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Officials Say, 14-Year-Old to be Charged With Murder, Tried as an Adult; First Trump Election Interference Hearing After Immunity Ruling; Trump and Harris' Stark Divide on Tax Plans. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired September 05, 2024 - 07:00   ET

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

[07:00:00]

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: This morning, a small Georgia community devastated by a deadly school shooting. We are learning new details about the 14-year-old suspect. Police say he will be charged as an adult with murder.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right. Later this morning, a key hearing in the federal election subversion case against Donald Trump, the first since the Supreme Court ruled he had broad immunity. We are poised to hear major decisions on how this case moves forward.

And did Pope Francis just have his own childless cat ladies moment?

Kate Bolduan is out. I'm John Berman with Sara Sidner. This is a show so packed we can't possibly sit down, CNN News Central.

SIDNER: This morning, new details in the Georgia High School shooting that killed two students and two teachers. There are new questions about possible missed warning signs, and we're standing by for the 14- year-old suspect's first court appearance. The alleged gunman is expected to face murder charges as an adult.

Officials are now revealing he was questioned about online threats to shoot up a school just last year. Police are trying to learn how he was able to get an AR-15-style rifle and why he turned it on his classmates. This morning, those classmates are describing the terror and the panic they felt as they hid and ran for safety at school.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LAILA FOHRMAN, STUDENT AT APALACHEE HIGH SCHOOL: I was scared I was going to die, to be honest. And when I heard hard lockdown, I knew it wasn't a drill.

KAYLEE ABNER, STUDENT AT APALACHEE HIGH SCHOOL: I just kept my feet up and I prayed and I closed my eyes and I tried to stay calm, and I was shaking, I was worried that they would hear me. Then I hear the gunshots, and everyone ducks behind the desk, and the teacher is like flipping tables and stuff and barricading the door. So, I was just scared out of my mind.

NICHOLAS CRISWELL, STUDENT AT APALACHEE HIGH SCHOOL: I did not personally know anybody that was hurt, but, we were sitting at the how about the field up there, one of, one of my cadets was going through it, and we found out his friend was killed, sadly.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SIDNER: It is such a sickening tragedy. A school has just started and here we are with a school shooting. Here are the 14-year-olds being remembered today and the two teachers, four heartbroken families as grief engulfs another American community. We will share more with you about the victim's lives.

But, first, CNN's Nick Valencia is live at the school just about an hour outside of Atlanta. What are some of the new details that you have been learning in this case?

NICK VALENCIA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, chilling details this morning, Sara, and a really heavy atmosphere around the school. The alleged gunman identified as 14-year-old Colt Gray, a student at Apalachee High School, somebody who was familiar to law enforcement. We will have more on that in just a moment. But we're also learning about the caliber style of weapon that was used, an AR-15.

The community, though, really focused on the victims and trying to huddle around the families that were impacted by this late last night, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, releasing the names of those victims, two of them students, just 14-years-old. One of them identified as Mason Schermerhorn, the other classmate, Christian Angulo, two of them teachers, those adults, one of them a 53-year-old math teacher, Christina Irimie, and the other Richard Aspinwall, who also was a coach on the football team, a defensive coordinator. The 39-year-old was a teacher here. He was beloved. And, in fact, we interviewed a student of his who described him as just being a really sweet person.

Among the other victims, though, that were injured nine all together, eight of them students, one of them an adult. And yesterday we're bringing you details of that adult who we know that was shot in the stomach, was in surgery yesterday during the hours that I was reporting, still waiting on an update on their condition. But we are getting new information from the students here who were eyewitnesses.

And it was yesterday my colleague, Isabel Rosales, caught up with one of the students here impacted by the tragedy.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LYELA SAYARATH, SAT NEXT TO ALLEGED SHOOTER IN CLASS: I just remembered like the moment that it happened. He was at the door and they, I knew they were looking for him already, but he was at the door and they almost let him in until they backed up and then he turned away, and that's when you hear like the first rounds of fire.

ISABEL ROSALES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: So, he was in class with you in algebra class, he left, then he came back, was at the door, and then knocking to be let back in.

[07:05:01]

Why? You told me something about the doors.

SAYARATH: Yes, they lock automatically, so you have to be let in to come back into our classroom. So, I think he wanted to come to us first.

ROSALES: Come to you first to shoot?

SAYARATH: Yes, to shoot us.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VALENCIA: The big questions this morning, where is Gray? When will he be seen next? When will his first court appearance? And will he be facing charges as an adult? Sara?

SIDNER: All right, Nick Valencia. Thank you so much. A lot of people don't remember those who have been shot, not just killed. There is so much tragedy there in that community, John.

BERMAN: All right. CNN Chief Law Enforcement and Intelligence Analyst John Miller is with us now. Nick just alluded to this, John, but the shooter was on the radar of law enforcement, federal law enforcement in 2023 when the FBI picked up on some kind of a message board, then relayed it down to local authorities. What more could have been done there?

