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Defense Secretary: Leak Suspect's Age is "Not the Issue"; Rep. Jason Crow (D-CO) Discusses About the Damage from Pentagon Leak; Supreme Court Weighs Fate of Abortion Pill Mifepristone. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired April 19, 2023 - 15:00   ET

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

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: Sensitive briefing on the Pentagon document leak. Earlier today, Jack Teixeira, the suspect charged with that security breach was in court briefly waiving his right to a preliminary hearing. And the Air Force unit where the 21-year-old Air National Guardsman was assigned was stripped of its intelligence assignment. Today, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin faced questions about why someone that young had access to such highly sensitive intel on so many high stakes conflicts and international alliances and here's what he said:

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LLOYD AUSTIN, SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: The vast majority of our military is young and so it's not exceptional that young people are doing important things in our military. That's really not the issue. The issue is - and, oh, by the way, he had a top secret clearance - the issue is how you responsibly execute to carry out your duties and how you protect the information.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: As the Pentagon tries to contain this, a secret document not previously reported on shows the Chinese military is preparing a supersonic spy drone unit.

We have CNN's Alex Marquardt here with us on, on this story. What are we learning about this drone? It's pretty incredible.

ALEX MARQUARDT, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: It is pretty remarkable. It does show significant advancement in China's drone capabilities. And as you noted, this is an assessment that comes from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. It was a document that was obtained by The Washington Post, which we ourselves have not seen nor verified.

But what it does indicate is that they have made significant leaps to this drone, which is called the WZ-8. It was seen in a Chinese parade a couple of years ago, but intelligence officials did not believe at the time that it was operational. It - this is a rocket-propelled supersonic drone. So rocket-propelled indicating that it uses rocket fuel to fly. Look at this, look how fast this is, three times the speed of sound.

It can fly at Mach 3. And not just fast, but it can fly extremely high, 100,000 feet. Brianna, that is significantly higher than commercial airplane traffic, that is much higher than the Chinese spy balloon which is around 65,000 feet. This is 100,000 feet.

So together that makes this drone extremely difficult to detect and to intercept. Now, it is believed that this drone base is in an area of China called Lu'An. And from there, this drone could fly out once it's deployed and collect mapping data in real time. It could target American ships and bases.

In the region, of course, we have lots of military assets in Japan, significant targets for the Chinese, could be Taiwan, of course. The drone could fly over Taiwan and South Korea. So this is a remarkable advance in this drone that we are really only learning about because of this massive leak of classified documents.

KEILAR: How does this compare to U.S. military spy drone capabilities?

MARQUARDT: Well, excellent question. So this is the MQ-9 Reaper. This is the main offensive armed drone that is used by the U.S. Air Force. So if we put them side by side, you have the U.S. drone which flies at about 300 miles per hour, that is less than half the speed of sound, while you have the WZ-8 that flies at three times the speed of sound.

This is an armed drone while for now it is believed that the WZ-8 is mainly going to be used for reconnaissance purposes, but experts believe that it eventually could be armed. The MQ-9 is - has laser guided missiles. it has Hellfire missiles.

So these are the main differences. It's kind of apples and oranges for right now. But the big thing that really sticks out is the speed at which the WZ-8 flies. Our viewers, Brianna, might remember this incident when a U.S. drone, the MQ-9 was attacked by this Russian jet over the Black Sea just last month dumping this fuel and damaging the U.S. drone and eventually a drone went down into the Black Sea. These jets were flying over international waters.

So this is something obviously that has been known to the U.S. Intelligence Committee for quite some time. This assessment was from last year. But this is giving us the general public a much deeper insight into what China is working on and what they assumed to be may be capable of.

KEILAR: Alex, thank you for taking us through that. So many questions remaining about these revelations, Jim.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN HOST: All right. So let's go to the Hill. The full House will get briefed on this leak after the Senate. Let's speak to someone who will be at the room, Democratic Congressman Jason Crow of Colorado, serves on the Intelligence Committee, also a veteran of the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Thanks so much for taking the time today.

REP. JASON CROW (D-CO): It's good to be with you.

SCIUTTO: First I want to speak about the scope and the damage of this leak, because in the last 24 hours, I heard two quite different assessments to that.

