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Interview With Rep. Katherine Clark (D-MA); E. Jean Carroll Faces Cross-Examination; DOJ Releases Damning Report on Uvalde School Massacre. Aired 11-11:30a ET

Aired January 18, 2024 - 11:00   ET

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

[11:00:59]

SARA SIDNER, CNN HOST: This morning, a damning report by the DOJ calling the police response to the Uvalde school shooting -- quote -- "a failure." The biggest mistake they say officers made when responding to the shooting that left 19 children and two teachers dead, that is ahead.

RAHEL SOLOMON, CNN HOST: And, right now, E. Jean Carroll is under cross-examination from Donald Trump's lawyers, Carroll moments ago pressed about the money she made after writing her book, an essay about Trump's alleged assault. We're going to have the breaking details from inside the court.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN HOST: Moments ago, Nikki Haley punched back at Donald Trump, who has attacked her on everything from her conservative credentials to her ethnicity. So she just got in the game. Is there time enough for it to make a difference?

I'm John Berman, with Sara Sidner and Rahel Solomon -- Rahel Solomon, who is in for Kate, who speaks much better than I do. This is CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

SIDNER: We have new information for you now.

A new Justice Department report offers very harsh criticism of the law enforcement response to Uvalde, the Uvalde, Texas massacre. A mass shooter attacked the Robb Elementary School in May of 2022. You will remember he was left unchecked for a stunning 77 minutes inside that school.

This is despite the arrival of hundreds of law enforcement officers on the scene, 19 children killed, along with two teachers. This new report bluntly calls that police response a failure.

CNN's Shimon Prokupecz has been following this story since the very beginning, breaking news on this story again and again.

You have a hold of this report, an early look at what it says, thanks to one of the families who shared it with you. And I know you have been close with them throughout this time.

What are some of the most important takeaways when you read it? Because you have seen the failures in person and talked to some of the players in all of this as well.

SHIMON PROKUPECZ, CNN CRIME AND JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Right, and talked to some of the players, sadly, in a confrontational way, because, for so long, law enforcement has refused to answer questions. There's been no transparency here.

And much of the work that we hear at CNN, that our team has been doing here is working with sources and family members to put together what happened here for a year almost, where we spent time here digging through information that we were obtaining.

And, essentially, what this Department of Justice report does is, it holds up all that reporting. It shows that law enforcement here lacked leadership, that they lacked training. The policy was all wrong and just one mistake after another.

Top to bottom, just everything, Sara, quite frankly, was a mess, the response, the way they treated the crime scene, the way they treated the victims on the day, the little kids that they pulled out of the classroom. And, I mean, this report goes into detail about how they were taken out of the classroom.

And it was wrong, the way they did it. And they may have actually injured them by doing that. And I have seen that video, and it is awful of what happens in the moment after that classroom is breached and the gunman is killed, and the way kids are brought out of that classroom. And the Department of Justice report touches on that.

But, essentially, they put all the blame on local law enforcement officials. It's the acting Uvalde local police department chief who was acting that day, Mariano Pargas, the former school police chief, Pete Arredondo, who was ultimately fired, and then the sheriff here, Nolasco, the sheriff here, who we had some interesting conversations with.

But he was the leading law enforcement official in the county here in Uvalde. And they take issue with his response that day and his inaction that day. So those three individuals are the key people in this report.

[11:05:04]

But, remember, there were hundreds of other law enforcement officials from the Texas Department of Public Safety, the State Police who were here, well-trained, well-equipped, senior leadership. The report barely touches on anything that they did that day. And that's certainly not something that families are happy about, because they want more accountability with every agency that was here.

And we will see what the attorney general has to say here in about an hour, when he holds his press conference. The other thing here that families are waiting for is for the district attorney to make her decision whether any of these officers are going to face charges. They're happy to see this report. They're happy that there is more transparency.

But I can tell you guys that the fight is not over. We're expecting to hear from them as well later today after the attorney general speaks.

SIDNER: Shimon, could I just mention the thing that really sent shivers down my spine just now? I had not heard this before in all your reporting.

