do you hope to find in those documents? Does anything connect any dots for you?
KHANNA: Well, the committee is going through that. There are a lot of documents. But the big question is how is Jeffrey Epstein, a former school teacher, worth half a billion dollars? Who is funding him? Why are people giving him this money? And what was he doing for this money? Those are things that we're going to get from these documents.
As you know, Senator Wyden has been investigating this in the Senate for over a year. That is going to be critical to understanding who all was involved.
COOPER: We've talked about Ghislaine Maxwell planning to ask a judge to release her from prison, according to a new court filing. What do you think the chances of that actually are, given the unknowns of, you know, the interview she had with President Trump's former personal attorney, who's now a high level of the Department Of Justice. What do you think is going to happen there?
KHANNA: It would be a slap in the face of the survivors. Anderson, as you imagine, I've gotten to know some of these survivors. I spent time with them. When you mention Ghislaine Maxwell's name, they have a trauma and an anger. This is someone who abused them. This is someone who facilitated their abuse. The fact that we're even discussing any leniency for her or letting her out of jail is, frankly, disgusting. And the survivors themselves get so emotional when people bring up Maxwell.
COOPER: A House Oversight Committee spokesperson earlier today criticized Democrats on the committee, your committee for releasing these videos and photos saying, "It is odd that Democrats are once again releasing selective information as they have done before". I'm wondering what your response to that is.
KHANNA: Let's release it all, that's what Massie and my bill does. If you don't think there's anything there, get the files out. If you think its selective, get the files out. Let's finally get the information out there, most importantly, because of the thousand survivors and that's what they want. And so, we end this kind of blame game and name calling. Let's just get it all out there in the next 16 days.
COOPER: All right, Congressman Ro Khanna, I appreciate it. Thank you.
For more on this, Sara Fitzpatrick, a staff writer for "The Atlantic," an investigative reporter, joins me. Also, with me, independent journalist Tara Palmeri, host of the "Tara Palmeri Show Podcast". Appreciate both of you being with us.
Sara, what do you see as the significance of these images?
[20:25:20]
SARA FITZPATRICK, INVESTIGATIVE REPORTER, THE ATLANTIC": I think it's very significant on a couple of fronts. One, I think that we are for the first time seeing inside of Jeffrey Epstein's home. It's the place where some of the most horrific sex crimes occurred and some real, you know, criminal conduct.
But I think what's important for me as an investigative reporter is that these images we've never seen inside, and they correspond and speak to what so many of the women who were abused on this island, how they described the rooms, how they described the layout. It just gives them additional credibility for the kind of really horrific things that they have described, not just to journalists, but also to members of law enforcement.
COOPER: Yes, I mean, Tara, Virginia Giuffre, who has died, had said that some of the worst abuse she suffered occurred on this island.
TARA PALMERI, INDEPENDENT POLITICAL JOURNALIST: Absolutely, it was a place that was hard to get to. You had to get on a helicopter to get to the island or a boat. It was specifically designed to be a place for pleasure, for the powerful and for the weak to be stranded there, to the point that, Sarah Ransome, one of the survivors, tried to swim off even though the current is quite severe and she was willing to risk her life. That was how terrible the experience was on the island, and we know that Virginia was severely raped on this island.
I also would have wished that Virginia was alive today. I would have asked her all about that dentist chair and what that meant and what that was, because to me, there's something sadistic about it.
COOPER: It's kind of creepy, I mean, it's bizarre to have a dentist chair in someone's private home.
PALMERI: Also, just no one wants to go to the dentist. There's something dark about it. The masks on the wall, there's a leeriness to it all. There's -- it's almost like you're walking through a crime scene. I mean, you are walking through a crime scene when I see the rooms. They're kind of hotel type rooms, it could be for anybody. It has just --
COOPER: Yes, I mean, there's kind of no personality other than sort of creepiness to these things.
PALMERI: Exactly.
COOPER: Otherwise there is this sort of anonymity to it of sort of anonymous hotel room somewhere in the Caribbean.
PALMERI: Exactly and it's interesting you could even see from the picture of the cameras. I mean, there are cameras everywhere. They're being recorded, you could say, for security, but also what I had heard from the survivors that they believe that they were always being recorded there.
