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Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees

Trump Attends Dignified Transfer for Four U.S. Soldiers Killed in War; Interview with Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA); Model Recruiter with Ties to Epstein Found Dead in France; Epstein Associate Found Dead, French Authorities Investigate; OpenAI Test Model Escaped and Breached Another Company's Servers; Nolan Wells' Family Releases Their Preliminary Independent Autopsy. Aired 8-9p ET

Aired July 22, 2026 - 20:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: ... to happen and we reached out to Olive Garden to just see if they had any comments about any of this. They did not, not surprisingly, they didn't do anything wrong here. So now we may reach out again and see if we can get some breadsticks. I'll charge them to you, Erin.

ERIN BURNETT, CNN HOST: They are actually delicious, my favorite thing, Olive Garden.

FOREMAN: They are delicious.

BURNETT: All right, Tom Foreman, thank very much. And thanks so much to all of you for joining us. AC360 starts now.

[0:00:30.1]

JOHN KING, CNN HOST: Today, the part of the job, President Trump says is probably the hardest, being on hand to welcome home America's war dead. Yet hours later, at a political rally, the President suggests his fight with Iran, in his view, isn't really big enough to be called a war.

John King here in for Anderson. Tonight, the war and yes, it is very, very much a war goes on and it could be widening. Yemen's Iran backed Houthis claim they've hit two Saudi oil tankers in the region's other strategic waterway, the Red Sea. And though CNN cannot independently confirm that a British maritime tracking organization says a tanker was hit by some kind of projectile and caught fire.

Also tonight, the air campaign continues. American forces are carrying out their 12th straight round of airstrikes since the cease fire broke down. The President, now threatening to destroy one Iranian bridge or power plant. You see his post there for every ship Iran targets in the Persian Gulf, Tehran promising in return to hit regional oil and gas facilities in return.

And as we said, the remains of four Americans killed in action over the weekend, returned home. The dignified transfer took place right there at Dover Air Base in Delaware. Family members, military officials and the commander-in-chief looking on. They are, we now know First Lieutenant Tyler James Feehan, Staff Sergeant Michael Emmanuel Swinton, Sergeant Angel Rampersad and Private Isabella Gonzales.

The President called todays ritual, "one of the hardest things to do as a President." In all now, 18 American servicemen and women have been killed since President Trump ordered the first strikes on Iran back on February 28th. From the solemn event at Dover, the President flew to a political rally in Georgia. It was there he suggested, what we have been witnessing for nearly five months now is something short of a war.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R) PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: I call it a skirmish. This is with this skirmish we have with the Islamic Republic of Iran, and I call it that, because let me tell you, they're getting hit so hard and they want to make a deal. But I say they're not ready to make a deal.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Now, there's simply no public sign that last part is true. No indication Iran wants the deal to end this skirmish as the President today called it. He in the past has also used excursion and incursion, in other words as well. Just not war, but keeping them honest, of all days, when the bodies of four American troops returned home to not call a war what it actually is. Especially since just yesterday, look there. He called the military action in Venezuela, which lasted a single day and cost zero troops their lives a war. Again, you see it right there, the Venezuela war and right beneath it, the Iran military conflict.

Perspective now from CNN global affairs analyst Karim Sadjadpour, former Deputy Director Of National Intelligence, Beth Sanner and the former Middle East and North Africa coordinator for the National Security Council, Brett McGurk.

Beth, we don't have independent confirmation at CNN, but we've seen some reporting, including what the British maritime agency says. If it is true that the Houthis now are striking Saudi tankers near the red sea. That would be a big escalation. The question is, what does the United States do? The President has previously said the Houthis were to blockade the red sea, "We'll just have to take care of business."

BETH SANNER, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Yes, I think that if he is going to hold true to his word, then it means that, you know, in the next day or so, we're going to be striking the Houthis again. And, you know, maybe the viewers will remember that we went through a multiple week bombing of the Houthis. And, you know, and then declared a truce. We had a ceasefire with them. And now if we if we reengage, of course, that truce will be broken.

And in essence, the war will be widened. right. And so, that is of great concern. This is a very important waterway; 30 percent of container traffic goes through there. You know, since the Houthis started this war in the beginning, in reaction to Israel, we had a big decrease in the amount of traffic going through there. It was coming back and now already this week; we've seen another 30 percent decrease in traffic just between Monday and Tuesday.

So, just from the threat, now that those ships have been struck, that is going to be a waterway that shippers will not want to go through. So, prices will go up.

KING: Brett, geographically, logistically, if there's an escalation like that, it's a bigger challenge, more complicated challenge for the United States military. What else?

[20:05:05]

BRETT MCGURK, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: Well, John, I dealt with that directly because the Houthis did this as Beth just mentioned, 2023-2024, we built an international coalition. We had an air campaign. It's just very difficult, a needle in a haystack problem to stop these drones, Iranian drones, which can be fired from 1500 kilometers away any and easily hit a ship, which may have just happened tonight, very difficult challenge.

