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The Lead with Jake Tapper

Global Health Officials Race To Trace Deadly Hantavirus Outbreak; Re-Examining The Murder Conviction Of Pierre Rushing; Judge Permits Cameras In Courtroom In Charlie Kirk Murder Case; Inside The DOJ's Quest To Indict Trump Critic John Brennan. Aired 5-6p ET

Aired May 08, 2026 - 17:00   ET

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

KASIE HUNST, CNN HOST: And then it airs again at 4:00 p.m. Eastern. It is right here on CNN. I would love to have you share some of your weekend with us. You can also stream The Arena live. You can catch up whenever you want in the CNN app.

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Hi Jake.

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: Did I hear that there is going to be a double shot of "The Arena Saturday" tomorrow?

HUNT: You have two chances.

TAPPER: Holy smokes. I can't wait. I'll watch it twice.

HUNT: Thank you. Well, see you soon.

TAPPER: All right. We'll look for more next week in "The Arena."

HUNT: Have a good weekend.

[17:00:42]

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: One of the most extreme efforts to contain a deadly virus is happening as we speak. The Lead starts right now. CDC staff now en route to that cruise ship with the Hantavirus outbreak. They're ready to escort Americans off and get them to a biocontainment unit in Nebraska. What sources are telling CNN about extra precautions to keep them in quarantine along the way?

And the major win for Republicans and the big blow for Democrats. Virginia's Supreme Court ruling that the commonwealth's brand new voter approved congressional maps are null and void. What this means for what's become a redistricting arms race and how it could all come down to Election Day and you in November.

Plus UFOs, possible extra to rest your life? The brand new report revealing what the government really knows. Welcome to The Lead. I'm Jake Tapper.

And we're going to begin tonight in our health lead. Staff from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the CDC, are being dispatched to meet the U.S. passengers stuck aboard that Hantavirus hit cruise ship that is preparing to dock in the Canary Islands, which are off the coast of Spain this weekend, likely on Sunday. There are 147 people currently on the ship, the MV Hondius. That's 88 passengers, 59 crew members. Of the 88 passengers, 17 are from the U.S.

Right now, there are five currently confirmed infections connected to the cruise. Others are considered suspected cases according to the World Health Organization. A worldwide contact tracing effort is ongoing as officials track down passengers who had already disembarked the cruise before the outbreak began. Three people who were aboard the ship, an elderly Dutch husband and wife and a man from Germany, those three have died from the virus. Three other passengers have been evacuated to the Netherlands for treatment.

Now caring for passengers on board right now are two specialists from the Netherlands who arrived Wednesday and an American doctor from Oregon, Dr. Stephen Kornfeld. Kornfeld is a passenger who stepped up to help the ship's doctor before that doctor became ill and had to be evacuated. Dr. Kornfeld spoke with CNN's Erin Burnett last night.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. STEPHEN KORNFELD, DOCTOR ABOARD MV HONDIUS: The fear with Hantavirus is you can go from seriously ill to critically ill very quickly. The remainder of the patients, passengers have really had no contact with any of the sick people recently. So in some ways, people on the boat have been in quarantine isolation for three, four weeks.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: Spanish authorities and health officials are undergoing intense preparations for the arrival of the MV Hondius at the port in the Canary Islands as soon as Sunday. Let's bring in CNN's Melissa Bell. She's on the island of Tenerife.

Melissa, what is the protocol for when that ship docks?

MELISSA BELL, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, first of all, as you can see, Jake, the conditions here are pretty blustery. And what local authorities are saying is that the weather conditions are likely to deteriorate before -- by Tuesday, which means that from when the ship docks, which we expect to happen at about midday on Sunday, they're really only going to have until the end of the day on Monday to get all of those people off the ship safely. And that's going to be a fairly intricate operation because what you're talking about is after some wrangling between authorities here in the Canary Islands and Madrid is this agreement by which the ship will be allowed to moor just off the coast of Tenerife, but not to dock actually on the island. So from that point, speedboats will then be used to fetch the passengers, but in such a way, Jake, that the planes that take them onto their onward destinations, and remember that there are 23 different nationalities on their ship, these planes will be ready to go, engines rolling, doors open, by the time that group of passengers that needs to get on the particular plane to where it's going is able to leave the ship. These are the kind of levels of reassurances that local authorities have been obliged to give people here. So great is the fear of contamination over greater outbreak.

