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Meadows Testifying In Hearing To Move GA Case To Federal Court; Meadows Questioned About Setting Up Call Where Trump Told GA Officials To "Find" Enough Votes To Win State; At Least 1 Dead After Fire Rescue Helicopter Crashes In Florida; Police Responding To "Armed And Dangerous Person On Or Near Campus" AT UNC-Chapel Hill. Aired 1:30-2p ET

Aired August 28, 2023 - 13:30   ET

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

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[13:34:22]

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN HOST: Happening right now, former White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, is on the stand in Georgia, under oath, testifying at a hearing to attempt to move his state charges over 2020 election subversion efforts to federal court.

A key moment in the court so far, Meadows was questioned by a Fulton County prosecutor about then-President Trump's January 2021 phone call with the Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, in which Trump asked Raffensperger on tape to find just enough votes for Trump to win Georgia, a state he had lost.

Meadows said that Trump had a concern about potential fraud in Atlanta and was hoping to find a way to find a less litigious way of resolving his issues with the election result in Georgia.

[13:35:09]

Joining me now, Jen Jordan. She's a former Georgia State Senator. She also testified before the grand jury in the 2020 election probe in that state.

Nice to have you on.

As you watch this and we're hearing his case play out in real time, do you think he has a case to move his prosecution to federal court?

JEN JORDAN, (D), FORMER GEORGIA STATE SENATOR: I think if you look at it in terms of how they're trying to frame it, as if everything he was doing was merely almost administrative in a lot of ways, just setting up a telephone call for the president, getting phone numbers for him.

If you look at it that way, but really you have to zoom out and really understand what was at play here. Why was he trying to talk to these people? What was the phone call about?

I have to tell you, it's staggering to me that his attorney put him on the stand. As an attorney myself, that's a very, very risky move to put a criminal defendant on the stand under oath.

But, you know, when I started to think about it, he may be the only person who could actually offer testing the support of any of these things made and the (INAUDIBLE).

So, I think it's risky if you (INAUDIBLE) judgment.

But I think there's way too much and I think ultimately the judge will say this needs to be in state court.

SCIUTTO: He claims this was just a procedural effort by him, I was just arranging things and so on. But you hear his voice in some of these calls, too, where, in a very nice way, he might say, or not too subtle ways, talking about the ultimate goal here, right? Which was to get a different result.

I wonder, from a legal perspective, how far does one have to go to substantiate the charge that this was not just a procedural effort but that the intent was to overturn the rightful results of the election?

What do they have to prove? What do prosecutors have to prove?

JORDAN: Look, I think what we'll see with respect to the prosecutors, is after Meadows gets off the stand, they'll put up the other people that were on that call, including two attorneys who are representing the Trump campaign.

Now that's important because, if Meadow was only acting in his capacity of chief of staff for the president, then any kind of attorney/client privilege that may have inured or protected him previously in terms of communication with those attorneys goes away. You can't have it both ways.

Then with respect to Francis Watson, he was the chief investigator that he reached out to. I mean, there are texts showing he's like, look -- and I'm paraphrasing -- but can the Trump campaign just throw some money at this to hurry this along?

If you're only acting in your capacity as a chief of staff, you're not offering up funds or the money of the Trump campaign to get to a certain result, and you're certainly not trying to put your thumb on the scale.

SCIUTTO: To be clear, the argument is that he was acting as a federal official and therefore it should be in federal court.

To be clear, though, a federal official can't do whatever the heck they want, right? There's a line, is there not, to criminal behavior even if you argue you were doing this as part of your federal duties?

JORDAN: Look, even buying that all he was doing was listening to what the president told him to do, what the president was telling him to do was part of a criminal conspiracy.

If knew that and was aware of it, he can't use that as some kind of a shield from being held responsible. Ultimately, at the end of the day, what he was doing really was

political in nature. It was electioneering at a minimum. And that's in violation of the Hatch Act, which says that you, as an employee of the federal government, can't do that.

There's no way he can legitimately say what he was doing was in furtherance of legitimate goals or, you know, responsibilities associated with the office.

SCIUTTO: Jen Jordan, thanks for breaking it down. It's hard with some of these questions here for folks who are not lawyers. We appreciate it.

Brianna? BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: A fire rescue helicopter crashes onto the

roof of a building in south Florida. We'll have more on what is a tragic accident, ahead.

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[13:44:18]

KEILAR: Video showing the moment that a fire rescue helicopter broke apart and crashed into an apartment building in Pompano Beach, Florida.

I want to warn you, the video is very graphic here.

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KEILAR: A trail of smoke from the helicopter, and then a sudden tailspin, as the tail almost breaks over.

Seconds later, you see the chopper crashing. It crashed into an apartment building where the accident and the fiery aftermath just tore that huge hole into the roof.

I want to bring in CNN aviation correspondent, Pete Muntean, to talk about this.

[13:45:02]

That was a building that had people in it, Pete. Tell us about the injuries and what we know here.

PETE MUNTEAN, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: And we're just learning now, Brianna, from Broward Sheriff's Department spokesperson, Greg Tony, that one person was killed in this incident, a flight paramedic on board that Broward County Sheriff's Department fire rescue helicopter.