Look, John, I'm asking myself, is this escalation to potentially de- escalate? Meaning as you're going up the ladder, but there's side conversations going on through mediators to try to come to some arrangement. A modus vivendi, short-term deal for a ceasefire.

And right now, I don't see that. I don't think there's really any off ramp at the moment. So, to your question I do see this escalating. We're moving more forces to the region. The President is threatening more strikes. And Iran is also threatening more strikes. And they are saying in their rhetoric, including Ghalibaf, who was the negotiator on their side, no give at all in their claim to the Strait of Hormuz. That's where we are.

KING: Karim, do you agree with that assessment that you don't see any effort to, again, sometimes escalate to bring about some sort of an off ramp or at least diplomacy at the table? And to add to that, as Brett talks about the President saying more strikes, he's being more specific, saying a bridge or a power plant for every ship, Iran targets in the Strait.

Now, we've heard that from the President before, but that would be a major escalation.

KARIM SADJADPOUR, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: So, John, the President's words over the last five months have been incredibly inconsistent, erratic, contradictory. And the challenges that, you know, do the Iranians take his word seriously? Do our partners in the Middle East take his words seriously?

The challenge is that Iran has been preparing for war with the United States for 47 years. They are a hundred percent focused on this war. Whole of government is focused. That isn't the case with the Trump administration. as you alluded to from the outset, he called this just a little excursion. He's not even calling it a war. And on various days he will say either that Iran is desperate for a deal. A deal is imminent, or were going to escalate. And so, I don't believe that the Iranians are taking the President's words seriously to significantly escalate and that could lead to a real miscalculation.

KING: And, Beth, as this plays out, as we watch the potential escalation, the Trump administration, the President today approving a deal with Saudi Arabia to provide the country with a civilian nuclear program.

Is that separate and distinct, or does that, at a minimum, at least continue to change the temperature in the region in a way that's not productive?

SANNER: I think, you know, I think it was an opportunity that the President wanted to take to do a deal. And I think the question is "Is this deal so transactional that it's expediency over some other considerations? I mean, we have to remember that Saudi Arabia denied the U.S. Military use of its airspace in order to escort commercial shipping, which they benefit from in the Strait of Hormuz.

And, you know, when Spain does this, we get a whole different reaction when Saudi Arabia does this, we're anxious to get this relationship back on track. And we've given up a few things that I'm worried about in terms of nonproliferation, in terms of IAEA, nuclear inspection access that are that are rather unprecedented. We still don't know exactly what the deal says. It's two secret annexes, but, you know, Congress will have to consider this. And there are many steps ahead. So, I don't want to be too alarmist, but it doesn't seem consistent.

KING: Well, to that point, Brett, you're part of negotiating a similar deal with Saudi Arabia back during the Biden administration. As Beth notes, secret at the moment. But they do have to submit it to Congress. What are your one or two biggest questions in the details?

MCGURK: Yes, we had an extensive negotiation, John, with the NSA, the National Nuclear Security Agency within the Department of Energy, all of our best experts to make sure that those nonproliferation concerns were met. But I have to say, this was part of an overall package, potentially for normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia as part of a broader deal, which obviously got taken off the agenda after the attacks on October 7th of 2023.

So, as Beth said, I think we got to see the details that will be submitted to Congress. If it is similar to what was done during the Biden administration, I expect it is, because I think a lot of that work was already done. it's fairly rigorous. There is the possibility down the road, John, of a U.S. enrichment facility in Saudi Arabia. That was a very controversial piece. Part of that is because we still import fuel from Russia. It was kind of looking for an alternative fuel source, but that's kind of down the road. Theres going to be a study about that.

Obviously, that will raise concerns and scrutiny in Congress, as it should. So, I think we'll learn more here over the coming weeks.

KING: Karim, a rule in life. I'm not sure it applies to foreign policy, but is to try to leave things better than you found them. Does this step in the region leave things better than the President found them? [20:10:14]

SADJADPOUR: So, John, this war was meant in part to avert a nuclear armed Iran and there is a legitimate fear that we will look back several years from now and say that this war actually convinced Iran's leadership once and for all, that they need nuclear weapons as a deterrent to stay in power, and indeed, if Iran's leadership gets nuclear weapons, there is a legitimate fear that starts a domino effect throughout the Middle East with not only Saudi Arabia, but other countries in the region, including Turkey, other Gulf Countries.

And so, that is a potentially Pandora's Box that we've opened. And, you know, Saudi Arabia is right now an ally. It's been a consistent ally, but there's always the concern about stability in Saudi Arabia, as we saw in Iran in 1979, you had an allied monarchy fall. And that is what we're talking about now, the nuclear program that the Islamic Republic of Iran inherited from the Shah's government.

