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Judge: No Immediate Ruling On Whether Suspect Stays In Jail; Griner Gets Emotional At First News Conference Since Release From Russia; Republicans Move To Restrict Gender Affirming Care In Multiple States; Medical Associations: Gender-Affirming Care Is Clinically Appropriate. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired April 27, 2023 - 15:00   ET

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

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[15:00:08]

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN HOST: The suspected Pentagon leaker in court just moments ago. What investigators found inside his bedroom that convinced them that his release from jail would be a grave threat, they say, to national security. They argued in court today Jack Teixeira was a "one stop shop for people who wanted access to things that they shouldn't have."

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: "No one should be in those conditions." WNBA star Brittney Griner speaking out about those 10 months that she spent in a Russian prison. It's her first press conference since returning to professional basketball. Hear what she says about the other Americans still wrongfully detained.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: Plus, after four hours on the stand, the woman accusing Donald Trump of rape now in cross examination. What we expect to hear from the former president's attorneys. We're following these major developing stories and many more all coming in right here to CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

SCIUTTO: Well, just moments ago, we heard from the judge in the hearing for the Air National Guardsman accused of leaking highly classified intelligence documents. He said he will not yet rule if Jack Teixeira will remain in custody ahead of his trial.

Prosecutors claim that if the 21-year-old is let out before then, he will either try to flee or further obstruct the investigation. This comes after a late night court filing, which prosecutors alleged Teixeira may still have access to hundreds of classified documents and that his online searches appeared to be a "deliberate effort to disseminate this country's secrets."

They also warned that Teixeira is a major flight risk, as well as an attractive candidate to foreign governments.

CNN's Senior Justice Correspondent, Evan Perez is here. He's been following the story.

I mean, listen they lay out a whole host of threats - current threats, right, what he might do if he were released, but also just - just the severity of what he's exposed and still has access to.

EVAN PEREZ, CNN SENIOR JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Right. The idea is that Jack Teixeira did a lot of searches for things that he had nothing really to do with his job and they say they still don't know whether he has possession of additional documents, additional materials that could harm the national security of the United States.

Some of the pictures you see that they entered into the record as they - as part of this hearing today, they talked about some of his searches that he did, including looking up a Ruby Ridge, Las Vegas shooting, Uvalde, his collection of firearms. Again, looking in his bedroom, he had an arsenal really and he was obsessed with mass shootings.

He talked with some of his friends about how to possibly carry out a mass shooting from the back of an automobile. Again, these are things that were very concerning to the agents who were doing the search there at his home.

They also found - Jim, they also found electronics clearly trying to hide his tracks. He smashed - according to the FBI, he smashed these electronics and dumped them in a dumpster behind a home.

SCIUTTO: Right.

PEREZ: And that's one of the things that they say shows he was trying to cover his tracks. He told others to lie about him and he wanted to make sure that he was not caught.

SCIUTTO: So that's after he knew they were on to him, in effect.

PEREZ: Right.

SCIUTTO: But then what we're learning as you look back further is that it's amazing it seems that he got a security clearance at this level, given past comments and experiences.

PEREZ: It really is.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

PEREZ: And one of the things you heard early on in this investigation is that the FBI knew that there were going to be red flags that were going to turn up and exactly that has been - is what they found. One of the things they found is back in high school, he had made some comments that may have raised concerns that he might be trying to plan a mass shooting.

And so he was suspended from school. This prevented him from getting a gun ID, a firearms ID in the state of Massachusetts. He was denied in 2018 and 2019. In 2020, however, he writes a letter to the state police there trying to get, again, his license to buy a gun and this is what he says, he's now a member of the Air Force and he says, "I was very concerned that my decisions I made at 16 would harm - would haunt my future serving my country in the military and I'm glad they did not." He was able to get that firearms ID because the Air Force had given him a top secret security clearance, obviously. If the government, if the military is entrusting him with some of the nation's biggest secrets, he should be able to buy a gun.

SCIUTTO: Listen, it raises questions again about oversight, how these clearances are awarded and how red flags it seems are missed.

PEREZ: Despite millions of dollars spent to try to prevent ...

SCIUTTO: Yes.

PEREZ: ... things like this.

SCIUTTO: Exactly. And past experiences, no question.

PEREZ: Right.

SCIUTTO: Evan Perez, thanks so much. Boris?