Even the statues are weird, like the one by the pool and I think it's important for us to have this documentary evidence, especially when you have the President of the United States saying this is a hoax, it's a hoax. Seeing is believing. See the place where he lived. And this isn't all just some wealth porn.
This is a very perverted man, and you can see it from the way that he lived.
COOPER: Sara, I mean, it is going to be incredible to see what happens with Ghislaine Maxwell, given the interview she gave with Todd Blanche. The weirdness of that interview and the statements that the President has made repeatedly when asked about this repeatedly not ruling out automatically. Of course, I would not, you know, pardon or give clemency to a convicted sex offender.
FITZPATRICK: Absolutely, I think that speaks to the fact that there are still so many unanswered questions, but it is a pattern that is so not -- so unprecedented in terms of how the Department of Justice normally runs. And I think that speaks to how this case, under multiple administrations has just really mishandled, and that has fueled the public interest.
And one thing, I think that's really important about these photos is that you mentioned that it's kind of creepy and it looks almost sterile. That is because these photos were not taken until well after Epstein had died. This was part of the virgin islands investigation. And so, there was a lot of time for things to be cleared out for evidence to be potentially destroyed or altered.
And so, I think it's important that the -- and that's a really important question that I think, I hope we learn in these Epstein files, whatever comes of them is it's our understanding that there was really never any law enforcement activity, that there were never leads that could have been followed, that there was never surveillance.
There were all sorts of things that my sources wanted to do in early investigations into Jeffrey Epstein, that they were prevented from doing, which would have yielded really important evidence. And so, I think it's important to know that, like, yes, these images are there, but these are very sanitized from what could have been.
COOPER: And, Tara, I mean, one of the things that's so, you know, one of the many chapters in this horrific saga is that the people who are now in power, you know, Dan Bongino, Kash Patel, the FBI, were the ones leading the charge when it was a Democratic administration and they were portraying this as this is, you know, Democrats and a cabal and sort of linking it with QAnon and that whole conspiracy theory.
And now that they are the ones in charge, for them to be the ones suddenly changing their tune and saying, oh, there's actually nothing to see is, it's just another bizarre element of like, why have they suddenly changed their tune?
PALMERI: It's because they know its political and it always was political. But for them, it was a Democratic cabal until they woke up and realized that actually, at the time when Jeffrey was committing his worst crimes, the President was also a Democrat at that time, and it was a cudgel. They never looked at it in terms of the victims and what it meant for them. And they used, they pulled on the heartstrings of American people feeling like they were the underdogs, not being heard and the powerful elites were getting away with crimes.
It turns out they are. But those powerful elites are now in power.
So I think, you know, I hope that we find out so much more. I can't believe December 19th, it will finally happen. And I hope that they don't use some sort of workarounds with these SDNY investigations to withhold information, selectively choosing what to see or what not to see.
But I think it will bring a lot of -- I hope it brings some peace to a lot of the women.
COOPER: Tara Palmeri, thanks so much. Sara Fitzpatrick as well.
Just ahead, federal immigration agents, detaining people in New Orleans and being met with some resistance, President Trump also sends agents to go after undocumented Somali immigrants in Minnesota.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: I don't want them in our country, I will be honest with you, okay. Some would say, oh, that's not politically correct. I don't care. I don't want them in our country. Their country is no good for a reason. Their country stinks! And we don't want them in our country.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: Minnesota's Attorney General joins us ahead.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[20:35:12]
COOPER: The Trump administration's immigration crackdown has expanded to New Orleans. The Department of Homeland Security says they are "targeting criminal illegal aliens who are roaming free." Federal agents have already begun detaining people, questioning their immigration status. Outside one home in a New Orleans suburb, agents who took some people into custody were met by protesters armed with cameras to record the scene.