KING: Ominous talk there, and, Beth, let's move back to Iran as we watch how this plays out. Help me from your former post, the intelligence perspective. What are you looking for in the sense that 12 days now, since the ceasefire broke down of American strikes, Iran has had counterstrikes, any signs, and what would you be looking for that this is having any effect on the regime's thinking, the regime's attitude about trying to find an off ramp?

SANNER: Well, the Gulf States and their ability, plus Pakistan, their ability to engage Iran, there have been this, you know, kind of noises about perhaps a ten-day ceasefire being in the offing, we don't have confirmation of that. But I would start to see some difference in tone.

But as Karim said, I personally don't expect that. I think this war has to end via negotiations, but I think we could be quite a ways off, somebody's got to give. So, that give could happen in the United States or in Iran. One side has to go first.

KING: One side has to go first. Karim Sadjadpour Beth Sanner, Brett McGurk, thanks so much.

And up next for us, we continue the conversation with a lawmaker, Marine combat veteran. What should Congress' role be in this apparently widening conflict?

And later, Jake Tapper's exclusive New CNN investigation, 18 days in Minnesota. The killings by federal agents of American citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[20:16:50]

KING: You're looking there, right side of your screen there. The President's most recent social media effort. That's a repost of a news report headlined, Trump orders CENTCOM to, "open the gates of hell" after U.S. Troops killed. Right now, for the 12th straight night, there are airstrikes underway. No indication, though, to what extent.

Joining us now, the Massachusetts Democratic Congressman Seth Moulton, who sits on the House Armed Services Committee. Congressman Moulton also has a Marine Corps veteran who served four tours of duty in Iraq.

Congressman, thank you for your time tonight. When you see a post like that, the President reposting, he's ordered CENTCOM to open the gates of hell. There is a 12th night of attacks, 12th round of attacks since the ceasefire broke down. Is that the answer here?

REP. SETH MOULTON (D-MA): No, I mean, he starting more attacks, he's inviting more attacks in return. He's getting us deeper into a war that he's losing across the board. A war in Iran that's been an utter disaster for everybody except Iran, and maybe also except for China. China's thrilled that were bogged down in another war in the Middle East. And every time this war escalates, more American lives are on the line. This is not a solution.

KING: I want to tap your experience, Marine veteran four tours in Iraq, including serving at the side of General Petraeus during that conflict. Today, the President was in Dover, Delaware, for what he concedes, one of the hardest things do as President of United States, a dignified transfer ceremony welcoming home, war dead men and women, young men and women, mostly who have volunteered and then given their lives.

He flew from there to a rally in Georgia and called this a skirmish. Is this a skirmish?

MOULTON: No, it's a war. And he's been calling it for a war from day one. He only started changing his tune on the terminology when he started running into legal trouble with Congress, because Congress did not authorize a war. And that's why I have been pushing, along with some other veterans, to have another war powers vote in Congress.

We're hoping it happens tomorrow to go on record and to say once again that Congress is against this war. We're against this escalation. This is not the way that we secure Iran's nuclear program. This is not the way that we curtail Iran's power. Iran is more empowered than they have ever been.

But I want to say something else, John, because you brought up this dignified transfer. After this transfer, Trump put words in the mouths of the troops who had died saying they didn't want Iran to have a nuclear weapon. Speaking as someone who was sent to war by politicians in Washington, D.C., the idea that politicians that a President would tell my family what I was thinking when I died is unbelievably offensive.

I served with a lot of Marines who disagreed with Bush's war in Iraq. You're speaking to someone who is an outspoken critic of the war in Iraq, and the idea that President Trump would treat these troops as pawns in his political game is just disgusting.

KING: You mentioned trying to get a war powers resolution passed again. Republicans also are trying to make sure they have the votes to get the Pentagon more money. Secretary Hegseth was out there making the case for billions and billions more yesterday. There were some votes in the House today.

My reading of that is that the Republicans so far have that funding on path, and then it goes over to the Senate. Do you have any hope that you can find enough Republicans, either in the House or your allies over on the Senate side, to stop the funding, or at least put strings on it?

[20:20:15]

MOULTON: I mean, we're trying really hard. And the interesting thing, John is if you came into the classified behind-the-scenes meetings that we have an Armed Services Committee, you'll actually hear a number of Republicans, especially Republican veterans, asking very tough questions of the administration. But then they go out in public and just support the administration's policy.

So, the lack of political courage in Washington is just unbelievable. We need to confront this administration in a bipartisan way, because Americans are dying and there's no path to winning this war. I mean, that's the big problem here. Iran is a serious National Security threat. Ive seen Iranians kill Americans in Iraq with my own eyes. And yet Iran is more empowered. They literally are strangling the world economy. Oil prices are going up. They're now asking American taxpayers to foot the bill for this losing war when costs are rising for everybody here at home, this is just a disaster across the board.