[15:05:02]

SANCHEZ: Let's expand the conversation now. We have with us former Assistant Homeland Security Secretary, Juliette Kayyem. She is a national - CNN National Security Analyst. And we also have Josh Rogin with us. He's a columnist at the Washington Post.

Juliette, let's start with the point that Jim and Evan were just making, violent racist remarks in his history. He was suspended at one point, and yet he gets top security clearance.

JULIETTE KAYYEM, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: I'm not excusing him. But there are lots of things people do when they're 16 that ...

SANCHEZ: Sure.

KAYYEM: ... later on in life, the military is going to have to assess whether that's the same person. So through this process, it's clear that he's trying to explain away what the 16-year-old him did. It is also clear that that's a lie, right? That he continues to harbor some of those thoughts. He's on these websites and platforms that at least are flirting with these ideas.

And so how did he fool them? But the more important thing is how did they not get this in the present day, right? So it's one thing to do something when you're 16, that's a hint. Why aren't they continuing to assess it? Why aren't they seeing the kind of activities that are going on online, that he's really at some stages not trying to hide? Remember, months ago, he's on a much larger platform doing the same thing.

SANCHEZ: And Josh, you've written extensively about the actual content of the material that was leaked. Prosecutors are saying that the information he allegedly took far exceeds what's been reported. I'm wondering what you think the extent of the harm might be here. JOSH ROGIN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: The bottom line is we don't know. The Washington Post, for example, has acquired 300 documents and that could just be the tip of the iceberg. And I think what we both know is that hundreds of thousands of people have these clearances. They're literally given out hundreds of times each day and amongst those hundreds of thousands of people, there are going to be some problematic people. There are going to be some people with problems and people who are just - shouldn't have them.

So it's really more about deciding what those people get and closing down the spigot of information, because the fact that someone at the Maryland Air National Guard could have access to the nation's top secret in the first place seems a little bit ridiculous in retrospect. And should they have caught him? Yes. But in the end, we're going to have a different system that tightens up the control of this information so that things like this just don't happen all the time.

SANCHEZ: I think that has become glaringly obvious.

Juliette, the defense here is arguing that the government in prosecuting the case is being hyperbolic ...

KAYYEM: Yes.

SANCHEZ: ... about the level of risk that he presents to national security. Do you agree with that?

KAYYEM: Well, one is we have to see all the materials. The government's in a funny position, because they also want to allege that it was - that it didn't cause grave harm, because our allies are watching. It's clear our enemies are watching. He had access to something that he probably did not need access to and then he's disclosing it for some period of time, a couple of months, and we don't catch it.

So the government's in a funny position of both wanting to minimize the harm so that others have confidence in our classification system, but as well keep this person in jail without bail. We can't know the greatness of it. I will say there is a difference in what he released.

It was present time intelligence. It wasn't like the Pentagon papers or stuff from the past. It was what was Russia thinking at the moment and what was the United States trying to do at the moment of the invasion of Ukraine. It's that current events aspect to it that makes it different than some of these debates that we've had about other major leaks.

SANCHEZ: Right. The current location of troops ...

KAYYEM: Yes.

SANCHEZ: ... in Ukraine and that sort of thing.

Josh, we had James Clapper, the former director of National Intelligence on earlier in the afternoon and he said that this leak was a failure of personal trust. He warned that the background check process relies on subjective judgments and that means we will see this sort of thing happen again. What can be done to prevent that?

ROGIN: Right. Well, 19 years of national security reporting, I've met many, many people who had top security clearances. You should never have had them in the first place, okay? I know, personal friends with top, top clearances who just hid some dirt that they did or they never found out or they found out and they just didn't care.

So yes, those - pretty subjective. I've been interviewed when my friends have gotten clearances and the interviews are not really that good. So it's kind of obvious I think to everyone inside the system that, there's a huge, huge problem with these background clearances.

But, again, if you can't fix the background clearances, why not just protect the top secret stuff better? You know what I mean? You either have a better system to see who gets what or you could just not give the top secret stuff to everybody, because that's ...

KAYYEM: Yes, that's (inaudible) ...

ROGIN: ... you're never going to be able to plug all those holes.

KAYYEM: Yes.

SANCHEZ: Yes, some really important points, a significant conversation as we think about the delicate time that the world is in. Juliette Kayyem, Josh Rogin, thank you both so much. Brianna?