Immigration agents are also on the ground in Minneapolis and St. Paul, a federal official says they're targeting undocumented Somali immigrants. President Trump has been attacking the Somali community, citing a $300 million fraud scandal there. Dozens of Somalis were charged in the case, accused of stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from a government program that was created to feed children during the COVID-19 pandemic.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: Somalians ripped off that state for billions of dollars, billions every year, billions of dollars, and they contribute nothing. The welfare is like 88 percent, they contribute nothing. I don't want them in our country, I'll be honest with you. OK? Somebody would say, oh, that's not politically correct. I don't care. I don't want them in our country. Their country is no good for a reason. Their country stinks and we don't want them in our country. We're going to go the wrong way if we keep taking in garbage into our country. Let them go back to where they came from.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: We're joined by Keith Ellison. Minnesota's Attorney General, who is a former Congressman. Mr. Attorney General, appreciate you being with us. What is your response to that kind of language from the president?
KEITH ELLISON, MINNESOTA ATTORNEY GENERAL: It reminds me of Third Reich type language. It's reminiscent of Nazis talking about poisoning the blood, calling people human garbage. It's just disgusting. And it leads invariably to tragic, horrible outcomes. In Rwanda where there was a genocide, it was preceded by rhetoric calling people cockroaches. Whenever the most powerful man in the world is using his pulpit to dehumanize Americans, this is a very concerning tragic moment.
And we have to all denounce it and say no to it, because these things have a very, very bad history when we allow this kind of language to just go unaddressed.
COOPER: What do you expect this new ICE operation targeting Somali residents in Minnesota will actually look like? And legally, what can you do, if anything, about it?
ELLISON: Well, what I -- good questions. Let me tell you. First of all, I am concerned given the president's rhetoric that it will not be an orderly use of lawful government authority to address people who have been in removal proceedings and the like. I'm concerned, given his rhetoric, that you will see American citizens harassed, detained, mistreated. You will see Somali businesses and neighborhoods harassed, offended, abused, mistreated. 90 percent of Somali people in Minnesota are citizens of the United States or in lawful procedures to become that.
Most Somalis are American born, by the way, a numerical majority are U.S. born. And so, this broad brush thing where you just say they're all garbage, you're sort of green lighting harassment and abuse. It's wrong.
[20:40:00]
By the way, Minnesota, we value our Somali neighbors. These neighbors of ours, they open businesses. They are very heavily represented in care professions like people who care for our elderly, children, things like that.
COOPER: I do want to ask you -- I do want to ask you about the fraud scandal. I mean, because the president's comment, it seemed --
ELLISON: Yeah.
COOPER: -- at least in part fueled by or he's talking about this fraud scandal that we mentioned earlier, involving that charity called Feeding Our Future. The vast majority of these 70 defendants charged in the case were Somali. For perspective, those are nearly 80,000 Somalis in the state. How much -- I mean, critics have said the state officials, including you and the governor, did not act fast enough or quickly enough to investigate charges of fraud against the Feeding Our Future and did little to flag their allegations to federal authorities.
I know you said it was the federal government that didn't move fast enough. Is there any -- is there something you wish you had done differently?
ELLISON: No. We -- first of all, the Department of Education denied claims when they were -- when questionable claims were made about these meals. My office went to court, explained that to the court. A judge actually found the department in contempt for denying claims. So yeah, and we cooperated fully and worked well with the FBI. We are glad that we took the action that we did. I convicted over 300 people in the last few years for Medicaid fraud. So, we are very able to go after fraud and we do all the time.
What we need though, Anderson, is cooperation to stop the theft of public money, not politicization and using this tragic situation as a political weapon to gain advantage. I am telling you as an attorney general, yeah, fraud happens. We should prosecute it. Hold people accountable for their individual conduct, not for their ethnicity. Right? Which is critically important.
But yeah, absolutely. We've got to hold these people accountable, but not based on their race, ethnicity, or religion.
(CROSSTALK)
COOPER: In general.
ELLISON: And we're doing that. We'll do more.
COOPER: Attorney General Keith Ellison, I appreciate it. Appreciate your time. Coming up next, the president accused of mixed messages. He takes on alleged drug traffickers and boat strikes, but then pardons the former president of Honduras. Details on that next.