[15:05:01]

Spoke to the U.K. Defense Secretary Ben Wallace, who said his heart hasn't skipped a beat following this, downplay the severity, said a lot of the documents are fake. I spoke to John Kirby and he said, listen, we don't know the full scope and he said make no bones about it. This is serious.

Based on what you know, what is the damage from this leak?

CROW: Yes, I think perspective is really important here. Is this a major problem? Yes. Is there information that shouldn't have been made public? Absolutely. And we're mitigating that, but I think it's really important to understand a couple of things.

Number one, a lot of this information was just a snapshot in time. The changes in battlefield, the changes in evolution of that information had been significant in that time is my understanding. Number two, a lot of this information was doctored, was changed. So there's a lot of misinformation, there's not a disinformation here as well.

So you have to take some of it with a grain of salt. Number three, this is not endemic and this is not undermine the integrity of our intelligence services writ large. We still have the most sophisticated, the most professional, the envy of the world with intelligence services. This does not happen very often period.

We actually help intelligence services around the world clean up their own services, conduct counterintelligence operations and alike. So we're still the envy of the world. We'll fix this. We'll figure out what happened and we'll move forward.

SCIUTTO: Okay. Maybe doesn't happen often. But it certainly has happened before to great effect. You think Chelsea Manning. You think of Edward Snowden. In the wake of Chelsea Manning, they tried to plug a hole, restrictions on thumb drives, which is how that service member got this stuff out.

But Sen. Mark Warner asked, I think, a smart question today. He said, why wasn't there tracking of printing out classified documents, as appears to have happened in this case. That strikes me as a fairly basic oversight issue here. Do you think there was poor oversight of this unit and this service member?

CROW: What I think is - there are structural changes that have to be made to how we handle classified information. There's kind of three ways of looking at this. Number one, what is the level of somebody's clearance whether they have a secret, whether they have a top secret, whether they have a special compartmented clearance.

Number two is the need to know. Just because you have a top secret clearance doesn't mean you should have access to all of the top secret information. It has to be further compartmented, but based on need to know. Number three is what types of electronic or automated checks we had to put in place that will check printing of information, viewing of information and bringing any red flags to our internal security personnel's ability to research that.

So it's really the latter categories. It's the need to know and automating some red flags and preventing printing and other basic things that we really have to dig into and we're going to have to make some investments, frankly, of money and time to fix it.

SCIUTTO: Yes. As I noted, leading in, you're veteran, 82nd Airborne, Iraq and Afghanistan. We learned today that the watchdog overseeing Afghan aid - U.S. aid to Afghanistan (inaudible). He cannot guarantee that U.S. aid is not being funneled to the Taliban. He also says he's gotten an unprecedented lack of cooperation from the State Department on the investigation.

What's your reaction to that as someone who served there to know that this aid could be going to the Taliban leadership?

CROW: Well, I disagree with some of the findings, actually, of our Special Inspector General for Afghanistan reconstruction. We certainly have to conduct oversight. We have to make sure that our sanctions programs are working effectively.

But listen, they the Afghan people are largely the people who are suffering here. I've been supportive of aid programs. I've been supportive of some of our efforts to unfreeze funds to funnel those to humanitarian organizations, to NGOs and the like to make sure that we're preventing famine. Because ultimately, if we want to keep the Taliban at check and if we want to fight against extremism, we're going to do that by supporting people in those regions, by supporting human rights, and supporting the dissidents and opposition folks who are still in Afghanistan not by closing them off and shutting them off.

So yes, we have to conduct oversight. We have to make sure it doesn't make it into the hands of extremists with the Taliban. And there's a way of doing that. We actually do that with North Korea. We do that with Venezuela. We have a long history of being able to do that.

SCIUTTO: Did the U.S. fail its Afghan allies by leaving so many 1000s, in fact, who served bravely alongside U.S. service members like yourself by leaving them behind to great danger from the Taliban today.

CROW: Yes. There's no doubt in my mind that we left some of our partners behind. That's why I formed the Honoring Our Promises Working Group, which is a bipartisan working group in Congress. We have to stick with our word. There's still 10s of 1000s of my friends, of our Afghan partners in Afghanistan that we have a moral responsibility to and we have to pass legislation like the Allies act like the SIV expansion programs where we're looking at passing and introducing here shortly. We have to get that done because we have that moral obligation to do so. [15:10:05]

SCIUTTO: Yes. And the red tape is just incredible. I've been working with the family for two years, it's hard.