And the idea that doubling down on this disaster is going to make it better? It just doesn't make sense.

KING: I want to ask you a question. You put it in my head by what you said earlier about your own service and being someone who was sent to war by a war. The Iraq war became quite unpopular. It became a very big deal in both the 2006 and the 2008 elections. We're about 15 weeks away from an election in this country.

I want to ask you how you deal with it, because you understand what it's like to be serving overseas in uniform while the politicians back home are debating, and you are against a war now that is very unpopular in the country. But you also understand how some young men or women wear the uniform overseas who might support it, might oppose it. I assume you get a little angry. You get nervous sometimes when the politicians back home are debating what you're doing as you risk your life every second. How do you personally handle that? Sticking to what you view as your principles and your opinion, but understanding that somebody wearing the uniform in the where you were years ago is listening?

MOULTON: You know, there's nothing more that we wanted on the ground in Iraq. Even those of us in the middle of a war we disagreed with. Then for politicians to tell the truth and to ask the tough questions and to ultimately know what they were doing when they asked us to risk our lives. I mean, I fought in a war that shouldn't have happened if people in Washington had asked those tough questions. I mean, John, I'm running for Senate against Senator Markey, who voted for that war, who voted to send thousands and thousands of Americans to die before asking the tough questions about whether we needed to fight that war. So, we can have debates in Washington about policy, that's what were supposed to do. We can have serious debates about whether we should continue this war, but what the troops demand more than anything, is for us to actually ask the tough questions, to demand answers from the administration and ultimately get the truth. We need the truth, and were not getting the truth from Trump or Hegseth with the Iran war.

KING: Congressman Moulton, thank you for your time tonight, Sir, appreciate it.

MOULTON: Good to see you, John.

KING: Up next for us, a man who recruited models and introduced young women to Jeffrey Epstein for years. He was found dead in his home. What authorities are saying about that tonight?

Plus, an exclusive CNN investigation, 18 days in Minnesota. The chaos, the lies, the cover ups after federal agents killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[20:27:40]

KING: A man who French prosecutors say recruited models and then introduced them to Jeffrey Epstein for over a decade, has been found dead. Authorities revealed today that Daniel Siad's body was discovered in his home on Monday outside of Paris.

According to CNN's affiliate in France, see how his name appears more than 2,000 times in the Department of Justice Epstein files. The files, also suggests Epstein paid him tens of thousands of dollars over several years. However, in a recent interview with CNN, Siad denied any knowledge of sexual abuse by the disgraced financier after he referred women to him.

CNN's Melissa Bell joins us from Paris with more. Melissa, what else do we know about the circumstances of this death?

MELISSA BELL, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Very little from authorities beyond the fact of his death. No sense, for instance, whether they believe that foul play was involved or not. They say we have to wait for the autopsy for that. But we have been hearing from Siad's lawyer who's pointed not just the need to respect the family around him, the bereaved, but also that he was under tremendous stress.

We've also been hearing from the Paris prosecutor about more about the probes that were launched as a result of that January release of the Epstein files by the U.S. Department of Justice. They led French prosecutors to set up two different probes looking into what went on in Paris during those years. Epstein's link to the modeling world and what place Daniel Siad may have had in that.

So, under a great deal of pressure, but nothing so far or yet to suggest how he died -- John.

KING: And to that point, in what place did Daniel Siad -- what more can you tell us about what we know about his relationship with Epstein?

BELL: Well, these statements from the prosecutor suggest that as a result of these probes, some 24 women have come forward, been identified as victims here in Paris, many of them interviewed already. We've also been learning, for instance, that French authorities had Siad on wiretap.

Now, this is a man who, over the course of ten years, had a close relationship with Epstein, as you say, the files suggest that their links continued after Jeffrey Epstein was convicted in 2008 of those sex crimes. CNN's Katie Polglase had a chance to speak to Siad just a couple of months before his death and probed him on that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DANIEL SIAD, EPSTEIN MODEL RECRUITER: My work with him has been strictly professional. I never doubt that because I never heard anything from anyone, I introduced him who came back to me that they had a bad situation with him.

I trust in him, I believe this guy is a professional person.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BELL: So, a lot more will come out of those probes that began as a result of that latest release of DOJ files about the relationships between Daniel Siad and a number of other people who've now been identified by prosecutors as to what happened to him. Of course, we have to wait a little bit more to figure out whether foul play was involved. And authorities are not saying anything about that -- John.

KING: Melissa Bell, thank you so much. Appreciate it. And joining us now to discuss further, Staff Writer for The Atlantic, Sarah Fitzpatrick, who has covered the Epstein investigation extensively. Sarah, how significant do you think Siad's death is to the investigation as a whole? Obviously, it's not the first person connected to the case who has died, including Epstein himself. Does that make it harder to get to the truth?

