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Deadly Tornado Slams Texas Panhandle Town; Source Says, Trump Lawyers Contacted Justice Department About Obtaining Security Clearances to Handle Documents Case; Consumer Sentiment Hits Highest Level in Four Months. Aired 10-10:30a ET

Aired June 16, 2023 - 10:00   ET

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

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[10:00:00]

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: A tornado takes lives and devastates a small Texas town in the blink of an eye. A storm chaser watched the deadly storm unfold right before his eyes.

RAHEL SOLOMON, CNN ANCHOR: And attorneys for former President Donald Trump put on notice as the judge overseeing his classified documents case issues her first order. The deadline today pushes his incomplete legal team to apply for security clearances to view the sensitive classified materials involved in the case.

BERMAN: A first of its kind trial in the United States. Gen Z puts Montana on trial, challenging the state's pro-fossil fuel policies. What this could mean for the fight against climate change. This is CNN News Central.

Terrifying footage from storm chasers who captured the severe weather that devastated a small town in the Texas panhandle. A twister picks up speed and really gets going right here. There is other video that shows a twister as it hits Perryton, a town, some 8 of 8,000 residents, at least three people were killed. One survivor said she saw dumpsters fly.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JAMIE JAMES, PERRYTON, TEXAS TORNADO SURVIVOR: There was a time where I thought that I was going to die and I was going to leave a lot of things undone. I know there's people here who died today serving our community and some of the best people I've ever met in my life are here in this town.

COLE UNDERWOOD, ATHLETIC DIRECTOR AND FOOTBALL COACH, PERRYTON HIGH SCHOOL: I think that there's a sense of fear just of the unknown. I don't think anybody really has any idea what's going to happen next. The shock is still sitting in.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: The deadly tornado in Texas among more than 260 storm reports made in the last 24 hours across multiple states.

With us now is Storm Chaser Brian Emfinger who shot some of the drone video of the damage. Brian, glad you're safe. Why don't you give us a sense of what you saw?

BRIAN EMFINGER, STORM CHASER: Yes, I kind of feel like it was almost a worst case scenario as far as the public and getting the warning because the tornado developed so rapidly, that when it first started hitting town, that's actually when the tornado warning was issued. And that's not anything on the National Weather Service. Sometimes these things happen. If you'd have told me five minutes before if this was going to produce a tornado, I would have said no.

So, basically, as soon as it developed it's on the ground coming into town and the first thing that I really remember is just seeing that mobile home park on the northwest corner of town, the first thing that the tornado really hit when it was on the ground, and just mobile home after mobile home after mobile home just destroyed and then on fire on top of that.

BERMAN: You're looking at the mobile home fire right there. How wide was the path and long was the path of destruction that you saw?

EMFINGER: Well the path of the tornado went completely across the town. It went from the northwest corner to like the southeast corner. So, it went across the entire town. In fact, it started in residential areas. It went direct directly over the downtown, which sustained heavy damage, and then it went on into the industrial part, where there's obviously a lot of employment and stuff.

So, it really couldn't have almost hit a worse stretch of town as far as just impacting so many important parts of their town.

BERMAN: How much warning did people have and did you have a sense that they had the time to take cover?

EMFINGER: No. Yes, like I said, sometimes the weather does what the weather does. And this is one of those cases where I never heard sirens. And the reason why is when they issued the tornado warning, the tornado was already in town doing damage and the power had obviously been cut to the town.

Again, I'm not going to say anything negative about the Weather Service because that tornado developed very rapidly from a storm that really you thought it was not going to be doing that so quickly. It was very rapid.

So, I doubt that most residents, unless they maybe were watching the news or something like that, really had any time. And when you're in a mobile home, you need to have time to be able to get into some sort of safer place. And I just don't think they had that, unfortunately, today or yesterday.

BERMAN: I have to say, the different types of neighborhoods that are hit here, you really can't see it from the mobile home park that you were talking about and obviously so vulnerable there, but the downtown area as well with some of those buildings just turned into splinters. You can see just the scope of the damage here.

[10:05:02]

EMFINGER: Yes. I did not see that the downtown was destroyed or heavily damaged until after I'd already seen the residential and the industrial part. And, honestly, my heart just sank because that's the heart of the town. People were talking about the one cell tower that is downtown toppled. There's like a radio communication tower. There was one of their main churches that someone was telling me about was destroyed.

So, this town is really going to need a lot of help when recovering. You're talking about hundreds of people homeless and most likely hundreds of people without jobs that aren't there right now.