Rep. Jason Crow, thanks so much for joining us today.

CROW: Thank you.

SCIUTTO: Boris?

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: All eyes are on the Supreme Court right now where the justices are expected to rule on a blockbuster medical abortion case. Any moment, the court could rule whether to let a lower court's ruling go into effect that would restrict full access to Mifepristone. The most commonly used abortion drug. A hold on that ruling is set to expire at 11:59 pm tonight.

CNN's Jessica Schneider joins us now live.

Jessica, what more are you learning about the Supreme Court's moves here?

JESSICA SCHNEIDER, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Boris, all eyes are on the Supreme Court as we tick down toward midnight. The Supreme Court really could rule at any point here. And there's a number of ways that they can rule, but there are really two ways that are most likely here.

Now first, they could extend the hold on this lower court ruling, which is something that the Justice Department, the FDA is pushing for. Because if they did that, it would keep the status quo when it comes to the abortion pill. It would be completely available as it is now.

The second option is that you really could allow the restrictions to take effect by not extending that stay. And what does that mean? If restrictions took effect, it would mean a number of different things in the way that Mifepristone is administered.

First of all, it would only be allowed for women up to seven weeks pregnant. Currently, women up to 10 weeks pregnant are allowed to get this pill. Secondly, women would have to go in person multiple times to their doctor. They'd also have to get this abortion pill in-person as opposed to via the mail.

So there's a lot that could change, actually, and we're just getting right now - we're getting word that the Supreme Court did just make another decision here. They have extended the stay here, Boris. So this is saying that they're putting for awhile here, I'm not sure exactly how long. It could be days or weeks.

They are extending the stay, so they are putting those - all of those restrictions that could have possibly taken effect. They're putting all have those on hold. So once again, the FDA and the Justice Department have one here,

though, incrementally at this point, because this case is still playing out at the lower courts. But for now, Boris, it does remain status quo for the abortion pill, nothing will change. It will remain available as it did in the previous weeks and months.

And I'm waiting to see right now if the Supreme Court is going to take this case up. Because remember the lower court here, the Fifth Circuit, they're still really dealing with the merits of this case. They've set up a really fast tracked briefing schedule on this and they're scheduled to hear arguments in this case in just about one month.

So the takeaway that I'm just getting now via paper that I've just been handed is that the Supreme Court has in fact extended this stay. Meaning, they are extending, putting the lower court ruling on hold. Meaning, everything remains status quo. There will be no changes to the way that the abortion pill is administered.

Good news for a lot of doctors and patients who are bracing for any changes. Good news for the FDA and the Justice Department, Boris. So I can come back with you as I know a little bit more detail. But that's the big takeaway here is that the Supreme Court is really keeping things as they are. While all of these legal wranglings play out below, Boris?

SANCHEZ: And Jessica, just to clarify, have we gotten word on exactly how long this day is going to last?

SCHNEIDER: Well, if you give me one moment here ...

SANCHEZ: Sure.

SCHNEIDER: ... I can actually pull this up.

SANCHEZ: This is happening live, so ...

SCHNEIDER: Yes, it is happening live. So I just ...

SANCHEZ: Right.

SCHNEIDER: I just pulled up the order here, interestingly. So this order was signed by Justice Samuel Alito. He's the same justice who put out the initial order at the end of last week. Now, he's the Justice who oversees the Fifth Circuit.

So he is putting this new ruling out saying that this stay that was issued on Friday is hereby extended until 11:59 pm next - oh, no, I'm sorry - this Friday, April 21st.

SANCHEZ: This Friday?

SCHNEIDER: So, wow, so once again, the Supreme Court is really just kicking the can down the road at this point ...

SANCHEZ: Only by two days. SCHNEIDER: ... now just two days, two and a half days.

SANCHEZ: Right.

SCHNEIDER: Yes.

SANCHEZ: Right.

SCHNEIDER: So this stay will be into effect until almost midnight, Friday into Saturday.

SANCHEZ: Right.

SCHNEIDER: So we're really going to go through this whole thing yet again ...

SANCHEZ: Again.

SCHNEIDER: ... for the third time come Friday.

SANCHEZ: Right.

SCHNEIDER: And we're going to be seeing what the Supreme Court does. It's unclear why they're only issuing it for this short amount of time. It's possible that the justices are still wrangling behind the scenes is exactly what to do here. And that's why we're getting ...