SARAH FITZPATRICK, STAFF WRITER, THE ATLANTIC: Absolutely. It's a major setback because it just illustrates to what extent this investigation has been so poorly handled by this Justice Department and the United States for decades. The fact that, you know, every day that goes by, every year that goes by, there are important witnesses who now have passed away or are no longer able to, you know -- are no longer able to share that information, it makes corroborating information much harder. It makes witnesses much harder.

Every single day that goes by sets this investigation back. And I think it makes it that much harder for anyone to have certainty that we will truly ever know the true extent of Epstein's crimes and those that enabled those crimes.

KING: I know part of your reporting is keeping in touch with the survivors. They're heroes and they're demanding accountability. What does this death mean for them? We heard at least one today express frustration to the point you're trying to make that he will not face accountability.

FITZPATRICK: It's such a gut punch, I think, because there is always, I think, this ongoing hope that coming forward at great cost, you know, these women have spent so much money on lawyers, received death threats. Some of them have gone into hiding, but they have always felt that it was worth it if there could be true accountability.

And for something like this to happen and again, to happen without any clear information about what happened and why, I mean, it's just an incredible gut punch. And I think it also is so frustrating, especially this week, because these women and so many in the law enforcement community watched Acting Attorney General, Todd Blanche, testify claiming that he would meet with survivors, that he was doing everything he can.

And it's just such a stark contrast that the French were actively, you know, interviewing witnesses, going off of (ph) probes from documents that were released this year. And as far as my reporting has been able to turn up, there is no indication of any serious investigative activity since the Trump administration came into office and since these files were made public.

So it's just a really, really stark and, I think, damning contrast about what could be done and what's not being done here.

KING: It's a fascinating point, because that's where I was going to follow up in the sense that is there any indication of movement in U.S. investigations? We'll see what happens in France now with their investigation, obviously, they've lost a very important witness. The state of New Mexico looking into the ranch out there, activities out there. In terms of the federal government, DOJ, you say it's gone dormant.

FITZPATRICK: I'd say, yes, absolutely dormant. I mean, there are efforts, of course, in New Mexico, there are some efforts in terms of civil litigation, but I don't think that we're seeing any great movement.

And in fact, this week we saw Alan Dershowitz, who was supposed to have an interview up on Capitol Hill, he informed them that he is not going to do that. And so, you know, we aren't really seeing -- we'll have to see if Congress will actually hold him to account and demand that he come in. But as of right now, you know, if people are willing to -- don't feel that they're even accountable to Congress, I don't think we can expect to see much movement.

KING: All right. Dershowitz, of course, has denied wrongdoing, but the committee wanted to sit down and talk to him. Sarah Fitzpatrick, very much appreciate it. Thank you so much.

And up next for us, a CNN exclusive investigation, 18 days in Minnesota, the killings of two Americans, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, by federal agents. And later, this sounds like the first chapter of a dystopian novel, one company's A.I. models escaping the lab with no human help and hacking into an outside system. Is this just teething pains or a taste of tech nightmares to come? We'll give you some answers, ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[20:38:51]

KING: A new CNN investigation, 18 days in Minnesota. This is about the Trump administration's killing of two American citizens six months ago, Renee Good and Alex Pretti. CNN's Jake Tapper examined the chaos, the lies and the cover-ups surrounding those deaths.

And for the first time, we are exclusively hearing on camera from one of the federal prosecutors who resigned in protest. Here's Jake with more. And a warning, some of the images and some of the language is disturbing.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JAKE TAPPER, CNN ANCHOR & CHIEF WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): On the morning of Wednesday, January 7th, a Minneapolis mother named Renee Good dropped her six-year-old son off at school, then went with her wife, Becca, to be legal observers of the immigration enforcement operations in their city.

RENEE GOOD, VICTIM OF ICE SHOOTING: That's fine, dude. I'm not mad at you. Show your face. I'm not mad at you.

BECCA GOOD, RENEE GOOD'S WIFE: It's OK. We don't change our plates every morning. Just so you know. It'll be the same plate when you come talk to us later. That's fine. You have citizens (inaudible) you want to come at us? You want to come at us? I say go get yourself some lunch, big boy. Go home.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Get out of the car. Get out of the car. Get out of the (expletive) car. Get out of the car.

R. GOOD: (Inaudible).

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (Expletive).

TAPPER: What did you think when you first saw the video?

TOM CALHOUN-LOPEZ, FORMER ASSISTANT U.S. ATTORNEY, MINNESOTA: We were getting updates as they happened.

[20:40:00]

We got the video as soon as we can. Obviously, the video speaks for itself. It's troubling. TAPPER (voice-over): Immediately following the shooting, senior prosecutors in the Minnesota U.S. attorney's office did what was standard operating procedure. They ordered an investigation into the shooting, whether Renee Good's civil rights had been violated. For a brief moment, it looked like a joint investigation would happen between the FBI and local authorities.