BERMAN: There is a lot of work to do. Brian Emfinger, thank you for being with us. Glad, of course, you're safe. I know this is your job, but you still take a lot of risks, so we appreciate it.

Extraordinary to see all that. Again, I'd seen the mobile home park, Rahel. I hadn't seen the downtown area with those buildings just --

SOLOMON: It really is incredible. Also to hear him say not just the loss of life, but also the economic implications, all of the people who have lost their home and have lost their jobs now, which is really devastating. John, thank you.

Also new developments this morning in the federal indictment of Donald Trump we are learning that Trump's legal team has asked the Justice Department for security clearance. They'll need that in order to get access to the evidence in his classified documents case.

This comes after the judge overseeing the case, Aileen Cannon, she issued her first order in the case telling Trump's lawyers that they had to request the clearance by today and report back to her by next Tuesday.

CNN's Evan Perez joins us now. So, Evan, how long could the clearance process take?

EVAN PEREZ, CNN SENIOR JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Rahel, the Justice Department is going to expedite these security clearances. It can take a period of months to approve one of these things, but we're told that it can happen. At least a preliminary security clearance can be done in just a few weeks.

And so that's going to be one of the first things that you can expect. There's going to be a little bit of contention between the two teams, between the prosecution, Jack Smith, the special counsel's legal team, and the former president's lawyers because they want to get started. They want to start taking a look at the evidence that the Justice Department says could prove their case. And, of course, they can't do that because these are classified documents. They cannot look at some of these documents until they get that approval.

We know that Todd Blanche and Chris Kise, of course, have already presented themselves as lawyers who are going to be with this case through appeal. So, they have already put in their request for security clearances, according to sources who spoke to Kaitlan Collins.

We also know, though, Rahel, that the former president is still working to hire additional lawyers. He's not finalized his legal team that is going to be working on this longer term. So, we expect that those people are going to have to get into the pipeline.

Now, one thing that we are not likely to see anytime soon is this list of witnesses that the Justice Department was ordered by a judge, by the magistrate that oversaw the arraignment. They need to provide a list of witnesses to the former president's lawyers of who he is not allowed to talk to about this case.

And so that is something that we know the Justice Department now has to provide to the Trump lawyers. We're not likely to see that publicly. But for the Trump legal team, it's a huge deal because it gives them a little bit of an idea of who the prosecution believes are going to be their witnesses in this case. So, that's, of course, longer term when we get to a trial. Rahel?

SOLOMON: Yes. Of course, what you're describing there is the process of discovery, always so fascinating, even more so in a case like this. Evan Perez, live for us in Washington, thank you, Evan.

PEREZ: Thanks.

SOLOMON: Now, to a divide between the GOP on Capitol Hill. Some Republicans say that the indictment of former President Trump will not come without consequences for the Department of Justice, and they are calling for Congress to undermine the DOJ by cutting funding. But not everybody is on board. The number two Republican in the Senate, John Thune, says, quote, it is a really bad idea.

CNN's Lauren Fox joins us now from Capitol Hill. Lauren, what are you hearing?

LAUREN FOX, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes. I mean, this week you heard a number of House Republicans, many of whom are in the House Freedom Caucus, calling to cut funding to the Justice Department in a myriad of ways. The menu of options that they are looking at is cutting funding to the special counsel's office, potentially pulling funding for a new FBI building. Those are some of the options that came up repeatedly in meetings with GOP leaders as they are really trying to find a way forward in this larger context of a funding fight that is just getting started on Capitol Hill.

Meanwhile, in the U.S. Senate, you have Republicans who are warning them, not so fast.

[10:10:03]

Here's the number two Republican senator, John Thune.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) SEN. JOHN THUNE (R-SD): Obviously, we need accountability and we need oversight, which is the job that we have to make sure they're doing their job the right way. But are we going to get rid of the Justice Department? No. And I think defunding is a really bad idea.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOX: There you have it. You have a senior Republican senator saying that it's a really bad idea.

And this really sets the House and the Senate on this broader collision course when it comes to spending no matter what the House of Representatives is able to pass out of their chamber. And we should know there are some moderate Republicans in that chamber who are also concerned about cutting funding to the Justice Department.

They have to send their bill over to the U.S. Senate and they're going to have to find a way forward, because over in the Senate, you're going to need 60 votes to pass anything. That means a number of Democrats are going to have to be backing it, not to mention the majority leader, Chuck Schumer, is going to decide what actually comes to the Senate floor.

