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4 Of 3 Proud Boys Defendants Found Guilty Of Seditious Conspiracy; White House: Russia Is Lying About Drone; U.S. Determine What Happened; White House Launches Plan, Meets With CEOs On Artificial Intelligence; ProPublica: Harlan Crow Paid Tuition For Nephew of Justice Thomas. Aired 3:30-4p ET

Aired May 04, 2023 - 15:30   ET

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

[15:30:00]

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR & SENIOR NATIONAL & INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: They saw the DOJ looked at the group, look at what they did, look at all the evidence, and the conversations him between them on media, on apps, on social media, and they said, OK, these groups had a plan and we're going to go after them. And it is exactly what they did. And in both cases, some of the members were convicted of seditious conspiracy. And all of the members of both of these groups that went on trial were convicted of other serious charges if they were not convicted of seditious conspiracy.

So, this is a win for the DOJ. But it is also a warning to anyone who is thinking of trying to stop the democracy in this country. And you look at what they did, especially Dominic Pezzola was slashing into the Capitol. That led a slew of people into the Capitol from a place where you weren't expecting people to come in. So, you saw this huge number of people pushing in through that broken window. I mean, it is remarkable to see that happen, and it would have been surprising if he were not convicted of serious charges. After seeing it, plain and in person what he did as well as some of the other members when you look at the evidence. The jury saw it, and they came back with guilty verdicts.

JESSICA SCHNEIDER, CNN HOST: Yes, there's just so much evidence. That's the other thing.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN HOST: Renato Mariotti, I do want to ask you -- and I asked this question of Elie Williams last hour -- the president, the former president is currently being investigated by the Justice Department for his role in January 6th. Of course, he did not storm the Capitol. He did not break a window there. He did not assault a police officer. The focus has been on whether he encouraged the crowd, incited the crowd to do so. I know that there were freedom of expression barriers to charging someone. But you have folks here among hundreds, right, who have now been convicted of criminal acts. In this case conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding. Do you see -- do you learn anything from these convictions as regards the president's legal jeopardy and the chances that he might be charged for his involvement?

RENATO MARIOTTI, FORMER FEDERAL PROSECUTOR: Well, a couple things. I mean, first of all, Jim, whenever a defendant is sentenced, one thing that they consider are all of the nature and circumstances of their offense, and all of the history and characteristics of the defendant. That's by law what a federal judge is required to consider.

So, I suspect that this will raise the stakes for the former president. Because ultimately a judge looking at a potential punishment in a case involving Donald Trump is going to consider these types of sentences that have been imposed in other cases and is going to be considering the impact that Trump had on our democracy. And the impact that he had, for example, in inciting this attack on the Capitol.

Even if that isn't charged, in other words, even if Trump is ultimately convicted of something like classified documents in Mar-a- Lago, if that ends up happening, I do think a judge is going to consider this activity as well. And ultimately is going to be considering whether or not a sentence for something else, you know, potentially is commensurate with the activity that the full breadth of the activity that he's undertaken. So, I do think it will have an impact.

Whether it impacts the January 6th investigation itself is yet to be determined. I think a focus there is going to be much more on what Mike -- that Trump was trying to get Mike Pence to do inside the United States Senate to obstruct, you know, that proceeding to potentially put forward false documents, false electors, things along those lines.

SCIUTTO: Goodness, well, that's another investigation. In this one we already have fairly remarkable results today.

Coming up, we have more news we're covering this hour. Russia says it is the U.S. that is responsible for a drone attack at the Kremlin, how intelligence officials are responding to that allegation today.

Plus, the White House unveils a plan to address artificial intelligence, what is most concerning to officials and what they plan to do about it.

[15:35:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: A mysterious drone impact in Moscow a day ago, and Moscow uses it to unleash carnage inside Ukraine today. The Kremlin claiming without showing any evidence that the U.S. orchestrated the drone incident that left Moscow's Senate palace damaged. The White House calls that ridiculous and a lie, but Russia is vowing revenge. As we've seen so often in this war, it's Ukrainian civilians who are the ones to pay.

Overnight Vladimir Putin released some of the worst strikes that Ukraine has seen in months. CNN's Natasha Bertrand is live for us at the Pentagon. Natasha, it's interesting talking to officials. They do not know who is responsible, but what is clear is that they are saying that Vladimir Putin is very wrong about who he is claiming is responsible for this drone incident.