SANCHEZ: Yes.

SCHNEIDER: ... these incremental holds ...

SANCHEZ: Right.

SCHNEIDER: ... on this lower court ruling, Boris.

SANCHEZ: Jessica, we're going to give you a minute to read all the details, so please stand by. We want to bring in Jennifer Rodgers to have a conversation with her. She is a legal expert that has been following all of this very closely for us.

Jennifer, initially, right off the bat, what is your reaction to this day? It seems like only a few days extension here.

JENNIFER RODGERS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Yes. I really think that this means that they are grappling with what they want to do here.

[15:15:03]

I mean, the chaos that will ensue if they let any part of the lower court's order take effect is going to be incredible. So the fact that they don't have enough votes to extend it for a more lengthy period of time or even permanently while the lower court litigation takes effect, takes - happens - means to me that many of the justices are thinking about affirming some parts of the lower court order from Texas, which is really troubling. So had it been a permanent stay, I would have felt pretty good about

it. Unfortunately, with a two day stay, I think we may see a mixed bag coming from the court on Friday, meaning that they will let some parts of the Fifth Circuit order take effect, which will be problematic for women and doctors all over the country.

SANCHEZ: And, Jennifer, let's talk in practical terms about what this extension of the stay state means. It essentially means that right now the decision of the lower court is held off, is that correct?

RODGERS: It means everything is on hold. It's as if none of this litigation has happened. So Judge Kacsmaryk in Texas issued a ruling that would have vastly changed what happens with Mifepristone. The Fifth Circuit states some of that changed some of that, but left a lot of restrictions in place. But all of that is on hold until now, Friday night.

But again, the fact that they didn't give it a lengthier stay or say that until the litigation goes through its pieces in the Fifth Circuit on the merits. That means that they are, I think, are seriously thinking about affirming some parts of what the Fifth Circuit said, which, as Jessica outlined a few minutes ago, if they agreed with the Fifth Circuit as to which parts of Judge Kacsmaryk's order could have survived and which parts would be rejected, it would mean that women would have to go in person multiple times to their doctor and could only get Mifepristone up to seven weeks.

So it would mean a big difference and not through the mail, so it made a big difference in the way that patients are obtaining this drug, big problems with the FDA and a conflict with the order out of Washington by Judge Rice, which orders the FDA to do what it needs to do to make Mifepristone still available as it's been available in the 17 states and the District of Columbia, the jurisdictions that brought that lawsuit.

So there's a lot of uncertainty still, I guess we'll know more on Friday. But I am concerned that they will not be staying the entire thing, which is a huge problem.

SANCHEZ: Well, Jennifer, you mentioned a conflict, I want to step back because this is the same Supreme Court that overturned Roe versus Wade a year ago saying that that decision did not change abortion law across all 50 states, that it essentially gave the decision over to the states, but a potential decision here could essentially contradict what the justices said about a year ago, no?

RODGERS: Yes, that's the irony here. I mean, they overruled based on what they now say the Constitution says about a woman's right to her reproductive privacy, not based on whether the state's rights should necessarily control. So they would say there's not literally a legal conflict here. But effectively, what's happening is you have a situation in which 17 states in the District of Columbia have been ordered to keep Mifepristone access as it is and a judge who purported to issue a nationwide injunction telling the FDA to change the way that Mifepristone is being administered. And so you do have a conflict, which is why the Supreme Court

definitely needs to do something about it. But what we may be seeing because we only have this two day delay is that they're preparing to resolve that conflict, but they may be preparing to resolve it by saying that they're ruling that what the Fifth Circuit has said will control, which then will overrule Judge Rice's ruling about what the 17 states in the District of Columbia can expect.

SANCHEZ: Jennifer, please stand by because we're expanding this conversation to include more of my colleagues.

Now, obviously, major news just in to CNN, the Supreme Court extending by two days this stay of a lower court that draws into question the future of this very widely used abortion drug.

KEILAR: And our Supreme Court Correspondent Joan Biskupic is with us now.

Why would Samuel Alito do this at this point, buying this time until Friday?

JOAN BISKUPIC, CNN SUPREME COURT ANALYST: They weren't ready. The Solicitor General, Elizabeth Prelogar submitted a very compelling filing last night. At the very end she said, if you are not ready to resolve this, extend this administrative stay until you can decide it in a bigger way.