[17:05:07]

So what we understand also from Spanish authorities tonight is that the 17 Americans on board will be the first to disembark. CDC officials on their way, you mentioned, to the ship, on their way also to Nebraska. We understand that what's going to happen is they're going to be put on a special plane, the kind that was used during COVID that will take them to this special quarantine unit in Nebraska. So two very different types of people associated with the ship, the ones that got off at St. Helena and that we're now talking about in terms of contact tracing and those that will get off here and that will be much more carefully monitored and accompanied home. Jake.

TAPPER: All right, Melissa Bell at the island of Tenerife, Canary Islands, thank you so much.

CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta joins us now to help us understand more.

Sanjay, so good to see you. So once the CDC team is able to meet with the 17 Americans who remain on board that cruise ship, what happens?

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: So there's another team, CDC team that's going to Nebraska right now. And Nebraska is home of a national biocontainment unit, federally funded unit. We talked a lot about it during COVID but it's also a place where patients during the Ebola outbreak more than a decade ago, they also went there.

So those patients will get there. I should say those people, those passengers, they're -- supposedly they don't have any symptoms yet, so they're healthy, but they will be medically screened. They will be tested and then they will go into quarantine and isolation.

Unclear how long. You know, what we do know about the incubation period is that typically most people are going to get sick, do get sick within the first couple of weeks. But there are people who have still gotten sick several weeks out, up to six or seven weeks out, even. So I think that they're going to have to sort of figure out how long those people will be in containment. I think Melissa just mentioned this.

But that charter plane that would come to Nebraska, it is sort of a biocontainment plane as well. So if people are getting sick or need to be quarantined, they can be quarantined on the plane itself. But this is a place that's sort of designed for exactly this sort of thing, Jake.

TAPPER: And this strain of Hantavirus, which can be spread from human to human, this strain, it's called the Andes strain.

GUPTA: Yes. Yes.

TAPPER: What else can you tell us about the Andes strain?

GUPTA: First identified in 1995, so, you know, more than 30 years ago. And look, when we talk about COVID again, that was a novel virus. This is a virus that's been around for a long time, really mostly in South America, Argentina, I think, is where it was first identified. So, you know, before outbreaks like this and global travel, it's pretty much been relegated to that area.

Part of the reason Andes gets a lot of attention is out of all the various strains of Hantavirus, this is the one that has some chance of spreading directly from human to human. The others are all -- what are known as zoonotic. So they're coming straight from animals to humans. So it doesn't spread easily necessarily from human to human, but, but it can. So those are the big distinguishing qualities.

TAPPER: And Sanjay, what do we know about symptoms and what do we know about treatment?

GUPTA: Symptoms, again, there can be this long incubation period, which, you know, just think about it as a detective. Be hard to know if someone develops some of the symptoms you see on the screen, headache, fever, muscle aches, nausea, vomiting, is that related to Hantavirus? Could it be something else? That's sort of the general sort of outline of symptoms. What is interesting is that when you've had Hantavirus infections in certain parts of the world versus the Americas, for example, they've sort of had different patterns of problems.

So, for example, in the Americas, it's been more pulmonary, lung sort of issues, whereas in South America, for example, it's been a lot of kidney issues, as well as what is known as hemorrhagic fever. So that's fever, but also where your blood clotting doesn't work as well and people may develop some bleeding as a result of that.

One thing I want to point out, Jake, is that the mortality rates are often discussed. And that's, I think, what really has frightened people. Forty percent you hear of people could die, but keep in mind that's of the people who come in, get tested because they are sick. We don't really know the true denominator of this sort of infection. Could there be a lot of people who are exposed to Hantavirus and don't really ever develop symptoms?

This outbreak may give us a clear understanding of just what the likelihood percentages of people actually getting sick and or dying.

TAPPER: All right, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, I have more questions for you, so stand by for me.

GUPTA: OK. TAPPER: Sanjay is also going to take some viewer questions about this deadly virus. I want to run through some of those in a moment.

[17:09:30]

And CNN is confirming that President Trump has signed off on plans to fire a high ranking important member of his administration. Will this be a Friday night news dump kind of firing? We're back with that and more next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TAPPER: We're back with the health lead and we are paging Dr. Sanjay Gupta to answer your questions about the Hantavirus outbreak on the cruise ship, the ship that is preparing to dock in the Canary Islands off the coast of Spain as soon as this weekend with 147 people still on board, including 17 people from the United States. Dr. Gupta is back with me now.