So, it really is just another example of this tension you're seeing between Republican leaders in the House and Republican leaders in the Senate. Rahel?

SOLOMON: That divide becoming even more clear. Lauren Fox, live for us on Capitol Hill, thank you. John?

BERMAN: All right, with us now, CNN National Security Analyst and former Assistant Secretary at the Department of Homeland Security, Juliette Kayyem. Great to see you in person.

JULIETTE KAYYEM, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Great to see you.

BERMAN: We talk so much about the legal case about the former president. I think sometimes we forget the national security implications in all of this. These documents that he had, what happens if the information inside those documents is compromised?

KAYYEM: It's a great question. And I want to be clear here. We don't know or have proof yet that there was a foreign agent who took it, nor do we even know why Donald Trump wanted to keep the materials and he did something with them. So, the distribution of the materials we don't even know yet, and that could be even worse.

The mere existence of them with the photos impacts three different sort of constituencies, let's say. The first is, of course, our military and intelligence communities who are doing stuff you and I aren't doing, risking their lives, being sent abroad to deliver information that they should have every expectation that a president or former president of the United States, let alone anyone with national security clearance, will keep clear, will keep private.

The second is our enemies. They know the basics of what our national security apparatus information looks like. It's in a bathroom of a former president. And so they should have all the confidence in the world that they can get it, have access to it and not rely on our intelligence assessments.

And then the third, and this is really important, is our allies. Whether it's Five Eyes, whether it's NATO, it doesn't matter. They have an expectation. It's sort of a reliance interest amongst our allies that what they do and give us will be protected as much as our expectation, what we give them will be protected. All three of those are completely thrown out, regardless of the classification status and regardless of what we know happened to them.

BERMAN: What must they think when they see pictures of Donald Trump's bathroom?

KAYYEM: I think what the thing that drives a lot of us in the field a little crazy is people will say, well, we don't know what happened, and we don't know if there's been any harm that the release of this information caused someone to die or someone to be compromised in intelligence agents. We should not have to ask that question. We should not be guessing. Why are we asking that question?

This is the former president of the United States. Whatever classification you give this, it is materials that he knew at one stage were secret. The consequences of their release, maybe we won't be able to ever prove. It's just the mere fact of it that becomes the liability and the danger to the United States.

BERMAN: A phrase that does get tossed around is compromising of sources and methods. And you just said compromise and brought up the extreme, extreme consequence, which is someone is harmed because they are found dead (ph). That's the extreme case. What's a less extreme case? Why do we care about that?

KAYYEM: The former president of the United States asked the military, what would it look like to invade -- let's just like be random here -- Uganda, right? No one thinks it. But the fact that a former president of the United States actually asked that question should make that country rather nervous. Why was he thinking that? What are the consequences of that? I'm making it easy. I'm not talking about North Korea, Iran or any, Russia.

BERMAN: Our reporting is that there were documents about Iran, battle plans for invading Iran, which you might assume that Iran would think, hey, look, we know that the Pentagon does these types of things, but to have it there in print is another matter.

KAYYEM: Yes, exactly. And I often say that whatever this legal status is, a former president ought to know that these materials are secrets, right? You can give it any classification you want. That's sort of an obligation of any former president, any person who had security clearance.

[10:15:00]

This isn't that hard to get, right? And I think the American public and many Republicans are beginning to understand that.

BERMAN: People are casting about for a possible motive. Why? Why would Trump do this? Do the consequences depend on there being a discernible motive?

KAYYEM: I think the consequences for Donald Trump do, right? So, I mean, look, if we learn that there're foreign intelligence agents in there who got information, that's going to be relevant for our ability out in the field, the agents may be compromised, information may be compromised.

If we were to learn in the case -- because we don't know this piece yet, so there may be shoes to drop. If we were to learn in the case that the materials were being used for his own personal benefit, say there's a third party that he wanted to get money from or one of his kids or a son-in-law wanted to get money from, if that's the case, that then goes to his intent. His intent was, of course, he knew that these were secret and that was their value. The secrecy is their value and that's what he damaged.

BERMAN: And, of course, we don't know anything about what possible motive and none of that has been real yet. We'll see. We'll see what we learn there.

KAYYEM: I wouldn't bet -- if I were a Republican, I think that's why you're seeing this. I wouldn't bet on this yet because we don't know motive yet.

BERMAN: Juliette Kayyem, thank you very much for being with us. Rahel?