KEILAR: A welcome return to the Phoenix Mercury for Brittney Griner today. Here she is being greeted with applause at her first press conference since her 10 month attainment in Russia and understandably it got emotional.

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BRITTNEY GRINER, WNBA PLAYER: I'm no stranger to hard times, so (inaudible) you made me cry. Just digging deep, honestly. You're going to be faced with adversities throughout your life, this was a pretty big one, but I just kind of relied on my hard work, getting through it.

I know this sounds so small, but dying in practice and just hard workouts, you find a way to just grind it out. Just put your head down and just keep going, just keep moving forward. You can never stand still. And that was my thing, just never, never be still, never get too focused on the now and just looking forward to what's to come.

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KEILAR: CNN Stephanie Elam is in Phoenix. She was at the press conference.

Actually, Steph, it was one question that you posed to Griner that I thought elicited one of the most interesting answers and she gave many today. Tell us what else she said. STEPHANIE ELAM, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes. Brianna, I felt like she was very open. And I have to tell you, I was struck by how there was a lightness about her. And if you think about what she's been through, what this last year was like for her, plus over a year, you could see that she could just still be very angry.

But that's not how we - she came across. She was also joking about things a little bit here and there, despite that little moment where she got emotional right away and it changed the energy in the room immediately. Everyone could feel that emotion in that moment.

But the question that I asked her was about whether or not playing overseas is a need or a want for the players in the WNBA. This is what she had to say.

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GRINER: Well, I can say for me I'm never going to overseas to play again, unless I'm representing my country at the Olympics. If I make that team, that'd be the only time I would leave the U.S. soil and that's just to represent the USA.

I'll say this, the whole reason a lot of us go over is the pay gap. A lot of us go over there to make an income to support our families, to support ourselves. So I don't knock any player that wants to go overseas and make a little bit of extra money.

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ELAM: And she also made it clear that she hopes that that is something that changes. And just to put this into perspective, if you look at the top basketball contracts here in the U.S., the best players in the WNBA make just over $200,000 a year. Or if you look at some of these in their contracts, I should say, and then if you look at some of the contracts for the men, they're e upwards of $40 million.

It's a very big difference and so she's saying this is why we need to have more people turning out. She was saying that she appreciates the media covering her today and her plight to get home, but she hopes they cover the games, too. And they get more people there to support their games.

As far as her fitness, she says, is she where she wants to be, no, but she's on the path back. She says she also feels like he turned a corner as far as her mental health since the first month that she was back into where she is now.

She also spoke a bit about transgender rights and seeing what's going on in the country. She said that she's going to speak out about that and that no one should be banned from play because they're living out and being who they authentically feel they are. And then on top of that, she said as far as people who are detained, it is very lonely.

She said getting letters from people who you don't even know was still comforting, because you know someone out there is thinking about you, as well as the ones from her family and looking at images of her family helped get her through that. But as far as people detained around the world, who should not be, they unveiled this mural here today outside of where the Mercury plays. And you can see she's front and center. But those are other Americans who are also detained around the country. She says all season long she'll be talking about that. Brianna.

KEILAR: Yes. Really amazing to see her bringing awareness to that and the plight of other people. Stephanie, thank you so much for sharing that press conference with us. Jim?

SCIUTTO: Coming up this hour on CNN NEWS CENTRAL, E. Jean Carroll, the woman accusing former President Donald Trump of raping her, is now under cross-examination. We're live at the courthouse.

Plus, as a slew of states try to band transgender care, we're going to look at the numbers, how many people are being impacted, also, what's the possible risk?

And former President Obama is going back to work. So what exactly is he doing now?

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[15:18:58]

KEILAR: Across the country, fierce legal battles are playing out over Republican-backed state policies restricting certain medical procedures that transgender youth can receive. In Tennessee, a bill prohibiting gender-affirming care for minors is set to take effect on July 1st. Now, the Justice Department is asking a court to block it.

In Montana, state lawmakers banned transgender representative, Zooey Zephyr, from the House floor for the remainder of the session, saying that she violated decorum with her speech criticizing a bill that prohibits care for transgender minors.

And in Missouri, hours before new limits on gender-affirming care for minors and adults was set to take effect. A state judge paused that rule.

CNN's Kyung Lah is following that legal fight from Kansas City.