Sanjay, Eric from Clay, New York asks, what is the likelihood of this rare strain spreading and becoming a pandemic?

GUPTA: Yes, you know, every major medical organization seems not to believe that that's the case. World Health Organization, CDC, they all put that at a very risk of that happening. I should preface every time we talk about this, Jake, by saying based on what we know now, that's what we're saying. So it's 5:15 on a Friday, that's what we know now.

But let me just give you a little bit of the why behind the what, why they are saying this? There's three main things they look at. One is something known as the R Naught or the reproductive number. And that basically is saying if somebody has it, how likely -- how many people are they likely to spread it to? And with Hantavirus, that number is around 1.19.

That's sort of an average in terms of in an outbreak. When COVID was at its peak, the number was somewhere between two and four. So more than double this. This also has a small window of spread. And what that means is that people really only spread this when they are sick and typically for about a day or maybe a day and a half is when they are really infectious.

[17:15:13]

Again, remember, with COVID, Jake, people could be spreading this even before they were sick, and it could be days, potentially where they were spreading it. And finally, it does appear to be a pretty stable virus. With COVID there was all these mutations in the first year, Delta, omicron, all that. There's sequencing of this virus from 30 years ago, 1996, and it's pretty close to what we see 30 years later now in 2026. That's a good sign.

Could it mutate more as it spreads from person to person more? Perhaps. But as of right now, those are the three main reasons I think people are not that concerned. TAPPER: Sanjay, Jennifer from San Francisco asks, how exactly does this virus spread from person to person?

GUPTA: Yes, you know, so it -- first of all, it's this particular variant, the Andes variant. And I think this diagram, which is a little busy, I realize on the screen, I don't know if we can blow it up, but it sort of tells the story of how this spreads. This is the story of a guy in the upper left corner there who was sick, showed up at a birthday party. This is in Argentina back in 2018. He's at this birthday party for 90 minutes, and during that time, he spreads the virus to five other people.

OK. And then some of those people then spread it and so forth and so forth as you can see in this. By the end, 11 people died and 34 people were infected. So that gives you some idea of what can happen in a closed setting with this particular virus.

But it's important to note this as well, Jake. There were about 80 healthcare workers that cared for those patients, and none of those healthcare workers got sick. None of them tested positive. So it can spread in a closed setting from a sick person, but with, you know, relatively simple protective equipment that the healthcare workers were using, like masks and also that narrow infectious window. These patients probably showed up at the clinic or the hospital after they were no longer contagious.

So that gives you a sense of sort of what happens in the real world with this virus.

TAPPER: All right, Sanjay, thanks so much for answering my questions and our viewers.

Also on our health lead, signs pointing to another shakeup in the Trump administration. CNN can report President Trump has signed off on a plan to fire the commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, Dr. Marty Makary. That's according to a senior administration official. The move comes as Makary faces criticism from Trump aides and others over management of the FDA and controversial drug approval decisions, not to mention his handling of efforts to limit access to abortion medication.

Makary has not yet been formally dismissed. Officials cautioned the president could change his mind. The Wall Street Journal first reported the story.

Breaking news from Utah, a hearing getting underway right now for Tyler Robinson, the man charged in the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. A judge set to rule on cameras in the courtroom and public access to the case. We'll keep you updated what we're hearing there. But first, the fight for 2026 and the major loss delivered to Democrats today as we watch this battle over the control of Congress in November's midterms. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[17:22:38] TAPPER: Our politics lead now, Democrats say that they are weighing their options after a monumental setback in the redistricting cold wars playing out across the country. Today, Virginia's Supreme Court struck down the commonwealth's new Democrat friendly congressional map. That map was approved by voters only two and a half weeks ago when 3 million people went to the polls. The result were close, only a 52 percent majority. That number is rounded up.

The results gave Democrats a 10 seat advantage in Virginia's 11 U.S. House districts. But the Virginia Supreme Court ruled that the process concerning the timing of the vote blatantly violated Virginia's Constitution and therefore the vote was null and void. And Virginia must go back to its old congressional map where Democrats had a one seat advantage, six to five instead of 10 to one. So what about those 3.1 million votes? Well, or the millions of dollars spent on campaign ads or the messages from former President Obama pushing Virginians to vote yes to gerrymander the maps.