NATASHA BERTRAND, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY REPORTER: Yes, Brianna, so the national security council coordinator for strategic communications, John Kirby, he actually accused the Kremlin of flat out lying about this notion that the U.S. was behind this drone attack in any way.

[15:40:00]

And while he said earlier today during a press briefing that he could not get into the minds of the Kremlin officials who are accusing the U.S. of doing this. He also said that they don't necessarily need a pretext in order to launch these kinds of attacks on Ukraine. They don't need a false flag, for example, to justify their continued invasion because they continue to bomb Ukraine day in and day out. Here's what John Kirby said earlier today.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN KIRBY, NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL SPOKESMAN: We're not investigating it and I want to be clear. So, we're still looking at this. We haven't come to any conclusions one way or the other. We're going to try to learn more, but let's not label it a report or an investigation or anything like that. We're doing the best we can to try to find out what happened.

Let's not lose the bigger picture here. It's not like Mr. Putin has to invent new reasons to kill innocent Ukrainians. He keeps doing it over and over and over again. Now, whether he's going to use this as some sort of pretext is up to him. But just in the last 24 hours, you know, he's bombing shoppers at a supermarket. So, the violence just continues one way or the other.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BERTRAND: Now, Brianna of course this is not a new accusation by the Kremlin. They have accused Ukraine of being at the whim of the United States really every step of the way in this conflict with Russia claiming that it's really the U.S. pulling all of the strings in the war. Something that the U.S. of course has categorically denied. Saying that they are supporting Ukraine, of course, providing military equipment, but they have actually explicitly told Ukraine not to attack inside Russia. And that is a big reason why they have not given the Ukrainians the kind of long-range missiles they have been asking for, for well over a year now -- Brianna.

KEILAR: Yes, Natasha live for us at the Pentagon, thank you for that -- Jessica.

SCHNEIDER: The question is, will artificial intelligence steal your job? As CEO of a major tech company has just said he will pause hiring on jobs he thinks can be accomplished by AI. We'll tell you who it is.

[15:45:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) SCIUTTO: Is artificial intelligence a threat or a tool? Maybe both. Do we know? The complicated debate, the focus of a White House meeting today. Vice President Kamala Harris hosted the CEOs of Google and Microsoft along with the chiefs of AI companies Anthropic and Open AI. A source tells CNN that President Biden also dropped by the meeting.

Ahead of it the White House announced how they plan to meet the challenge and the risks of this new technology. That includes spending $140 million to promote research and development. But listen to an expert known as the godfather of AI warning on CNN this week that he does not think it is clear we can solve the problems AI presents.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEOFFREY HINTON, AI PIONEER WHO RECENTLY QUIT GOOGLE: I believe we should put a big asterisk into thinking about ways to solve the problem. I don't have a solution at present. I just want people to be aware that this is a really serious problem, and we need to be thinking about it very hard.

I don't think we can stop the progress. I'm not an expert on how to do regulation, I'm just a scientist who suddenly realized that these things are getting smarter than us. I want to sort of blow the whistle and say we should worry seriously about how we stop these things getting control over us.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCIUTTO: Let's speak now to CNN's Jon Sarlin. You know, Jon, watching that White House meeting it made me think of a meeting in the White House in the '90s on the internet. Right? It's like hey, we got this thing, this internet. Let's talk about how we're going to handle it. Folks had no idea, right, they had no idea how it was going to change things and how dominant it was going to become. I kind of feel like we're at a similar place here with AI. But zero in particular on the current risks as it relates to politics and disinformation, particularly as we're entering a whole new election cycle?

JON SARLIN, CNN BUSINESS, HOST, NIGHTCAP: Jim, that's a great point. This is a new chapter in technology. And so, as we've seen this rapid improvement in AI technology over the last year, it's increasingly blurring the lines between what is AI-generated and what is generated by people. Whether it's text or video or audio.

Earlier this month the RNC released an ad that they claimed was their first 100 percent AI-generated ad. It painted this dystopian picture of if Joe Biden were to be reelected president in 2024. Those photos in the ad were entirely generated with AI. Now, to be fair, the RNC declared that the ad in a press release, on YouTube and in the ad itself, said that it was AI generated. That, however, won't always be the case.

Look no further than an English channel that appeared on YouTube called "House of News" that was broadcasting Venezuelan propaganda. The reality is that anchor that you see right there is completely AI generated. The face, the voice, Synthesia, the company who offers the product there. So, we're seeing how AI can be used by political actors to create images that were not -- that are not real.

