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At This Hour

U.S. July 4 Parade Shooting; Top Trump Allies Subpoenaed. Aired 11-11:30a ET

Aired July 06, 2022 - 11:00   ET

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

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BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, everyone. I'm Boris Sanchez, in for Kate Bolduan.

The 21-year-old man accused of opening fire on a 4th of July parade in Illinois is making his first court appearance moments from now. He's been charged with seven counts of first degree murder.

Prosecutors anticipate filing dozens of additional charges, because investigators say the suspect planned the attack for several weeks, firing 70 rounds from a rooftop with a military-style weapon that he purchased legally.

There are a lot of questions remaining about how the suspect slid past safeguards in Illinois' red flag laws, despite his threatening violence in the past. In the meantime, six of the seven people killed in the attack have now been identified. That includes a couple, whose toddler was found alive and alone after the shooting.

Let's begin our coverage with CNN's Josh Campbell, outside of the courthouse in Illinois with today's top story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JOSH CAMPBELL, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Boris, we learned a lot about this investigation over the course of the last 24 hours; specifically, two police encounters in 2019.

Authorities tell us that they were called in April of 2019 to the alleged shooter's home. A family member indicated that he had allegedly attempted suicide. Police ultimately determining that there wasn't a policing issue. The suspect was apparently under the care of a mental health professional.

And fast forward to September of the same year. Authorities say they returned to the home. A relative told police that the suspect had talked about wanting to kill every member of his family.

Police determined there was this collection of knives inside the home, which they confiscated. That included several knives, it included a dagger, a sword. Now I asked authorities yesterday at a press conference, what are

police supposed to do if you have someone who is allegedly exhibiting signs of potentially wanting to harm themselves or harm someone else?

What can authorities do to try to intervene in the interest of public safety?

Here's that exchange.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CAMPBELL: How are these things supposed to be handled?

How do you stop a shooter if someone's calling police, saying, we have a problem?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The police responded. Police can't make an arrest unless there's probable cause to make an arrest or somebody's willing to sign complaints regarding the arrest.

Now if there is an issue where there is the necessity to involuntarily commit somebody to the hospital, that's an option. But that wasn't an option at that time.

CAMPBELL: Can you explain that?

What are the options for officers?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Based on that time, based on those circumstances, that was not an option. It did not fall in the category.

CAMPBELL: What would it require?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Again, it's case by case specific.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMPBELL: Boris, here's what's so concerning. We're told by state police, in December of 2019, just after this police counter in September, the suspect in this case apparently applied for a firearms license in the state of Illinois. Because he was under the age of 21, his father sponsored him, raising serious questions for the father.

If the suspect was allegedly exhibiting signs that forced the family to call police, why would this father then sponsor a license for the suspect to eventually obtain a firearm?

We're told by authorizing that he obtained five guns over the course of a year, including the semiautomatic style rifle allegedly used in this attack. Serious questions there for the father.

And finally, the suspect appearing in court today for his first appearance. Prosecutors yesterday filing charges. He's now been charged with seven counts of attempted or seven counts of first-degree murder. Authorities say that there are many more charges to come on the horizon. Those include those who suffered psychological injuries as well as

attempted murder. Boris.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SANCHEZ: Josh Campbell, we understand the hearing just started.

And we're going to raise those questions that Josh brought up to a legal expert in just moments but we want to focus on the victims.

We learn new details about the seven people gunned down at the 4th of July parade in Highland Park. Police identified six of them as dozens of others are now recovering from their injuries. Let's go to Highland Park and CNN's Adrienne Broaddus.

One of the most striking stories, this toddler, who lost both of his parents, now orphaned.

ADRIENNE BROADDUS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Boris, that 2-year-old you're talking about is Aidan McCarthy. He is not forced to grow up without his parents, Irina and Kevin McCarthy.

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BROADDUS: We learned the family was here like so many other families on Monday. Irina's father told the local paper, the "Chicago Tribune," that his son-in-law died trying to shield his grandson from the gunfire.

Soon after, there were reports that the 2-year-old Aidan was walking around alone. But before he was reunited with his grandparents, whose care he is now in, there was a couple attending the parade that stepped in to help. Listen in.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: When we pulled in, the cops looked like they were getting ready for war. I'll never forget it. I pulled up. i said, this is not our kid. He's OK.

What should we do (INAUDIBLE)?