But the Trump administration had different plans.

KRISTI NOEM, THEN HOMELAND SECURITY SECRETARY: This appears as an attempt to kill or to cause bodily harm to agents, an act of domestic terrorism.

TAPPER (voice-over): In addition to those highly questionable comments from then Homeland Security Secretary, Kristi Noem, President Trump quickly took to Truth Social and made demonstrably false claims, saying Good was, quote, "very disorderly, obstructing and resisting, who then violently, willfully and viciously ran over the ICE officer, who seems to have shot her in self-defense," adding, "it is hard to believe the ICE officer survived."

TAPPER: This is the site where Renee Good died. The investigation was shut down into the shooting?

CALHOUN-LOPEZ: That's correct. The president and the secretary of homeland security both announced that there would be no investigation. Secretary Noem referred to Renee Good as a domestic terrorist. And I've certainly seen no evidence of that whatsoever.

TAPPER: And had you ever seen anything like that happen before, where the president weighs in on a shooting?

CALHOUN-LOPEZ: Never. Under normal times, an administration would have no objection to an investigation because the investigation may clear the officer. An investigation isn't necessarily designed to indict anybody.

TAPPER (voice-over): U.S. Attorney Daniel Rosen was in Washington, D.C. at a conference. So the second in command of the U.S. attorney's office, Joe Thompson, who was worried that the presence of homeland security agents on the street, ICE, Border Patrol, CBP would inflame matters, made a request to the Feds to remove them. That request was honored, briefly.

MAYOR JACOB FREY, (D) MINNEAPOLIS: They are already trying to spin this as an action of self-defense. I want to tell everybody directly, that is bullshit. To ICE, get the (expletive) out of Minneapolis.

TAPPER (voice-over): In the U.S. attorney's office, staffers grimaced knowing Mayor Frey's comments weren't going to help. But even before those comments, prosecutors worried about how the Trump administration would handle this shooting. By the end of the day, the FBI was no longer working with local authorities on the shooting investigation. And homeland security agents were back on the streets.

On Thursday, January 8th, the day after the Renee Good shooting, tensions between the prosecutors in the U.S. attorney's office in Minnesota and the Justice Department began. Justice Department officials wanted the prosecutors to claw back a warrant they'd obtained for Renee Good's car, a warrant predicated on an investigation as to whether Renee Good's civil rights were being violated.

DOJ officials in D.C. wanted the charges to be against Good for attacking the ICE officer. The Justice Department, led by the office of Deputy Attorney General, Todd Blanche, also wanted Good and, to a different degree, her widow, Becca, investigated. But the Minnesota prosecutors would not carry out those actions.

On Monday, January 12th, five days after the death of Renee Good, Minnesota's U.S. Attorney, Daniel Rosen returned to the office and he told prosecutors that the marching orders from D.C. were to investigate Good for an assault on a federal officer. And he also suggested they take some investigative steps regarding Good's widow, Becca, instructions the prosecutors thought were madness.

TAPPER: Does it make sense to investigate somebody for assault on a federal officer if they're dead?

CALHOUN-LOPEZ: It did not make sense to me at the time. It didn't make sense to any of us. It doesn't make sense to me today.

TAPPER (voice-over): Also that day, Greg Bovino demanded a phone call with the U.S. attorney's office. Bovino was angry that prosecutors had not been filing cases against protesters whom he had claimed and his agents had claimed were assaulting officers and agents.

GREGORY BOVINO, FORMER BORDER PATROL COMMANDER-AT-LARGE: You assault an officer and you're going to jail.

TAPPER (voice-over): What Bovino said on the call stunned the prosecutors. Quote, "These people are wackos," Bovino said about Minnesota protesters. This shit is getting ready to come. We're not going to calm it down. We're going to put it down. We're going to pacify this place. We're going to roll them up. Bovino also made a comment about Rosen, the U.S. Attorney, who's an Orthodox Jew, sneeringly referring to him as one of the "chosen people," a comment prosecutors found anti-Semitic.

After the call with Bovino, one of the prosecutors said, quote, "They're going to kill someone else. Others agreed." On Bovino's claims that immigration officers were being assaulted and charges weren't coming, well, those cases had been going to Tom Calhoun-Lopez.

CALHOUN-LOPEZ: Law enforcement officers have a difficult job and federal agents do their job very, very well. So it's important that prosecutors protect them where they can. And that means vindicating their rights if they're victims of assault.

But I began to have concerns that agents were not being truthful, making arrests with very little provocation and then soon enough, no provocation. And even after that, I would learn that agents had instigated physical contact. And so, they were arresting people not only who had committed no assault, but who had in fact been assaulted by federal agents.