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[20:46:33]
COOPER: Tonight, President Trump is being accused of mixed messages when it comes to his war on drug traffickers. On one hand, he's threatened to escalate his crackdown beyond the strikes on alleged drug boats. Yesterday, during his cabinet meeting, he said his administration would start doing strikes on land "very soon." Also this week, President Trump pardoned former Honduran President, Juan Orlando Hernandez, who is now a free man despite him being convicted and sentenced to 45 years in federal prison on drug trafficking charges last year.
The New York Times printed the letter that Hernandez sent to the president requesting a pardon, saying in part, "I have found strength from you, sir. Your resilience to get back in that great office, notwithstanding the persecution and prosecution you faced, all for what, because you wished to make your country great again." Tonight on X, Hernandez released a new statement saying in part, "I was set up by the Biden-Harris administration and the deep state through a rigged trial. There was no real evidence, only the accusations of criminals who sought revenge."
More now from CNN's Brian Todd.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The 57-year-old former president of Honduras was found guilty in a U.S. federal court of working with drug cartels, conspiring to distribute more than 400 tons of cocaine toward the United States. He was found to have taken millions of dollars in bribes and prosecutors said he bragged about all of it.
DAMIAN WILLIAMS, U.S. ATTORNEY FOR SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK: Hernandez declared that he wanted, and I quote "to stuff the drugs right up the noses of the gringos."
TODD (voice-over): Witnesses at trial said, Juan Orlando Hernandez used Honduran military units to escort drug shipments. A federal jury in New York took only about nine hours to deliberate and convict him on importation and weapons charges. He was sentenced to 45 years in federal prison. But all of that changed this week, when he was pardoned by President Trump.
TRUMP: I feel very good about it. If you have some drug dealers in your country and you're the president, you don't necessarily put the president in jail for 45 years.
TODD (voice-over): President Trump called Hernandez's trial last year a witch hunt by the Biden administration, although there were no allegations of prosecutorial misconduct.
JASON MARCZAK, ATLANTIC COUNCIL: It was a case that the Justice Department had built over a number of years, against Juan Orlando, that dated back to the trial of his brother Tony.
TODD (voice-over): Hernandez's brother, Tony was tried and convicted for charges related to drug trafficking by the first Trump administration in 2019. Democrats and some Republicans in Congress are slamming the pardon. Republican Senator Rand Paul said it flies in the face of the Trump administration's escalating campaign against drug cartels in the region. "It really puts in stark relief the craziness of this policy." Hernandez's case drew the attention of some Trump allies, including Roger Stone, who personally called for Hernandez's pardon, claiming he saw similarities with his own legal entanglements.
ROGER STONE, AMERICAN POLITICAL CONSULTANT AND ACTIVIST: I had great sympathy for President Hernandez who was framed not because of there was evidence that he was actually involved in drug trafficking, but framed to get him out of the way to make way for the narco-Marxist regime to take power in Honduras.
TODD (voice-over): Hernandez wrote to Trump in October saying, he'd been targeted by the Biden-Harris administration, not for any wrongdoing, but for political reasons, calling it a "rigged trial" and praising Trump for fighting "the persecution and prosecution you faced, all for what, because you wish to make your country great again."
MARCZAK: Now, as you can imagine, those words and that attack against the previous administration resonates with President Trump, given his own history with the previous administration.
[20:50:00]
TODD (voice-over): Analysts say the timing of Trump's pardon is also crucial, coming as the vote count continues in Honduras' latest presidential election. Trump has endorsed the right-leaning ally of Juan Orlando Hernandez in that race and experts say the pardon could be an effort by Trump to influence the outcome there.
Brian Todd, CNN Washington.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
COOPER: Joining me now is former federal prosecutor, Jeffrey Toobin, bestselling author of "The Pardon: The Politics of Presidential Mercy." I mean, this is fascinating. It's so incredible because the president's own personal -- one of his personal attorneys during one of his many court cases before he became president, Emil Bove, he is the guy who prosecuted this case.
JEFFREY TOOBIN, FORMER FEDERAL PROSECUTOR: He prosecuted the brother and was involved in this case. I mean, this is so --
COOPER: And he's a Department of Justice official.
TOOBIN: Right. And he -- and the idea that this was some sort of --
COOPER: Right, so if it was rigged --
TOOBIN: -- Biden, conspiracy to get the Hernandez brothers --
COOPER: He's a federal judge, I guess.