Well, now it's President Trump calling today's ruling a quote, "Huge win for the Republican Party and America."

You will recall it was Trump who kicked off this gerrymandering arms race.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How many more seats do you want the Republicans to draw?

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Five.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And then what if California, New York, Illinois and other blue states try to --

TRUMP: Yes. well, that's OK too. But five, I think we get five. And there could be some other states. We're going to get another three or four or five in addition. Texas would be the biggest one.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: As of right now, it seems as though Republicans have the edge in this gerrymandering arms race. It's a fight that typically plays out at the end of a decade, not midway through. Let's bring in CNN's John King.

So, John, we warned up your magic wall for you. Show us where this stands.

JOHN KING, CNN ANCHOR: Let's go back to this map first, see if it wants to come up for me here.

TAPPER: There it is.

KING: There we go. It'll come. It takes a little bit. This is the house after the 2024 elections, right? You see the red and the blue. Couple have changed because of special elections, right. Right now we have six vacancies, some vacancies because special elections swallow retirement to death. A few of those. But think of the number three to five, right? If those special elections filled in with the partisan person who owned them now as well as seat goes to a Democrat, Republican seat goes to Republican and so on.

[17:25:00]

The Democrats would need three. So let's say three to five is what the Democrats would need without any of this redistricting, three to five. In a midterm election year with a Republican president, Democrats are going to win more than three to five seats. So now let's look at what we're talking about, what has happened, right? You mentioned -- you showed President Trump talking about Texas.

Texas Republicans think they added plus five. Remember, California countered by saying no. OK, you want to do that, we'll do it, too. A court ruling in Utah gave the Democrats plus one. These are all of the other ones.

They're not all done. Tennessee just passed this map. Missouri's done, Ohio's done, North Carolina's done. So now the governor will sign this. Alabama says it's going to go down, because of the Supreme Court ruling, they're going to do one more.

Louisiana is going to try to do one more. South Carolina is going to try to do one more. Florida plan would be plus four. If this plays out exactly the way the Democrats think so in the ones that are blue, the Republicans think so, this is what you get. Republicans would get to Election Day with 231seats, assuming their math is correct here, right?

In other words, right now they have a very narrow majority. They're kind of building their majority because of the midterm election year. The Democrats would need, instead of three to five, the Democrats would need 14 because of the math right now, because Virginia would be a plus four, which would have helped, right? This was essentially even. If you counted the Virginia seats, it was essentially a draw despite months of this, until Virginia comes off the board and then that Supreme Court ruling says the Southern states can go back and take away the majority of black districts.

So if you look at the map now, this is still a bad Republican year. The Democrats are still, based on historical odds, it's usually 25 seats. The on average since World War II, the party in power loses 25 seats in the House in a midterm election year. So the Democrats on average are still poised to get there. But if they have a below average year, it is possible now.

The math is much more interesting for Republicans if all this plays out.

TAPPER: So the fight over these congressional seats does not dictate, of course, the results in November as you know -- as you're noting, voters will still have the final say, right? KING: That's why I want to go back to this because I just showed you the Texas map. Texas Republicans think they get plus five. Voters get the final say. That Texas map, and I'm just using Texas as an example, is based on, you see these blue areas down here, those are Latino seats, largely Latino majority populations. Republicans said, oh, they voted for Trump and Republicans in 2024, maybe they'll stay with us.

When they drew the lines, they were counting on that. We have seen a lot of those Latinos in 2025 and 2026 come back to the Democrats. So the Republicans have put a heavy thumb, maybe even a foot on the scale, but the voters still get the final say. And Jake, you know, look, this helps the Republicans, don't get me wrong, Virginia coming off the board and those Southern states continuing to move forward helps the Republican math. But it makes a bad situation -- makes a horrible situation a little less worse. This is what will decide the election.

It's decided every midterm election since I've been alive. Here's the president in 2018. He was at 41 percent at this point fell to 39. They lost 40 seats. This is where he is right now.

TAPPER: (Inaudible).

KING: He says -- he is historically low. We don't know where he's going to be in November there. But can the Republicans -- the Republicans now, they have a money advantage. Now they have a bit of a map advantage. Can they really keep this to five or 10 seats?