TAPPER (voice-over): The result of the false claims and the chaos in Minneapolis would soon reverberate inside the Minnesota U.S. attorney's office.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

[20:45:00]

TAPPER (on camera): CNN reached out to former Border Patrol Official, Greg Bovino, who disputes the characterization of that January 12th phone call. He says that though he couldn't recall his exact words, the idea that he would say he would put down the protest is not something he would say. As for the "chosen people" comment, he denied it was intended to be anti-semitic.

He says he was simply frustrated that he had not been able to reach U.S. Attorney, Rosen, on the Sabbath. John?

KING: Jake, it's a fascinating piece. I urge our viewers to go to CNN.com and take the time to read through it because the level of detail is what makes it just compelling reporting. And among the level of detail you have in there is your conversation with the former Federal Prosecutor there, Tom Calhoun-Lopez, who resigned early on. And when he did so, others went with him. Why did they ultimately make those decisions?

TAPPER: I think there were a lot of reasons in terms of what was going on in Minnesota with Operation Metro Surge. But the five resignations from prosecutors in the U.S. attorney's office in Minnesota on January 13th ultimately were because the Justice Department was pushing them to claw back a warrant that they had obtained for Renee Good's car for the investigation into her death.

The predicate for the warrant was an investigation into whether this dead woman, her civil rights had been violated by the ICE agent who shot her. The Justice Department said, claw back that warrant and change it so that the predicate for it is that she assaulted a federal officer and she was a domestic terrorist.

And the prosecutors did not think that made any sense to do it. You can't charge a dead woman. And also, they'd already obtained the warrant. It didn't make any sense. Also as part of that, the Justice Department was pushing for an investigation into Renee Good, a dead woman, for being a domestic terrorist who assaulted federal officers. And part of that would involve some investigatory steps having to do with her widow, Becca Good.

And the prosecutors pushed back on this for days and days and ultimately, concluded they would just have to resign. This was not going to work.

KING: And Jake, it's crystal clear from your reporting that the seasoned professionals thought they should at least explore federal charges against the officers involved in the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. But here we are six months later. Anything from that reporting to suggest there ever will be federal charges?

TAPPER: Well, the reporting from Evan Perez, who covers the Justice Department for us, suggests that sources insist that an investigation is going on. It is just standard practice that when there is what's called an officer-involved shooting, when a cop or a federal agent kills somebody, there's an investigation just to, at the very least, clear the officer of any wrongdoing.

But in this case, all of the precedent was abandoned. The idea that the FBI and local authorities in Minnesota, it's called the BCA, that they work together, which was the initial plan, that went out the window and the federal authorities just did it on their own. Same thing with the Alex Pretti investigation.

And in fact, not only was there not any cooperation, because the Trump Justice Department said we don't want to cooperate with local authorities, they prohibited local authorities from even being on the crime scene. So it's unclear whether there ever will be any sort of accountability, at least on the federal level.

KING: Again, breathtaking reporting in its own right, and all the more important because of the continued questions about ICE conduct out on the streets of America. Jake Tapper, thanks so much.

TAPPER: Thanks, John.

KING: And now to something that sounds like a sci-fi movie plot, except this is real life. OpenAI says some of its experimental A.I. models escaped a test environment with no human direction and then hacked into a real company's servers, all while trying to apparently cheat a cybersecurity test. Joining us with more on this, CNN Contributor and Tech Journalist, Jake Ward, the host of "The Rip Current" podcast.

Jake, help me understand what happened here and the danger it could pose. This seems like a pretty big deal.

JACOB WARD, CNN CONTRIBUTOR & TECHNOLOGY JOURNALIST: You know, I think it is a pretty big deal. OpenAI says that it was essentially doing cyber research around these models, seeing what they could do, and it paired a couple of them up.

Those two models got it into their head to essentially find an escape hatch from the sort of closed sandbox it was in, got out onto the open web, used some stolen credentials to then get into another company where it thought it would find the answer to the question it had been assigned, and then went ahead and got in there using a bunch of nasty tricks.

And so that company, Hugging Face, they found that out last week without even understanding that this was an OpenAI product, and OpenAI yesterday announced that this was in fact them. The language that they use is funny here, John.

They say, we consider this incident to be an unprecedented cyber incident involving state-of-the-art cyber capabilities. [20:50:00]

That's up toward the tone of (ph) -- on top of (ph) how they describe this. And so this is, I think, a very big deal. We've also seen its rival, Anthropic come out with a product that seems to be capable of this kind of thing. And so, we're definitely in a new world in terms of cybercrime, but it's the tone there that sort of sticks with me, I have to say.

KING: Well, to that point, this is the stuff of a sci-fi plot that you tell A.I., do this, stay within this box. You're not allowed to do this. And then A.I. on its own decides it's going to do something else.