We can't be babysitters now.

Can you take care of him?

He said, of course.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROADDUS: Dana (ph) and her husband stepped up to the plate. That is just one example of kindness that was on display in the midst of all of that chaos. So we know Aidan is one child who lost his parents.

Another person who lost her mom was Cassie Goldstein. She says her mom was Katherine (ph). She said looked up and she saw the shooter firing. That's when she told her mother, and I'm paraphrasing, to run. The two ran together and her mother was shot.

She said she saw her mom collapse. She leaned over to her and told her, "I love you, I have to keep going because he's shooting people around me." Boris.

SANCHEZ: Terrifying moments. Adrienne Broaddus, thank you so much for bringing us their stories.

Joining us now, CNN national security analyst, Juliette Kayyem, and Shan Wu, a defense attorney and former federal prosecutor.

Thank you both for being with us this morning.

Shan, what are you expecting is going to happen in court today?

SHAN WU, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Probably they'll set the bail, I'm sure he'll plead not guilty. There won't be any release conditions of this killer. He's certainly going to be held without bail. They may set some scheduling issues in terms of the next time they're in court. And I don't expect too much substance going on besides that.

SANCHEZ: Juliette, I want to dig in with you with the interactions this suspect had with police. Apparently, they received calls about him in April of 2019. He attempted suicide. And a few months later in September of that year, a family member tells police that he threatened to kill everyone in the family, that he had a collection of knives.

He was still legally able to buy five firearms, including that military-style rifle. Illinois has red flag laws.

What failed here?

JULIETTE KAYYEM, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Yes. So this is where the term "red flag" is probably used too broadly. So I looked at the timeline and I think the biggest flaw is the father sponsoring a son, who tried to kill him, based on the September 2019 incident.

The father sponsoring and alleging for the sanity of his son in December of 2019. That moment it then becomes very difficult for law enforcement to step in, in the absence of a criminal case of even a sort of formal investigation against the son.

Remember, when the police come in September of 2019, after this knife incident, it's directed -- the violence is directed toward the family. The family then says, we're not pressing charges, no problem. The guns are ours, excuse me, the knives are ours, give them back.

It's very difficult. Even good laws are limited because you have to have standards for them. And they are not self-executing. So we have a case here, where we might want to look at what happened with law enforcement, did they drop the ball.

But I think the real focus is this is an enabling family for a variety of reasons and look to them for potential legal liability, as we've see in other cases; most recently, the Oxford school shooting case, where the prosecutor is going after the parents for almost the same exact thing, enabling.

SANCHEZ: Shan, the sponsorship for the dad, to get that gun owner's license approved, that came in December of 2019, fewer than three months after the incident, where he said, I'm going to kill everyone in my family.

Is there potential legal liability now for his father?

WU: There certainly is. I would agree with Juliette on that point. Certainly could be a civil liability as well later for victims and their families.

I think one distinction with the Illinois red flag law is it seems to only allow family members to seek the so-called firearm restraining type of order. There are other kinds of laws that could be rewritten to allow health professionals or law enforcement to seek that.

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WU: And the earlier reporting by Josh, great question, which is, it's not whether there's signs of mental illness or a diagnosis; it's the threatening behavior.

And if the law only allows the family member to raise the threatening behavior and seek to make sure they have no guns, then that's a limitation. So that's something that can be looked at in terms of what can be done legally. No law is 100 percent effective. But maybe that's something to be improved.

SANCHEZ: We understand he's just been appointed a public defender. We cannot carry it live. But we are tracking it as we speak.

Juliette, police laid out what seems to be obvious plans of the attack. The suspect climbs a ladder, disguises himself.

At the same time they call the shooting completely random.

How do both things fit?

KAYYEM: So when they say random, they mean the target -- I'm sorry -- the deceased are random. In other words, this wasn't premeditated, I'm going to kill my sister or brother. It is I'm looking at a crowd, I don't know who they are. That's the random part.

But to your point, it's really important that this case is starting off as what we would call a non-motivation case. In other words, we don't know what his motivation was. So they are starting with the murder charges. They said there may be more additional charges.

The police department has been pretty clear they're not seeing a motivation. So I just quickly want to address this. There's lots of stuff online about him. Maybe he supported a certain political ideology or maybe he was maybe racist or maybe the community is heavily Jewish. Maybe that was the reason.