SOLOMON: Well, John, still ahead for us, new data on the state of the economy just in. Details on what the numbers reveal about how Americans and consumers are feeling about their finances.

Also, your next package delivery could be late. That's if UPS workers around the country go on strike. Why hundreds of thousands of workers are getting ready to hit the picket line.

And Prince Harry and Meghan Markle parting ways with streaming giant Spotify. Why the multimillion dollar deal is coming to an end.

We'll be right back.

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[10:20:00]

SOLOMON: Now to some stories on our radar today. In the next hour, Attorney General Merrick Garland and other top Justice Department officials expected to announce the findings of a two-year investigation into the practices of the Minneapolis Police Department. The long awaited probe follows the murder of George Floyd by former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin.

Federal experts say that they are looking at more than two dozen possible causes for the collapse of a condo tower in Florida. The Champlain Tower South in Surfside, Florida, collapsed in 2021, killing 98 people. A spokesman with the National Institute of Safety Technology says that the building's pool deck was prone to failure for a variety of reasons. Investigators hope to have their final report completed on the collapse by the end of 2025.

And Spotify has ended its lucrative deal with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. The couple signed their multiyear deal with Spotify in December 2020. But a release says that Spotify and the couple's production company, Archewell Audio, mutually agreed to end the partnership. The announcement comes just two weeks after Spotify said that it had to cut 200 jobs within its podcast unit. John?

BERMAN: All right. New this morning, the latest read on the state of the economy, data released just minutes ago shows how consumers are feeling as inflation begins to cool.

CNN chief business correspondent rushing here with the numbers, what do they say?

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: They're feeling better. I mean, you had the resolution of the debt ceiling crisis and then you have signs of cooling in the inflation front, and so consumers saying that they feel a little bit better about things, a four-month high in terms of consumer sentiment. It rose in the month.

And the outlook, I was looking into these numbers and what the firm was saying about it, the outlook here actually surged both near term and long-term. So, last summer, consumer sentiment was at rock bottom. You're up quite a bit from there, but still not as good as in normal times.

BERMAN: And the outlook means how people think things are going to be?

ROMANS: Yes. And people think things are going to be good in the near term. And they're pretty confident in their own personal earnings potential. And they're also looking out. They're thinking that inflation is going to get a little bit better. So, you have a little bit of enthusiasm here, I would say an improvement, really, in the consumer sentiment arena.

And we told you yesterday that retail sales also improved in the month of June. So, people sometimes say they feel pretty lousy about the economy, but they're still spending money.

BERMAN: Deep down inside, they don't really mean it. I know what that's like.

ROMANS: Right.

BERMAN: We also will learn today about UPS. There could be this huge strike that would have an impact on all of us. That decision comes today?

ROMANS: So, we're going to get the conclusion of the vote. The Teamsters will vote, and the conclusion of that vote is today. And, by and large, everyone thinks that there's going to be a strike approval that will approve a strike. That doesn't necessarily mean a strike will happen. That's something then the union goes into the negotiations with the UPS and can say, look, we have -- our members are ready to strike over this.

If it happens, it would be huge. 340,000 UPS teamsters and 6 percent of U.S. GDP travels on one of those brown trucks. They're arguing over conditions in the trucks and Teamsters -- UPS has already said they will put some air conditioners in the new trucks and try to improve retrofit old trucks.

They're also still arguing about wages and pay. UPS' profit doubled during the pandemic. It softened a little bit. The outlook has softened into the beginning of this year, but you've got Teamsters who are saying, hey, show us the money.

BERMAN: All right, those talks still going on. Christine Romans, thank you very much. Have a great weekend.

ROMANS: You too.

BERMAN: Rahel?

SOLOMON: Coming up, sources tell CNN that the U.S. has resumed indirect talks with Iran in an attempt to constrain Tehran's growing nuclear program. What one source says about the possibility of striking a deal.

Plus, it's not easy being green, as a group of plaintiffs in Montana found out. They are suing the state, claiming that its support of fossil fuels violates Montana's Constitution. We have the details ahead.

[10:25:00]

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SOLOMON: And welcome back. Sources tell CNN that the U.S. has resumed talks with Iran in an effort to constrain the country's growing nuclear program. It's part of an effort to revive the Iran nuclear deal after the Trump administration withdrew from the agreement in 2018.

There are rumblings that some progress has been made, but Washington and Tehran say no deal has been reached.

[10:30:00]

CNN Global Affairs Analyst Kim Dozier joins us now. She is also the senior managing editor at the Military Times. Kim, welcome and good morning.