Here, it was, you know, searching and it hacks into another system. But this is the fear people raise about, you know, what if it has access to military technology, maybe even to build (ph) like, you know, can it launch things or can it shut down a factory or do other things?

Is that a legitimate concern after something like this?

WARD: I mean, I think it absolutely is. And I think it's important to remember here that this is not a deviation from what the industry is after. This is, in fact, right on mission. We've been talking for a long time in the A.I. landscape about the Agentic era, the idea that we're going to have these agents that are going to run through our lives and make our lives easier without stopping to ask us permission along the way.

We know this, in fact, because basically a few months ago, a new product was put out there, basically made in a guy's garage called OpenClaw that you could give a phone number to and an email address and then access to your life. And you know, thousands, maybe tens or even hundreds of thousands of people went ahead and used this thing. I used it for a while. It blew through my whole budget real quick. And so I took it right down.

But it was the first sort of spark of that. That guy, Peter Steinberger, who created that, he got hired by OpenAI about three weeks later. They have been working on the idea of A.I. that doesn't check in with you for a long time. And so on the one hand, yes, military applications, you know, those are scary, but we're seeing those on the battlefields of Ukraine right now. Ukraine has developed robots that do that.

You have the United States military actively developing, you know, fighter jet drones that can, you know, dogfight in the sky. This stuff is definitely happening right now. But the idea that somehow what we're using at home and what is being developing there, that those have different strategies and different purposes, I would argue, is not right.

KING: It is beyond fascinating. Jake Ward, appreciate your teeing it up. We'll continue the conversation. And coming up for us, his death after a boating accident, we think, on July 4th is a mystery. Tonight, what Nolan Wells' family is saying about the independent autopsy that they commissioned.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[20:56:40]

KING: An independent autopsy performed for the family of a Mississippi teenager found dead earlier this month did not help the family in its search for answers. The preliminary findings were inconclusive. The family of Nolan Wells arranged that independent autopsy as they await the results from a separate autopsy by the Mississippi State Medical Examiner. The 18-year-old's body was found floating near an island off the coast of Mississippi back on July 6th.

More now from CNN's Randi Kaye.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CHRISTINE WELLS-WONSLEY, MOTHER OF NOLAN WELLS: The only question that we have is what happened to our son.

RANDI KAYE, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Nolan Wells' parents were hoping an independent autopsy on their son would bring answers, but so far, there are only more questions.

BENJAMIN CRUMP, WELLS' FAMILY ATTORNEY: The cause and manner of death for Nolan Xavier Wells is undetermined, pending investigation.

KAYE (voice-over): Wells had gone boating with friends on July 4th at Horn Island off the coast of Mississippi. He never returned home. After the initial autopsy ordered by authorities, his body was sent to Washington, D.C. for an independent autopsy requested by the family.

CRUMP: We got the body without his neck at the time of the second autopsy.

KAYE (voice-over): The family's attorney, Benjamin Crump, said the findings were limited because Wells' body was not intact.

CRUMP: The throat was not received with the body. Therefore, this pathologist cannot rule out injury to the neck as a contributor or a cause of death.

KAYE (voice-over): According to Crump, many of Wells' organs were missing, having been removed for the first autopsy, which the pathologist says is common forensic pathology practice. Because of this, they couldn't examine his stomach contents or even his lungs.

CRUMP: The most significant of the limitations was the inability to directly observe the airway and the lungs for water.

KAYE (voice-over): Crump said the pathologist noticed red discoloration on the back of Wells' head, which concerned him. Another medical examiner not affiliated with this case told CNN that could represent decompositional changes of the musculature, or it could be from blunt force injury to the back of the head and neck.

Still, he could not determine if Wells was conscious or unconscious when he entered the water or if he might have been forced into the water. His body was found face down near the shoreline two days after he disappeared.

CRUMP: For these reasons, this pathologist cannot rule out if any intervening non-accidental factors contributed to or caused the death of Nolan Wells. He's saying, based on the examination of the body, he cannot rule out foul play.

ELMORE WONSLEY, FATHER OF NOLAN WELLS: We just want honesty. We want to know what happened to our son because the things that you're telling us, that's not the character of our son.

KAYE (voice-over): There are conflicting stories, the family says, about why Wells initially separated from his friends, who returned to shore without him. His mother also believes pictures are missing from her son's phone. Authorities are also investigating a video of an alleged altercation involving Wells, on which Attorney Ben Crump says, you can hear him arguing about his phone. Though a person did tell CNN that it was his own voice on that recording, not Nolan Wells.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

[21:00:00]

KAYE (on camera): The medical examiner can update his findings as he gathers more information, the family's attorney says, and the investigation is ongoing. Both the authorities and the family are asking anyone with information or possibly even video from that day, to contact them. John?

KING: Randi Kaye, thank you very much. And the news continues. "The Source" starts now.