That's the challenge. History says no. But Republicans are in better shape today than they were yesterday.

TAPPER: All right. And they can thank the Virginia Supreme Court for that.

KING: Yes.

TAPPER: John King, thanks so much.

Still ahead, a man who insists he was wrongfully convicted of murder and evidence raising serious questions about his conviction. We're reexamining this case in a new series here on The Lead, it's called Injustice System. And that's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[17:32:51]

TAPPER: Now to the very first story in a brand new series we're launching here on The Lead. It's called Injustice System. We're looking at the cases of people who may have been wrongfully convicted. And bigger picture, we're examining whether the two-tiered justice system that we have contributes to these convictions.

Today we're going to tell you about a man named Pierre Rushing. A young black man from Oakland, California who has spent the last 15 years of his life in prison for a murder. That now even the only eyewitness in the case says Pierre Rushing did not commit.

It's a disturbing case with serious questions about evidence originally not provided to Rushing's defense team despite the prosecution being required to do so. Here's our report.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JORDAN GROTZINGER, ATTORNEY FOR PIERRE RUSHING: Either Mr. Rushing is innocent or this is the most remarkable coincidence I've ever seen.

TAPPER (voice-over): Pierre Rushing was convicted of first-degree murder for the 2011 killing of Dawone Taylor. His attorneys, Jordan Grotzinger and Andrea Carmona, say the conviction is a profound miscarriage of justice. And they argue it raises broader questions about the reliance on a single eyewitness and whether critical evidence was withheld.

ANDREA CARMONA, ATTORNEY FOR PIERRE RUSHING: The thing that's been shocking to me is how easily he was convicted. He was 22 years old. He was an aspiring rapper. He was going to school to being picked up and three months later he's convicted. He's been 50 years alive. And so it's so easy to take away his freedom like that on basically no evidence.

TAPPER (voice-over): Prosecutors say that in Oakland, California in the early morning hours of April 15th, 2011, as seen on this surveillance camera footage in the incident, four men were driving away from an apartment complex in a red Volkswagen Jetta after a drug transaction. One of them, known as C, a key figure in this case, said he spotted someone who had stolen his iPod. C got out of the car and confronted that person, along with another passenger, Andre Morris. C then fired a single gunshot, killing Dawone Taylor. Robert Green, who was in the car, would later say that C was Pierre Rushing.

CARMONA: There's zero physical evidence. There's no murder weapon. The car was wiped and there were no fingerprints that matched Pierre.

[17:35:03]

GROTZINGER: There was one witness who identified him. He testified at trial in 2011 that he was a seven-time felon, a serial crack abuser and a panhandler who had been smoking crack many times that day, including the night of the crime.

TAPPER (voice-over): If Robert Green was the only witness to give testimony identifying Rushing as C, why was Rushing convicted?

CARMONA: I think there are a couple of different reasons. First, the prosecutor was able to get some evidence of a March 2009 uncharged crime in which Pierre went up to San Francisco with another individual and they were looking to collect some money that they were owed. There was an altercation and somebody got shot. Pierre wasn't charged with this crime. He wasn't convicted of this crime, but he was there.

TAPPER: Either way, nobody's suggesting that Pierre at the time was, you know, Citizen of the Year. That's not even the point. CARMONA: Right.

GROTZINGER: Right.

TAPPER (voice-over): After Rushing's conviction, two persons connected with the case, Yolanda Washington, who was in the apartment complex with C and the driver of the Jetta, Patrick Smith, both made significant new claims.

GROTZINGER: Those two witnesses both signed affidavits saying that Pierre Rushing was not present that night and he is not C. Ms. Washington also identified the name of the perpetrator.

TAPPER (voice-over): Testimony from Washington and Smith, along with Rushing's girlfriend, who said she was with Rushing at the time, meant that there were now three people saying that Rushing did not commit the murder.

GROTZINGER: Early 2023, we talked to another witness who was involved in the crime. His name is Andre Morris. He had a lawyer and he agreed to cooperate, so he signed a declaration that I know Pierre Rushing. I was there that night. He's not C. He wasn't there. And then on Super Bowl weekend 2023, our investigator calls me and says, I found Green. He's in county jail. Mr. Green has been there for, I think, enough time to seem stone sober. And he signs an affidavit saying that I want to come clean. My testimony was false. Mr. Rushing wasn't there. And it wasn't -- he is not C. So now we have five witnesses, not including Pierre, saying it wasn't him, and no witnesses left saying that it is.