His name, Captain Terryson Jackson. He was a flight paramedic on that helicopter. Incredibly, four people were hurt in this incident, two on the ground,

two crew members of the helicopter, but we're hearing from the Pompano Beach city spokesperson none of those people were injured were injured critically.

In fact, there's some video surfacing online showing first responders helping crew members of the helicopter off of the roof of that apartment building.

Pretty incredible when you consider just the dramatic, disturbing video of this helicopter. It's an EC-135, pretty commonly used as a MEDEVAC helicopter around the world. There's some 2,000 of them flying.

And you can see in that video what appears to be a fire on the left side of the cabin of that helicopter. Then the helicopter starts to spin out control.

The boom that goes to the tail rotor essentially fails. Incredibly difficult, if not impossible to control a helicopter without the tail rotor. You can see if spinning there counterclockwise until it contacts with the ground. A pretty big crater in the roof of that apartment building.

We're still waiting to hear a little bit more on the response here.

And also investigators have their work cut out for them. What precipitated the fire? That's the big question. Was it something on board? Was it a failure of a system that was part of the airplane?

Or was it something that was part of the life-saving equipment that's typically carried on board some of these aircraft?

Really big questions here, Brianna. No doubt the FAA is investigating and the NTSB now leading the investigation as well.

KEILAR: Big questions there because that chopper was clearly in trouble before it started to spin out of control and break up.

Pete, thank you so much. We know you'll be following this carefully.

Jim?

SCIUTTO: Now to some of the other headlines were watching this hour.

President Biden and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin offering their condolences to the families of three U.S. Marines killed in an air crash off the northern coast of Australia.

The U.S. military says 23 Marines were on board of an Osprey tilt- loader aircraft when it went down on a remote island during a training exercise. Five other Martines were injured. Rescue crews transported them to a hospital on the mainland.

It's the latest deadly crash involving an Osprey, which has a checkered safety history. No word yet on what caused this latest accident.

Also, new data shows that requests to ban books at public schools and libraries hit a 21-year high last year.

The American Library Association says there were more than 1,000 questions to censor books in 2022, a 70, 7-0, percent increase over the previous year. Many of the titles singled out had LGBTQ themes or were written by people of color.

Texas saw the most attempts to restrict access to books, while Florida had the average number of titles challenged in each ban attempt. Other states that saw a high number of book ban requests were Michigan, Illinois, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts.

Finally, a SpaceX capsule, carrying four astronauts from four different countries, has now docked at the International Space Station. They join seven astronauts already on board the orbiting laboratory and expect to spend about six months conducting experiments there.

Brianna, I still haven't gotten my invitation.

(LAUGHTER)

KEILAR: I'll invite you.

Spain's soccer scandal. The country's soccer federation meeting to discuss the fate of its chief, who was suspended over his unwanted kiss of a star player.

[13:49:10]

And as the backlash grows and his mother stages a hunger strike in support, we have some more information. We'll have that ahead.

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KEILAR: We have breaking news into CNN. Police at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill responding to what they are calling an "armed and dangerous person on or near campus." This is according to an alert from the university.

We have CNN's Nick Valencia joining us now to talk to us more about this.

School is in session there, Nick, just to be clear. Classes began last week so this is the second week of class. Students are there on campus. What can you tell us?

NICK VALENCIA, CNN CORRESPONDENT; Yes, there's tons of people on campus giving this a troubling atmosphere to this situation, which we understand is very fluid.

But the emergency notification from UNC going out to students, staff and faculty around 1:00 p.m. notifying those in the area of an armed and dangerous person on or near campus near the bell tower area, that is what local affiliates are reporting.

Witnesses tell CNN that they are in lockdown currently and they see police armed on campus.

The alert, again, I mentioned going out before 1:00 p.m., so just within the last hour or so. This is a very fluid situation.

[13:55:00]

We don't know much right now other than that alert, which told people to go inside immediately, close windows and doors, stay until further notice and follow directions from emergency responders or University officials.

So again, UNC in Raleigh, North Carolina, the campus on lockdown or parts of it according to witnesses because of reports of an armed and dangerous person at or near campus with reports of shots fired.

We are clearly monitoring the situation. And when we have more information, we'll give an update. But right now, a scary situation in Chapel Hill.

KEILAR: Repeat what he said about the bell tower and where that information is coming from?

VALENCIA: WRAL and WTVD, both of those local affiliates of CNN, reporting that the area of campus is near the bell tower part of campus. So those in the area watching us in North Carolina, that is the part of the campus currently on lockdown.

Local affiliates also reporting some middle schools are on a soft lockdown.

Again, this is very fluid information happening around 1:00 p.m. Eastern time with the alert going out from the university to those in the area -- Brianna?

KEILAR: All right. And we'll pay close attention to that, Nick. Obviously, a lot of details we're trying to pin down as police are responding to an armed and dangerous person on or near the campus at UNC-Chapel Hill.

Nick Valencia, thank you so much.

Jim?

SCIUTTO: Let's hope the students are safe.

Ahead on CNN NEWS CENTRAL, a hearing today on whether Donald Trump's co-defendants in Georgia can move their cases from state court to federal court. The decision could have big implications for others involved in that case. We'll explain.

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