What they've done is just by themselves 48 hours, which they apparently needed and needed bad. Samuel Alito had put in the first temporary hold last Friday late in the day.

[15:20:00]

Essentially, they had three working days in which they were doing many other things. Arguably, they should have anticipated that they were going - right up against the gun on this thing. But they obviously need more time. They're probably divided on what to do.

If they had decided that they wanted to definitely stay the lower court orders permanently, they probably would have done that. So that says that they didn't have a ready majority to do that. But they also didn't have a ready majority to deny the Biden administration and the drug manufacturer. If this had been clear cut, we would have gotten an order today. But clearly, they have to resolve it more to even get through this preliminary stage of the litigation.

SANCHEZ: Does this decision give you any indication as to whether they may just take up the entire case?

BISKUPIC: No. I'll tell - and I'll tell you why. I actually think - when I thought about how crunched they were with time and I'd been up at the court every day this week seeing them doing other business thinking how are they going to address this if they are not - if they don't have a majority to act in a clear cut way and they obviously didn't. Because, frankly, I think the easy thing to do would have been just to

further stay all of the litigation for a longer period just because this has come upon the nation. So quickly, just put those lower court orders on hold. But obviously, they're not convinced that that's the best route as immediately. They might on Friday then give us an order that says: Yes, the lower court orders are unheld (ph). The FDA authorization stands. There are no more - there are - the restrictions and regulation of the pill stand for now and we'll let the merits of the controversy play out.

But clearly they weren't ready to say that today, just as much as they weren't ready to say we're denying the administration's request.

KEILAR: Joan, how does their decision on Roe and the reaction that came after it play in, perhaps, to their thinking on this?

BISKUPIC: Well, I mean, if they were at this table with us joining us, they would say it's not playing it at all because they say this is a completely different dispute. But they must be aware of what's happened since June.

There have been serious legal and political ramifications from that and one of the key legal ramifications is that a district court judge in Texas has tried to just end access to the main way that women have abortions these days, even in the states that allow it to be legal.

And as Boris said earlier, when he was talking to Jennifer, the Supreme Court when it ruled in the Dobbs case said we are getting rid of the constitutional right to abortion. But we are not tampering with what happens in the states. States can still make it legal.

Brett Kavanaugh who concurred in that said specifically we are not outlawing abortion. If they make this pill and change its accessibility as it is now, they are - they will be making much harder to access abortion rights and undercutting what they said in the Dobbs opinion.

KEILAR: It's the main type ...

BISKUPIC: Yes.

KEILAR: ... of the main form ...

BISKUPIC: Right.

SANCHEZ: Right.

KEILAR: ... of abortion.

BISKUPIC: Right. Right.

SANCHEZ: Right.

BISKUPIC: So I guess just stepping back on what did they tell us today, they told us they're not ready just like anything else, you'd have to postpone the decision because you're not ready to decide. So they're - as humans - next set of people. But it also says that they do not have a majority. They need five votes to act either to accept the Biden administration's request and the drug manufacturer to, again, pause for a longer period, not just 48 more hours, but they also don't have a majority to outright deny it at this point.

SANCHEZ: Jennifer, I want to go back to you because critics are charging that this ruling essentially allows a lower court or lower district court judge to opine on science and to overrule a jurisdiction that belongs to the Food and Drug Administration. I'm wondering how that argument might unfold at the Supreme Court if it gets there.

RODGERS: Well, I'm sure Joan have thoughts about this, too. I mean, now you're really talking about administrative law and administrative law and the ability of the executive branch agencies to make decisions on issues in which they are the experts took a big hit last term in the EPA case.

So everyone's wondering the same thing, if this gets up to the Supreme Court on the issue of whether the FDA ought to be the body to decide what happens with medications in this country, this Court has expressed some hostility to the notion that they should not be able to be overruled by Congress or that they should be the ones to make those expert decisions. So that's a whole another legal issue that is at play here and that will be a subject of the Supreme Court's handling of this whenever it makes it this way up there on the merits.

KEILAR: All right. Jennifer and Joan, stay - standby for us, if you will.

[15:25:02]

Huge news here as we learned that the Supreme Court is going to stay until Friday, what they're going to do on this lower court ruling effectively buying themselves a couple more days to figure out what they're going to do. I want to send this over to Jim. He has some more information.