TAPPER (voice-over): But despite Robert Green, the only witness recanting, Pierre Rushing today remains in prison.

PIERRE RUSHING, CHALLENGING MURDER CONVICTION: Even right now, 15 years later, they're still standing on the faulty conviction. We have a mountain of evidence in post-conviction that shows I didn't kill Dawone Taylor. Nobody deserves to sit in a cage for something they didn't do for 15 years.

GROTZINGER: You'd think with all of these developments that that's enough to convince a reasonable person, a judge, a D.A., that Pierre is innocent. But that's not even the most remarkable part of the post- conviction evidence.

TAPPER (voice-over): In 2024, 13 years after Rushing's conviction, his attorneys received hundreds of pages of previously undisclosed material from the district attorney's office. And much of it relates to a suspect known as C.

GROTZINGER: It's 464 pages, including police report after police report, of Andre Morris committing crimes, robberies, a few days before the crime in our case and a few days after the crime in our case, in the same neighborhood with the person that Yolanda Washington identified as C. Not only that, there are references in those reports that this individual is known by the nickname C. Not only that, the robbery victims said that C had a gray or white pickup truck. Mr. Green, when he first talked to the police in our case, said that C had a gray or white pickup truck.

TAPPER: Pierre doesn't have a white or gray pickup truck?

GROTZINGER: No, and there's no C in his name.

TAPPER (voice-over): Under U.S. law, prosecutors are required to turn over all material evidence to the defense before the trial. This obligation is known as the Brady Rule, and it's a cornerstone of the American legal system. When it's violated, convictions can be overturned.

CARMONA: The D.A. and the prosecutor at the time should have presented these police reports to Rushing's defense team, and if they had done that, there probably wouldn't have been a trial.

TAPPER (voice-over): We asked the Alameda County District Attorney's Office why this material was not disclosed for more than a decade. They declined to comment on pending litigation.

GROTZINGER: Their argument was the investigators who looked at the Morris C crimes were different investigators than the ones investigating the Dawone Taylor crime, which is the -- which is our case. That's the argument as to why Brady didn't apply.

[17:40:02]

TAPPER: To be clear, both crimes were committed, both the robberies before the murder and the murder were allegedly committed by a perpetrator known as C.

GROTZINGER: And a few robberies after the murder, shortly after.

TAPPER: Therefore, it's obvious that anything pertaining to C would be part of the Brady evidence.

GROTZINGER: Absolutely.

TAPPER (voice-over): Pierre Rushing's attorneys say they hope an upcoming evidentiary hearing could be a critical step toward his release, but they acknowledge the legal road ahead remains steep.

GROTZINGER: This is the moving of mountains. It is incredibly frustrating. It's hard because we do believe he's innocent. I mean, this is not our day job, but this is a pro bono case for us. We took this because this case is too crazy for him to be guilty.

TAPPER (voice-over): Black men from poor neighborhoods going to prison in circumstances that more affluent Americans would not have is a far too common story.

TAPPER: If this had happened to me, with my dad's a doctor, I come from a nice home, is there any chance that I would have been even prosecuted, much less convicted?

GROTZINGER: I am speculating, but I will say 100 percent no.

TAPPER (voice-over): For Pierre Rushing, the waiting continues, still fighting to prove what he has said all along.

RUSHING: What I ask people to do, the justice system, is just look at the evidence. Look at the post-conviction evidence. Look at what he's saying now. Look at what everybody in that vehicle has said.

We like to categorize this story as the Pierre Rushing story as a wrongful conviction, but it's not about me. It's about Dawone Taylor.

If we're going to stand up for justice, Dawone Taylor's justice that he deserves. It's not a man that didn't do it sitting in a cage. That's not justice.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

TAPPER: Pierre Rushing tells us that he is committed to clearing his name, and when he is finally exonerated, he plans to use the lessons he has learned from his case to work with others in prison wrongfully convicted. In the meantime, he remains behind bars as his legal fight continues.