What's hard for people to understand is that there's a whole part to radicalization that actually has no point and, in other words, these are the dark, Dark Web in which these people are playing games of sort of murder and fiction. And there's no purpose to it.

So our laws about terrorism or hate crimes are focused on protected classes -- African Americans, religious groups -- and that this may just be just, writ large, a murder case that the motivation is not related to anything larger. And that's sort of terrifying when you think of what's out there.

SANCHEZ: Juliette and Shan, we hope you can stand by. We know the state's attorney is set to give some public comments. So we want to get your insight and expertise about that. Thank you for being with us.

Still to come, former White House counsel Pat Cipollone now set to testify before the January 6th committee this week. There's a twist though. We have details in a live report from the White House after a quick break.

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SANCHEZ: Developing right now, CNN has confirmed that former White House counsel Pat Cipollone will testify before the January 6 committee on Friday. But his testimony is going to be handled differently than other witnesses.

Let's take you to the White House now with CNN's chief White House correspondent Kaitlan Collins on these new developments.

What is going to be different about Cipollone's testimony?

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: You're not going to see Pat Cipollone testify publicly like Cassidy Hutchinson did in that bombshell testimony. The former aide to Mark Meadows coming forward, making revelations that included a lot of stories about Pat Cipollone, comments he had made, pushing back on the efforts the overturn the election.

Instead, we're told the former Trump White House counsel has agreed to sit down for a transcribed interview on Friday with the January 6 committee. And it will be taped, so you'll see it on camera. That's different than the first time Pat Cipollone met with the committee back in April, when he was not under oath, it was more of an informal sit-down with the committee.

But he had resisted testifying so far, even though Liz Cheney directly called on him to do so, saying they believed his testimony was needed and it would be critical. He had not wanted to do so.

The White House counsel, he felt the institution, not something typically you'd see the top lawyer at the White House going forward to testify before a congressional committee.

But things changed last week when he got a subpoena from the committee and that changed his thinking here. We're told he intended to comply with it. They extended it a little bit and so he's expected to sit down for several hours Friday morning.

And of course, the big question will be, how consequential his testimony will be to this investigation?

Pat Cipollone was at the center of so many these conversations that Trump had leading up to the election, during the election, afterwards, as he was resisting turning over power to President Biden.

So that will be critical and this is a huge development that he will finally be sitting down with the committee on Friday, Boris.

SANCHEZ: Yes, we shouldn't expect a John Dean moment but we'll see exactly how his testimony might impact the next hearing, come next Tuesday. Kaitlan Collins from the White House, thank you so much.

In the meantime, a Georgia grand jury has subpoenaed several Trump insiders, including senator Lindsey Graham, Rudy Giuliani and a handful of Trump legal advisers in their efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.

Fulton County defense attorney Fani Willis launched a criminal probe after this now infamous phone call from the former president to Georgia's top election official.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT: So what are we going to do here, folks?

I only need 11,000 votes. Fellas, I need 11,000 votes, give me a break. You know, we have that in spades already.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SANCHEZ: CNN's Sara Murray with the latest.

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SANCHEZ: Bring us up to speed on the investigation.

SARA MURRAY, CNN NATIONAL POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: We know she's been conducting this criminal probe into whether these efforts Donald Trump and his allies made in Georgia could have actually violated the law.

But this is a significant new round of subpoenas. Look at who is targeted. You talk about Rudy Giuliani and senator Lindsey Graham, a handful of these other legal advisers. Cleta Mitchell Bayer (ph) was on the call with Donald Trump and Brad Raffensperger when Trump asked him to find the votes for him to win.

John Eastman and Ken Chisrobe (ph), both pushed this fake electors plot in Georgia. But more importantly, when you look at this group of people, you get closer to Donald Trump's inner circle.

All of these people have been subpoenaed as witnesses. It's not clear whether any of them may also be targets of this investigation. Most of the folks that reached out to did not reach out to a request to comment.

And Rudy Giuliani's attorney declined to comment. But we're now getting a statement just this morning from senator Lindsey Graham's lawyers. And they have made it clear the senator plans to contest his subpoena and challenge it in court.

They believe there's a separation of powers issue here. And this is what they said, the attorneys in their statement.

They said, "This is all politics. Fulton County is engaged in a fishing expedition and working in concert with the January 6th committee in Washington."