SCIUTTO: Well, don't scare me with AI-generated anchors, man, that's really going into sensitive territory. But let's talk about on that topic how AI is already affecting jobs, right? I mean, I suppose the worry here is it takes over some jobs?

SARLIN: Right, as we've seen this rise in AI technology, there have long been speculation that that increase in AI technology will lead to a rise in job losses. That's coming to a head now with the writer's strike, with the Writers Guild making demands from studios to prevent AI from being used in films and television.

[15:50:05]

They're calling for -- to regulate use of artificial intelligence on MBA-covered projects. That AI can't write or rewrite literary material. Can't be used as source material. And MBA-covered material can't be used to train AI.

This is a major concern for the writers. The studios rejected that provision. They instead offered an annual meeting to assess new technology.

And then you look at an interview that the CEO of IBM gave with Bloomberg this week and he speculated that as many as 7,800 jobs of theirs can be taken away because of advancements in AI. So, look, the prospects of AI coming for jobs? It's looking more and more like a scenario that could be happening in the future.

SCIUTTO: We saw it. We're seeing it with robots for certain jobs. Stands to reason AI might do the same thing in some categories. Jon Sarlin, thanks so much -- Brianna.

KEILAR: Jim, we're talking to new accusations leveled against Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Another ProPublica report alleging a Republican mega donor paid for the school tuition of a grand nephew that Clarence Thomas had legal custody of and who lived with the justice. We'll have details ahead.

[15:55:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KEILAR: There's a new report from ProPublica that finds that billionaire and GOP mega donor Harlan Crow paid school tuition for Clarence Thomas' grand nephew who Clarence Thomas had custody of and who lived with the justice. It is the latest in a series of controversial financial dealings between the two men that has legal experts and lawmakers asking the nation's highest court to establish a code of ethics.

We should note as I just stood there, Thomas took legal custody, right, legal custody of his nephew when he was just six years old. And in his own words said that he was, quote, raising him as a son. CNN legal analyst Norm Eisen here with us now. When you look at this, Norm, how bad is this? NORM EISEN, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Brianna, it's bad. Even if it didn't

come on top of all of these other allegations about Justice Thomas' conflicts, it would raise an eyebrow. But here the latest revelation that thousands of dollars in what I believe were essentially gifts to Justice Thomas who would have otherwise had to pay the tuition for this young man or gifts to a dependent, either way you look at it, it had to be disclosed under federal law. Yet another undisclosed benefit from Harlen Crow. The Justice Department must investigate.

KEILAR: And the other option -- because he didn't disclose this -- was to disclose this. Right? And he has disclosed some things before. And then he sort of stopped disclosing them. What would have happened if he did just disclose this payment?

EISEN: Well, we would have had the tremendous fuss that we now find ourselves in, but he would not be legally exposed. The gift itself is allowed. What is not allowed is to hide it. And when this comes on top of the justice's failure to recuse himself from the January 6 cases, even though his wife Ginni Thomas was a witness. Hundreds of thousands of dollars in undisclosed luxury travel from Harlen Crow. Harlan Crow purchasing real estate from Justice Thomas. That's not disclosed. Now this tuition, we need to ask ourselves when is enough, enough. And when is DOJ going to open an investigation.

KEILAR: To that point, what are the consequences here besides, say, the chief justice walking to Clarence Thomas' office and addressing this with him? I mean, where are the real teeth in any of this?

EISEN: Well, these disclosures are required by federal law. And the law provides that there can be civil penalties. You have to pay a fine if you don't settle the case. Go to court, get a judgment against you. DOJ sometimes does that. If it is serious enough, there can even be criminal penalties for hiding this kind of information. And here where you have issue after issue after issue, DOJ has to investigate. They can't just take the statements of Clarence Thomas and his friends that everything was fine or that Thomas consulted with people as he said about the travel with his colleagues. No, DOJ has to examine him. They would need to get real answers.

KEILAR: You say they need to. Will they I think is the question. You feel that this is incumbent on them to do. Do you actually expect that will happen?

EISEN: We don't know if they will or not. They don't love to tackle these financial disclose cases. And for those of us who do ethics, look, I administered these rules in the White House. We're frustrated and we were tough in the Obama administration on following these rules. We're frustrated that DOJ hasn't acted yet. But this latest tuition payment revelation should be enough. We'll see if should be is the same as will be.

KEILAR: Often it is not, I will say.

EISEN: Tragically.

KEILAR: Norm Eisen, thank you so much for being with us. And that does it for CNN NEWS CENTRAL. "THE LEAD" starts right now.