Each and everything that you have reported has been confirmed in this report. But the idea that the children could have been injured by the officers because of the way in which they were treated and taken out is just mind-blowing. What a moment for the families to have to hear that. I just cannot imagine all that they have gone through all of this, with all the loss, and then with this report, seeing their fears confirmed as well.

Shimon, thank you and your team for the great work that you have been doing on this story throughout. We really appreciate it -- John.

BERMAN: All right, with us now, seen in chief law enforcement and intelligence analyst John Miller.

John, we only got our hands on this report about an hour ago. It's not even officially released for some time. We are poring through it. What's the science now on mass shootings? And based on what we have now seen from this report, where did they fall short?

JOHN MILLER, CNN CHIEF LAW ENFORCEMENT AND INTELLIGENCE ANALYST: So, the science in the post-Columbine world on active shooter was immediate action, rapid deployment.

It was get on the scene, don't wait for the SWAT team, form a contact team. You, me, two other officers, OK, we're together, we have got a radio, we have got weapons, and push to the shooter, distract, isolate, neutralize.

And some of that happened. Many officers showed up with a large array of weapons, long guns, body armor. But this is a command-and-control issue, which is, there were officers there who were willing to go in, but there wasn't that single commander, whether it was the police chief, the schools chief, or the sheriff, who said, I'm giving the orders here and this is what to do, except telling them on multiple occasions, well, wait.

Wait, why? Because we think the shooting is stopped in these barricades. They advance towards the door, the shooting starts again, and they retreat without pushing forward again. That's why the DOJ report, which really doesn't tell us anything new, but its value is. It's not from Texas law enforcement. It's not a self-examination.

It's an independent look by a disinterested party far away, validates all of Shimon's reporting from the past year-plus about what didn't happen that day. So I think it's going to be of value to the family members.

The other problem here is going to be their expectation of accountability, because, while you have failures of leadership here in command-and-control, what you don't have is anything where somebody is going to be facing criminal charges or going to jail. It's confusion. It's delay. You could argue it's incompetence. It can be driven by fear, but none of those are a crime.

If you're the sheriff, your consequence is either you get reelected or you don't. The police chief's already gone of the school system, and their accountability is kind of out there, but outside of civil suits, I don't think we're going to see that kind of thing.

BERMAN: No, if you're one of these family members, the consequences is you lost your child, and you feel you have been mistreated ever since it happened. So there may be very little that can do now that can be done to make them feel better.

I understand from people who have gone through this report, it says there were 10, at least, stimulus events -- I guess it was over those 77 minutes -- that should have caused law enforcement to go in, but didn't. That's not one missed opportunity. That's a huge pattern.

MILLER: Right.

And that's where the leadership piece really comes in. You do have different police agencies there that are arguing, well, let's make entry, but then they're like, well, slow this down. Do we have the keys to that room? Does it turn out even to be locked? Do we have the right keys? Where's the janitor who has all the keys?

All of this is eating time, until you get to 77 minutes, when, finally, in some measure, John, actually acting against instructions, BORTAC, which is the SWAT team of the U.S. Border Patrol, which also responded to the scene as a resource, actually gets together a team and makes that entry and confronts the shooter. And the rest, as they say, is history.

[11:10:09]

But it really goes against everything, from immediate action, rapid deployment. It lacked the immediacy. It lacked the rapid, and the ICS part about who was in charge. And this is a nuance, which is, if you're in charge of the six-person school police, are you really the right incident commander, even though you're primary because it's your venue?

At what point do you say, this is going to overwhelm my agency, I'm going to cede this to the town police or to DPS? And none of that happened. So you had this tremendous resource of people on the scene ready to go and properly equipped, but not the leadership to say, here's the plan, now let's move.

BERMAN: John Miller, again, we will continue to look through this report and report on what we gleaned from it. Thank you so much for being here.

MILLER: Thanks, John.

BERMAN: Rahel.