We are monitoring a pivotal hearing in the case of Tyler Robinson, the Utah man charged in the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. Prosecutors want cameras allowed in future hearings. The defense is fighting against that. The judge is ruling just in, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[17:46:55]

TAPPER: Breaking news in our Law and Justice Lead. A Utah judge just ruled moments ago in the high-profile murder case against Tyler Robinson, the man accused of fatally shooting conservative activist Charlie Kirk during that Turning Points USA event in Utah last September. Let's get right to CNN's Nick Watt. Nick, what did the judge say?

NICK WATT, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Jake, the defense was asking for cameras and microphones to be banned from the trial, from the court. They were also asking for the preliminary hearing to be delayed from middle of May because they say there is just so much evidence, so much discovery for them to go through. The judge just ruled the judge will allow cameras in the court.

Now, Erika Kirk, Charlie Kirk's widow, had said she wanted those cameras in there. She said that her husband was murdered in public. His alleged assassin should be tried in public. And one of the prosecutors actually got kind of poetic. He said mischief lurks in the dark. He said that exposing the trial to cameras would help quash any conspiracy theories.

Now, the defense argued the exact opposite. They said that the cameras in the court were just going to fuel conspiracies, that also a lot of the coverage had been negative towards their client. Therefore, transparency, they said, was going to impinge on Tyler Robinson's right, constitutional right, to a fair trial. But the judge said cameras will be allowed, but there are strict rules around what we can show in that court where the camera can be. Now, in terms of the preliminary hearing that was supposed to be starting 10 days from now, that will now be in July. The prosecutors are seeking the death penalty here. Tyler Robinson just turned 23 years old behind bars. Jake?

TAPPER: All right, Nick Watt, thank you so much for that breaking news. Let's bring in our legal panel to discuss. Elie Honig, what do you make of the judge's ruling just now?

ELIE HONIG, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: Absolutely the right call, Jake. Of course, the U.S. Constitution ensures the right to a speedy and public trial. Utah law actually says, presumptively, there should be cameras in the courtroom. And ever since Utah adopted that law over a decade ago, they've actually never removed the cameras from the courtroom. So, as Nick said, the prosecutors wanted this. The family wanted this. And it's absolutely the right call for transparency.

TAPPER: All right, lots of legal news today. Evan, you have new reporting today, Evan Perez, into the Justice Department's investigation into former CIA Director John Brennan, who is a big critic of President Trump. And the removal of a prosecutor in the case after she raised doubts about the strength of the case.

EVAN PEREZ, CNN SENIOR JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Right. And so that prosecutor, Maria Medetis Long, was removed in part because there was this big, extraordinary meeting just a few weeks ago here in Washington where the U.S. attorney there, Jason Reding Quinones, had come up.

And he's been promising that they're going to bring this case and is going to be bringing it very soon. And she laid out that the evidence just didn't support that. And that really makes things very difficult for the department because, as you know, the President fired Pam Bondi because he was unhappy about the pace of this case and others.

[17:49:54]

And, of course, the acting attorney general now, Todd Blanche, essentially has a short leash on him because he hasn't gotten the job yet, permanently, and we all know that he does want it. So one of the things that we know is the President's friend, Joe diGenova, is now in charge of this investigation, and what he's trying to do is make this a broad conspiracy that stretches from 2016 to 2024 that there was a conspiracy against President Trump.

We'll see how that works, but one of the things that's clear from our reporting, certainly, on this is that this isn't likely to happen anytime soon, and we'll see whether that puts more pressure on Blanche and the department.

TAPPER: Yes, rushing these cases actually hurts the cases.

PEREZ: Correct. TAPPER: We saw this with the trial of Jaffer, who was not -- this is the guy with the Abbey Gate bombing. He was not found guilty of anything having to do with the Abbey Gate bombing.

PEREZ: And you saw what happened with Jim Comey and James and all of that.

TAPPER: Yes. And then, Elie, what does this reporting tell you about the potential strength of the Brennan prosecution?

HONIG: Well, it definitely raises red flags, Jake. The thing I thought was really interesting about Evan's article is it's not only these career-experienced nonpolitical prosecutors who are expressing reservations, but it includes the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney down in Florida who expressed reservations. So if recent history is any guide, however, those cases you just mentioned, what this DOJ tends to do is they shop around until they get a prosecutor who's willing to try to ram through a prosecution.

Now, most of those have failed, and so we'll see what they can come up with Brennan, but the fact that numerous people are expressing reservations to me is really telling.