SCIUTTO: Thanks so much, Brianna. Of course, Jessica Schneider has been on the Hill. It's a - I have that ruling here. It's one page, very simple. What more do we know about what happens between now and Friday at 11:59 pm, which is the entire length of this extension of the stay?

SCHNEIDER: Well, it's likely that the justices will either confirm or perhaps one or more of the justices is writing to further explain what they'll ultimately decide on this.

One thing that's really interesting about this is that this just further kicks the can down the road for the Supreme Court. We saw that initial ruling on Friday. Then we were waiting with bated breath until today and now we're once again going to be in the same position on Friday.

And I know that because a lot of the parties here, the FDA, the Justice Department, even the drug manufacturers have repeatedly told not only the Supreme Court but other courts Jim, just about how much chaos and confusion this is causing.

And I'll note that the manufacturer of the generic version of this drug, GenBioPro, they actually just filed a lawsuit in the Maryland federal court here. And they were asking this court to really help them clarify exactly how they're supposed to proceed, asking the court to put in a court order against the FDA.

I mean, there's just a lot of chaos, confusion and unsettled view from doctors, patients, the drug manufacturers here. So that uncertainty is not going away. They'll continue to be on edge until at least Friday.

SCIUTTO: Let's be frank. It's not just chaos and confusion, right? It's genuine concern, because if the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling goes into effect, if those restrictions or some of those restrictions stand, they're not insignificant. I mean, you mentioned the generic manufacturer of this, this would no longer be approved under this ruling and that accounts for two thirds of the market, right?

And I imagine there's a financial aspect to that, because the generic versions are typically less expensive, perhaps much less expensive, but other things as well, window to obtain Mifepristone narrows to seven weeks from 10. The dosages would change. These are significant rules changes if this stands in some form or some of them stand.

SCHNEIDER: Right. And one of the things too that the FDA told the Supreme Court is, look, we can't just snap our fingers and institute these changes. This is a days, weeks or months long process. So the FDA is expressing uncertainty as to how they'll even proceed here if the Supreme Court doesn't continue to put these restrictions on hold.

So there's a lot in play here. And again, we kind of thought that we'd get some sort of definitive decision on this today and it's not the case. We'll have to wait until Friday.

SCIUTTO: And it may expose those words you heard from Brett Kavanaugh after Dobbs, right, that that decision would not impact access in abortion states or states that would continue to allow abortion. If this stands, that wouldn't stand. We'll certainly stay on top of it.

Jessica Schneider, thanks so much.

SCHNEIDER: Thanks.

SCIUTTO: We have our Phil Mattingly who's on the Hill right now, because I'm sure, Phil, that - well, you're at the White House, apologies - I'm sure that the administration is watching this. They've been watching this case already with trepidation and now they see this very short extension of the stay. Do you have a reaction from the White House?

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, there's no reaction yet, Jim. I think what's been interesting, though, is obviously this is a pause and I think everyone was waiting kind of with bated breath for some type of finality or at least definitive answer about the path forward for things. One thing we do know is that there has been an extensive amount of

preparation behind the scenes, not expecting this. necessarily, but in terms of whatever happens next. I think that's something officials have made very clear between the Counsel's Office, the Justice Department and the White House health team, the President's senior advisors, all kind of working through all different possibilities here, very cognizant of the fact that they can't predict how this is all going to land.

They've made very clear they believe they're on the right side of this case. Legally, they believe the FDA has authority is very clear in this case and everything that's been put into place up to this point, doesn't have legal merit, but they are also cognizant of the fact that that doesn't mean it's necessarily going to go their way.

And so there's been significant, behind the scenes, preparations for pretty much any outcome here. The President himself has been briefed repeatedly as well. Advisors saying he was going to be briefed throughout the course of this day. We'll see what the response will be to this.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

MATTINGLY: It doesn't really change anything at the moment. I think one thing that it kind of underscore is that the preparation for whatever the final response is going to be is certainly going to continue.

SCIUTTO: Phil, I do have to ask you because as you know, there was criticism from this administration for the perception that they weren't quite prepared for the Dobbs decision in terms of how they were going to react, what the steps, the responses were going to be. I mean, is there a Biden administration plan if Mifepristone is significantly restricted in a - in "abortion states" or states that continue to allow abortion?

[15:30:06]

MATTINGLY: Yes, Jim. I'm not going to surprise you when I tell you that.