It's very clear at least Lindsey Graham plans to fight his subpoena. I wouldn't be surprised if we see others mount legal challenges for the subpoenas they've received.

SANCHEZ: Sara, please stay with us.

Joining us now is Patricia Murphy, a political columnist for the "Atlanta Journal-Constitution" and a co-host of the podcast "Politically Georgia."

And Patricia, your paper broke the news of the subpoenas.

What about them stands out to you?

PATRICIA MURPHY, "ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION": A number of things stand out about these subpoenas. In addition to what Sara said about these being the closest we've seen these subpoenas get to Donald Trump, these were also the first out of state subpoenas we've seen from Fani Willis.

We are starting to see her concentric circles of people around Donald Trump. This is the absolute closest she's gotten. It's also really important to know what she's really zeroing in on are a legislative hearing that happened in the state of Georgia, where Rudy Giuliani came to testify and raised all sorts of questions and conspiracies about the elections, saying they were fraudulent in those committee hearings, that people are not required to swear an oath to tell the truth.

So we really had a full view of the conspiracies that they were pushing, not just on Georgia voters but lawmakers as well.

The other piece that we've seen in these subpoenas is that they're focusing on the effort to have fake electors for Donald Trump, all of these people who have been named, also who have been brought in.

And we are going to hear from the governor, Brian Kemp. He has agreed to testify over video. So all of these are really zeroing in on these two events here in Georgia.

SANCHEZ: Sara, you spoke with Fani Willis back in February. And she did some foreshadowing. Let's show our viewers some of what she shared.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

FANI WILLIS, FULTON COUNTY DA: I imagine we'll be issuing subpoenas to a lot of people and then all of them are not going to welcome our invitation to come speak with us.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SANCHEZ: You just noted how many are not going to welcome the invitation.

One of the questions, is she going to subpoena the former president himself?

What are you hearing about that?

MURRAY: Of course, that is an open question. It's something she could try to do. I think it's probably unlikely, only because Donald Trump is very clearly a target in this investigation.

They made it clear through these subpoenas, through these other court documents, they're looking at the activities of Donald Trump and his allies. But Trump is really the sort of center of what this scheme was in Georgia. And that call you played at the beginning, with him with Brad Raffensperger, is really the heart of that.

MURRAY: So I will be surprised but you can't rule anything out. I think a number of folks are a little bit surprised to see the subpoenas go out to senator Graham and Rudy Giuliani.

SANCHEZ: And Patricia, we can't ignore -- we have reporting that indicates that, any moment, Donald Trump will announce his candidacy for president in the 2024 election. But this case, legal experts point to it as the one that perhaps holds the most legal jeopardy for him and his allies.

How could this case impact the decision to run and his announcement?

MURPHY: Yes, well, there's certainly a lot of legal exposure down here. This is a very real investigation. And Fani Willis has said she would not have pursued this if there wasn't a lot there.

But the real question for Donald Trump is his political support, are Republicans just exhausted of this series of exposures, of scandals?

Would they like to change the subject, turn the page?

We hear that from some Republicans down here in Georgia. They may be looking for a fresh start. Donald Trump might use his announcement to distract from this.

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MURPHY: But I think we're starting to see some real fatigue from Republicans down here in Georgia, ready to change the subject as well.

SANCHEZ: You mentioned the testimony from Brian Kemp. He's running for reelection. I can't imagine this helps him in that bid.

Sara, I wanted to get your reaction to the new reporting, that former White House counsel Pat Cipollone will testify Friday behind closed doors.

How significant is that development?

MURRAY: I think this is very significant. We've heard Pat Cipollone's name come up over and over again in these January 6th hearings. And that's because he was there for so much of what went on.

He was in the room for lot of the scheme around -- between Donald Trump and allies, to figure out how they might try to overturn the election. He was there for a lot of the sort of attempt at a coup at the Justice Department to put in loyalists who would help Donald Trump carry out the efforts.

So he knows a lot about what went on in these meetings and what Donald Trump's thinking and state of mind and comments were, as this all went down. We'll see what he actually answers because there's an attorney- client Issue there. But for the committee, it's obviously a big win to get him to testify and that have that transcribed on video.

SANCHEZ: Sara Murray, Patricia Murphy, thank you both so much. Appreciate it.

Coming up, we have a special guest. Highland Park state senator was at the parade shooting. She's going to join us live to share what she saw and what her community needs most right now. That's next.