TOOBIN: Yeah. Well, he was a very senior official in the Justice Department, very involved in the early stages of the Biden -- of the new Trump administration. He's since been confirmed to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, but he is the last person you would think would be a Biden stooge.
COOPER: Right. Taking part in this railroading.
TOOBIN: Correct. But the thing that's just so incredible about this that makes you your head explode is we are about to go to war, it looks like, against Venezuela because the president of Venezuela is supposedly a drug dealer who is involved in the narcotics -- cocaine trade. Here you have a country, Honduras, where he's not an alleged conspirator. He's convicted of exactly the same crime.
COOPER: Right. He was accused of getting $1 million from El Chapo.
TOOBIN: El Chapo, and 400 tons of cocaine were involved in this case. And one guy gets a pardon and the other guy gets a war. It's just incomprehensive.
COOPER: I want to read just a little bit more of the letter that Hernandez wrote to the president saying, like, you, I sought only to serve my people to uphold our conservative values while leading unprecedented reforms to make my country safer and -- stronger and safer. Like you, I was recklessly attacked by radical leftist forces who cannot tolerate change, who conspired with drug traffickers, resorted to false accusations, lawfare, and selective justice to destroy what we'd achieve and clear the path for a Honduran radical left to change power.
Again, I mean, this guy, this guy who represented the president in court, who was a Department of Justice official and is now a judge, was his -- was the attorney prosecuting this case.
TOOBIN: Correct. And another thing Hernandez said is, oh, well, they brought in criminals to testify against me. Virtually every narcotics case that I have ever seen --
COOPER: Right.
TOOBIN: -- involves criminals testifying against other criminals. As prosecutors always say in their summation, they're not our friends. They're the defendant's friends. They're the people he was involved in.
COOPER: Right.
TOOBIN: So it is not surprising that there were cooperating criminals testifying against him.
COOPER: Yeah.
TOOBIN: That doesn't make him innocent. The jury said he was guilty.
COOPER: It's incredible. Jeffrey Toobin, thanks so much as always.
Up next, my conversation with singer and author, Nick Cave on the death of his two sons years apart. He's the guest this week on my podcast, "All There Is."
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NICK CAVE, AUSTRALIAN MUSICIAN: Grief has a specific feel about it, but loss to me is something a little gentler and wider. And I think that that's the sort of connective tissue that holds us all together.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
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[20:58:12]
COOPER: There's some stunning new video of a U.S. Air Force Thunderbird pilot safely ejecting from a fighting Falcon jet in California during a training mission earlier today. Thankfully, the pilot was the only person on board, taken to the hospital, non-life threatening injuries. The Air Force says the incident is under investigation. It's unclear what caused the crash.
A new episode of my podcast, "All There Is", is out. My guest this week is legendary singer, songwriter and author, Nick Cave. His 15- year-old son, Arthur, died 10 years ago in a fall off a cliff in Brighton, England. Then in 2022, tragedy struck again. Nick's first child, Jethro, died at the age of 31. Here's just a bit of my conversation with Nick Cave.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CAVE: What I came to understand is that, that we are all creatures of loss. We are all suffering in our own ways. You don't need to have someone close to you die to be suffering from this thing too. I think the world is suffering in a collective way. I mean, you must know that too, just by visiting war zones and this sort of thing. But, the world is suffering from loss. It is the thing that holds us together.
COOPER: There is an ocean of grief out there.
CAVE: Yeah. Yeah. Grief has a sort of specific feel about it, but loss to me is something a little gentler and wider. And I think that that's the sort of connective tissue that holds us all together. I can look at you, you can look at me, and we understand that within our lives, whatever they may be, there is this sort of thread of loss that runs through. It's, as I said before, a condition, a condition of being to be, and that's not a bad thing. I don't find grief to be a bad thing.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: Well, you can watch the full episode right now at cnn.com/allthereis, or listen wherever you get your podcast. Also, join me from my companion streaming show, "All There Is" live every Thursday night at 9:15 p.m. So there'll be one live show tomorrow night 9:15 p.m.