Kyung, you spoke to some young transgender Americans who are receiving gender-affirming care in Missouri. What are they saying about all of this?

KYUNG LAH, CNN SENIOR U.S. CORRESPONDENT: For them, they say that this is not a choice, that for them, this is vital care.

[15:20:03]

Now, what we are seeing here in the state of Missouri at clinics, like the Planned Parenthood clinic behind me that is offering this care it says mad scramble ahead of Monday. Monday evening is the new deadline. When the judge says that she will have a decision on whether or not this emergency rule should go into effect, she's going to decide amid legal challenges, whether it should be an 18 month rule.

That comes from the Attorney General, written by the Attorney General of the state of Missouri. Advocates and the legal challenges facing this say that this would be, if it goes into effect, some of the most restrictive rules in the entire country for children and for adults. So we've spent a good bit of time inside these clinics talking to people.

We two young people, adults, but they say this is not something that just comes as a whim. They've been thinking about this for years since they were teenagers. I want you to take a listen.

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KHARRI, MISSOURI PATIENT: We are terrified. I've been afraid since I was like 15 and this world is terrifying. It's talk with us. Like just sit there and talk - listen to what we're saying. We're not trying to indoctrinate anyone.

ANDI, MISSOURI PATIENT: It's a constant disconnect from my own body, my own being. I look in the mirror. I feel like an imposter, a stranger. I always have. I'm going through a personal journey now and hopefully can start to feel comfortable in my own skin and maybe feel like I recognize who the person in the mirror.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LAH: Kharri is 19, Andi is 20, patients just like them are trying to now get these appointments before Monday evening, Brianna. They believe if they can establish care with a physician, then they can continue that care, whether or not this emergency rule goes into effect here in Missouri. Brianna.

KEILAR: Yes, this rush to be grandfathered in. Kyung, thank you so much for that report from Kansas City. We do appreciate it. Jim?

SCIUTTO: Brianna, this is a truly difficult issue. It certainly charge rhetoric around transgender rights, gender-affirming care, particularly what involves young people, minors. We do want to take a moment here to look at medical research behind these procedures. So what is involved in them, what do doctors say.

CNN's Jacqueline Howard, she joins me now.

So Jacqueline, first walk us through, because folks might hear gender- affirming care, not know exactly what it is. What is and what age groups are actually available to undergo it at this stage?

JACQUELINE HOWARD, CNN HEALTH REPORTER: Yes. Well, Jim, when we talk about gender-affirming care from a medical perspective, we're talking about any intervention: medical, psychological, that supports or affirms a patient's gender identity. So that can include hormonal treatment, for instance, or surgery, but also mental health counseling and social support for that patient.

And we have seen many major medical groups supporting gender-affirming care. For instance, just last year, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the president at that time, she said that she is proud to stand alongside pediatricians providing gender-affirming care. That's from the past president.

Now, also with gender-affirming care, Jim, it can include a patient's medical provider, like their physician, working alongside their psychologist. So it's also a group of providers that might develop a patient's care plan as well, Jim.

SCIUTTO: Now, we should acknowledge, folks I'm sure watching are aware, that there's great debate around this issue, particularly when it comes to age. And you have competing points of view here, because you have some folks who say, if minors don't undergo this treatment now, then it will be too late after puberty. You have others who say minors are too young to make decisions now, particularly decisions that are irreversible, right? So how do doctors approach this? How do medical associations approach that question?

HOWARD: Right. What we're \hearing from doctors and, again, most medical associations, they say that they support gender-affirming care, because if a patient doesn't get that care they need, it can come with mental health risks. So one example of that, a study that was published last year in the journal JAMA Network open this was a study looking at 104 patients who received gender-affirming care.

The researchers found that those patients showed a 60 percent lower odds of moderate or severe depression, receiving care was also associated with a 73 percent lower odds of suicidality. So that's one example of the research out there that medical groups have pointed to showing the mental health benefits of this, Jim. And I do think, that's one part of the debates, the conversation that is an important one, Jim.

SCIUTTO: No question. Jacqueline Howard, thanks so much. Boris.

[15:25:01]

SANCHEZ: He's never one to shy away from attention, so why does Donald Trump plan to skip an RNC presidential debate?

Plus, an important update on that search for three inmates who escaped from a Mississippi jail. We have the latest on a multi-state state manhunt.

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