SOLOMON: All right, John, moments ago, E. Jean Carroll finishing her second day of testimony. Last hour, Trump's lawyer is really focusing on the money that Carroll

made after she accused Donald Trump of rape and sexual assault.

Let's get right to the courthouse and CNN's Kara Scannell.

So, Kara, now that E. Jean Carroll has finished her testimony, what happens next?

KARA SCANNELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Rahel, E. Jean Carroll just finished her cross-examination.

We're taking a break right now in the trial. It's unclear if her lawyers are going to do any redirect. That is their opportunity to try to ask her anything that they want to clean up after the defense had their turn asking her questions.

Now, the defense spent most of their time focusing on this question of, how was E. Jean Carroll harmed? That's because this trial is not about the assault, but about damages that Carroll may recover from the jury. So they were focusing in on whether or not Carroll was better off since she went public with her allegations that Trump raped her in 2019.

And they brought out in her testimony that she currently makes about $100,000 a year from a Substack that she writes, along with royalties from some books. And she said when she was working at "Elle" magazine back in 2019, she made about $60,000 a year.

Now, at her peak, way back in the '90s, she said she made as much as about $400,000 a year. So they're just trying to get at this question of whether or not she is better off. They also showed her Twitter and saying that her followers went in 2017 from about 10,000 to 20,000 to today about 282,000 followers.

And part of this is to try to question that Carroll is better off here. And one of the closing questions from Alina Habba, Trump's attorney, was just that. "Your reputation in many ways is better," she asked Carroll. And Carroll replied: "No, my status was lowered. I'm partaking in this trial to bring back my old reputation and status back."

So that is where they ended the session this morning. We will be waiting to see when this break is over whether Carroll's lawyers will question her or if they will move on to call their next witness -- Rahel.

SOLOMON: All right, keep us posted what happens after the break.

Kara Scannell live outside the courthouse there.

Kara, thanks so much -- Sara.

SIDNER: Ahead, it is that time. We're just five days out from the first primary in the 2024 presidential race. But there's only one candidate campaigning across the Granite State today.

You know who it is, and you know why she's doing pretty well so far. Details ahead.

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[11:18:07]

BERMAN: A partial government shutdown coming tomorrow unless Congress takes action. So, will they?

With us now is the House minority whip, Democratic Congresswoman Katherine Clark from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

Congresswoman, thank you so much for being with us.

What is your understanding of the timing on votes to keep the government funded?

REP. KATHERINE CLARK (D-MA): Well, John, it's good to see you, and good to be back on the show.

And what we are hearing from the Senate is that their vote is imminent on the continuing resolution, which is what will be the temporary budget to prevent a shutdown.

And I can tell you that House Democrats are ready to play the role that we have had to play since the majority took over. And that is of being the adults in the room, putting the American people first, and preventing a shutdown. It's what we did in the manufactured debt ceiling crisis back in June. We did it in October. We did it in November. And we stand ready to do it today.

BERMAN: So that vote in the Senate could happen shortly, which means in the House maybe by tonight. Is this a feel-good moment, Congress fending off a government shutdown?

CLARK: There is nothing feel-good about this.

We have had this agreement in place since June, where we took a bipartisan vote coming out of the negotiations with the president and then Speaker McCarthy when the Republicans held our economy hostage over the debt ceiling. They used that hostage-taking to extort this deal.

We agreed to it. And ever since then, they have put their own internal chaos, their quest for power, their quest to turn the Capitol and the business we should be focused on here in Congress into a campaign arm for Donald Trump, instead of fulfilling this most basic requirement of having a federal budget.

[11:20:12]

And what's at stake again is another shutdown that is bad for small businesses, bad for veterans, bad for federal employees. This is such a core obligation of Congress. The fact that we are here again just speaks to the chaos and division on the other side of the aisle.

BERMAN: You just mentioned as a campaign platform for Donald Trump here. We heard yesterday from House Speaker Mike Johnson that he is consulting with Donald Trump on the issue of border negotiations.

These negotiations are largely happening in the Senate right now, but House Speaker Mike Johnson, who over the weekend reportedly said that whatever bipartisan agreement comes from the Senate is dead on arrival in the House, has said he's talking to Donald Trump about this. How do you feel about that?