TAPPER: Katelyn Polantz, let's turn to another case, the White House Correspondents' Association dinner shooting suspect. His lawyers want to disqualify U.S. attorney for D.C., Jeanine Pirro, who was prosecuting the case, her office is anyway, and the acting attorney general, Todd Blanche. They want them disqualified because they attended the dinner. They were there. They could be witnesses. They could have been possible targets. I actually asked U.S. Attorney Pirro about this not long ago. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: Has it been suggested to you at any point by anyone that maybe you need to recuse yourself because you were both a witness and a potential target?

JEANINE PIRRO, U.S. ATTORNEY FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA: Absolutely not. I mean, there is no way. And my ability to prosecute this case has nothing to do with my being there.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: Now, I'm sure that she feels that way, but the defense disagrees. What are you hearing?

KATELYN POLANTZ, CNN CRIME AND JUSTICE REPORTER: Well, so far, we've already heard from the U.S. attorney's office. Jeanine Pirro says, we're going to respond in court, and then we're going to let the judge decide. That's where we are now. And it's a fascinating, unique situation around this case, one where the Justice Department and the administration, they want to really enforce justice here. It was a significant moment, and these charges are quite significant, attempting to assassinate the President. But in this situation, Cole Allen's attorneys are saying, Jeanine Pirro and Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, they were there in their formal wear.

PEREZ: The FBI director was, too.

POLANTZ: He was, as well. And actually, Kash Patel, the FBI director, two days later, even said in a news conference, this one hits differently. We are all there. As he's announcing the charges against Cole Allen, what Allen's attorneys wrote in court today was that at least two of the very same high-ranking officials, that's Blanche and Pirro, are now responsible for making the unbiased and dispassionate discretionary decision that the Justice Department requires.

That's things like approving charges, looking at possible penalties, a plea offer if he is to get one, potential sentencing if he's ever convicted. And they point out that both Blanche and Pirro are witnesses who said they heard the gunshots and they saw the reaction of the Secret Service, and they also are those high-ranking members of the U.S. government that Cole Allen may have targeted. We're not going to talk about this in court on Monday, but Cole Allen will be back there. It'll be his arraignment, his chance to put in his initial pleading of we expect to be not guilty.

TAPPER: Elie, just from a practical standpoint, I mean, there are thousands of prosecutors, federal prosecutors, who were not at the dinner. Wouldn't it make sense just to make sure that there's no grounds for appeal that this guy, if he's found guilty, if he is guilty, is locked up forever and there's no grounds for appeal? Wouldn't it make sense just to have one of those federal prosecutors who wasn't there be in charge of it?

HONIG: This is a huge mistake, Jake. If Jeannie Pirro and Todd Blanche refuse to recuse themselves, it's such an easy, obvious call. They are witnesses, no fault of their own. They were in the ballroom. They heard the gunshots. They saw the reaction. They are witnesses. They also are likely potential intended victims. If you look at this individual's writings, he said, I'm going after the administration members top to bottom. Jeannie Pirro herself said, I was in the line of fire.

She didn't mean that literally. It is a bedrock rule of prosecution that if you are a witness or potential witness, and especially if you're a victim, you have to recuse yourself. It's not punishment. It's the smart tactical move. As you said, Jake, what would happen if they recuse themselves? There are dozens, hundreds of other prosecutors in DOJ more than capable of trying this case and of supervising this case. And on the flip side, you take away an appeals issue.

[17:55:06]

If they stay on this case, Pirro and Blanche, they are handing this individual where the proof of his guilt seems to be overwhelming, an issue to raise on appeal. Now, it doesn't mean he automatically wins, but I will tell you, Jake, there are federal courts of appeals in this country that have thrown out guilty verdicts because prosecutors refuse to recuse when they should have recused. So this, to me, is a really dangerous path that DOJ is going down. And for the good of the case and the prosecution, Pirro and Blanche need to do the right thing and step off and recuse themselves.

TAPPER: Yes, and no one's saying that they couldn't do a fair job. It's just a question about whether or not you're handing the defendant grounds for appeal. Elie Honig, Evan Perez, Katelyn Polantz, thanks to all of you.

Coming up, the cyberattack that briefly shut down Canvas. What's Canvas? Canvas is a popular education platform used by millions of students and teachers in K-12 schools and in colleges and universities nationwide. So how did this happen? Can it happen again? How much does this expose vulnerabilities in these online systems? That story's next.

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