CLARK: Yes, well, it's absolutely no surprise.

Donald Trump and MAGA extremism has taken over the House Republican Party. And this is what we get. We are in divided government. We need to come together in a bipartisan way to create solutions for the American people. And the border and border security is one of the most pressing issues that we are facing as a country.

So, this rejection of any kind of bipartisan coming together to meet this need, address this crisis is at odds with exactly why we're sent to Congress, to do the people's work. And national security is at the top of those responsibilities and we have seen this president, the Biden/Harris administration, coming to the table, working in a bipartisan way in the Senate to create solutions, as the president has done around the border since the first day of this presidency.

And this rejection before even seeing a deal just speaks to where the House GOP is. They are fighting amongst themselves, and they have forgotten the American people and what they are asking us to do, which is help them, help them lower the costs of health care, help them address gun violence help them secure our borders.

(CROSSTALK)

BERMAN: I do want to ask you. You were talking about what the president has done on immigration, because right here on the show just a few days ago, I heard from a Democratic member of the House, Vicente Gonzalez.

Listen to what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. VICENTE GONZALEZ (D-TX): The president needs to do a whole lot more. We need to raise credible fear standards. We do more on southern border.

BERMAN: Are you saying the administration is not getting the job done?

GONZALEZ: I don't think this administration or the past administrations have done enough on our southern border.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: So, what do you say -- what do you say to that criticism? And how far would you be willing to go in terms of changing asylum laws?

CLARK: Here's what I'm going to say, is that the administration has acknowledged, as have all House Democrats, that we have a broken immigration system.

And what we have seen also at the same time is, the administration put forward their different proposals. Let's just look at the budget at the end of last year, where the administration, working with Democrats, put forward hundreds of millions of dollars in technology to help us address and stop the flow of fentanyl that we know comes through our ports.

That's where fentanyl comes through. Not a single Republican vote. And we fast-forward to today, where the administration is in discussions about issues around asylum, around setting up the ability to process people in their home countries. They are willing to come together to address this crisis.

And what we are seeing are comments from the speaker that, if it is about bipartisanship, they are not interested. In fact, Marjorie Taylor Greene said that bipartisanship alone -- this was her quote -- would mean she would be open to moving forward with a motion to vacate. That's where they are.

BERMAN: Would you be willing personally...

CLARK: If it is about finding solutions...

BERMAN: Would you personally be willing to vote for a bipartisan agreement that raises the credible fear standard, which is what we just heard from your Democratic colleague Vicente Gonzalez?

CLARK: I think that our caucus is open to looking at all sorts of changes that we could do to increase security.

[11:25:00]

We are waiting to see text. I'm not going to get ahead of our caucus on any specific proposal. But we are here meeting with solutions. We have bipartisan bills we have put forward. We have bills that we are working on to gather support from around our caucus. We are open to ideas that promote national security.

But let's look at the situation we have, John. We have House Republicans who are saying, first, we're going to hold up funding for Ukraine, for humanitarian aid, for national security, for border security. And when the administration says, OK, I will come forward and work with you to get to a solution, they preempt that in the House and say whatever solution you come up with is going to be bipartisan, and we tap out.

That is where they are. And that is really a dangerous place, not just to put our politics, but to put the security of the American people in.

BERMAN: It's already upsetting Republicans in the Senate as well.

Congresswoman Katherine Clark from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, go, Celtics. Thanks for being with us -- Rahel.

(LAUGHTER)

CLARK: Go, Celtics.

SOLOMON: All right, John, still ahead for us: a tit for tat on the campaign trail. Donald Trump says that a vote for Nikki Haley is a vote for Joe Biden, as she calls Trump's attacks on her a temper tantrum. We're going to have the latest on the race for the White House coming up next.

Plus, millions of people have been displaced in Gaza as the humanitarian crisis there grows even worse, Secretary of State Antony Blinken saying that the suffering breaks his heart. Coming up, we will have more on this.

We will be right back.

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