JOHN MILLER, CNN CHIEF LAW ENFORCEMENT AND INTELLIGENCE ANALYST: I'm not sure anything more could have been done. When you look at the system and ask, well, did the system work, tips came in from the public, that's people on the internet who saw this threat to shoot up a school coming from a handle on a gaming website.

They then sent that to an FBI threat line that you can reach online, which goes to the NTOC, the National Threat Operations Center. They then take those tips and they run it down. Where's this IP address where this threat came from? Who's the subscriber? Does it have a physical address?

They then forward that to Jackson County Sheriff in Georgia. And Jackson County does not drop the ball. They send investigators out. They go to the house. They ask, you know, is there somebody here that uses that computer? Yes, we have a son. Are there guns in the house? Yes, there are, but they're locked away and he doesn't have access to them. They question a 13-year-old boy, who turns out to be our shooter a year later, and he says, that wasn't me. You know, somebody else must have done that threat to make it look like me.

So, they end up closing the case because it's not arrestable. It's probably not prosecutable. He's 13 years old. They even notified the local school district. But when they move from Jackson County to Barrow County, that information we don't know whether that followed the Jackson County School to the Barrow County School. It's unlikely, but at that point, instead of looking at authorities who checked all the boxes, you really have to shift that look to where was the concern in that home? What was the level of that concern by the parents? How did they engage that child about that threat? And obviously if that gun came from the house, there's another issue there.

BERMAN: We also were talking about the idea that this young man was a loner, right? Let's listen to what one of his classmates said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SAYARATH: Nothing too off. He was just another quiet kid that didn't really speak too much.

ERIN BURNETT, CNN ANCHOR: And I know you've been in school here for a few weeks. Has -- you've been sitting next to him all the way through? Did anything -- anything different today about him?

SAYARATH: No, he wasn't here when I first, like when school first started. I think he transferred in. But nothing really seemed too off about him.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MILLER: So, what does that tell us? I mean, the idea that he's a loner, that he didn't really talk to other kids, he's also new in the school. So, that could be perfectly normal. Or it could be a sign that he is feeling ostracized, that he is feeling as an outsider. We find that as a common theme in some of these young people involved in school shootings. And it has become a part of the school doctrine to kind of look for these signs if there are concerns to report them.

Even the school had that electronic system that they installed a week ago. I think it's called Syngenix (ph), where they press one button. The entire school goes on alert that there's an emergency or an active shooter. It goes into lockdown. This technology goes then right to the police, to the front office. Police can see on their devices where people are in the school floor plans, maps.

There's another company that came after the Fort Lauderdale shooting by an entrepreneur named Gino Roefaro, who set up SaferWatch. It does all that, but it also has an anonymous tip function where if someone has concerns about someone who may hurt people or may be contemplating self-harm, that you can report that. So, this technology is catching up to some of our human failings in this area.

BERMAN: All right. John Miller, thank you so much. Keep us posted throughout the morning. Sara?

SIDNER: In just a few hours, Donald Trump's legal team will be in front of a federal judge for the first time since the DOJ revised his indictment.

[07:10:05]

We have reporting on their new defense strategy. Also, this morning, Donald Trump hedging his bets ahead of the debate against Vice President Harris, making baseless claims that the moderators will not be fair. We've heard this one before. Also, a U.S. service member is being detained in Venezuela. New reporting on why he was there.

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[07:15:00]

SIDNER: In just a few hours, federal judge Tanya Chutkan holds her first hearing in Donald Trump's election interference case since the Supreme Court ruled Trump has broad immunity for official acts that he took as president. Special Counsel Jack Smith and his team revised their case and added new details in a superseding indictment, getting rid of some of the old details. Now, Judge Chutkan must decide where the case goes from here with the November election now just 60 days away.

CNN's Katelyn Polantz is outside the federal district court in Washington, where you basically have a home. You are always there with all that goes on in these cases. What are we expecting to see today in this case?

KATELYN POLANTZ, CNN SENIOR CRIME AND JUSTICE REPORTER: Well, Sara, we haven't been in this courthouse in this case before Judge Tanya Chutkan since last October. So, it's been almost a year since she made a bunch of rulings to move things toward trial and then the Supreme Court paused everything to decide upon presidential immunity in this case and has given Donald Trump some level of protection because he served as president.

And so what we're watching for today is how Judge Chutkan on the bench, speaking to the lawyers for Donald Trump and the prosecutors from the special counsel's office, how she indicates she wants to handle things. They're making asks on both sides. Basically, Trump's team wants to pause everything until after the election, or they just want to be able to dig into some meaty legal questions first. They want to be able to control what happens, what each briefing schedule and what steps are taken. They want to challenge the special counsel's office. They want to make their arguments first to try and dismiss the whole case.

And then the Justice Department, they are going to argue that they should be going first, that the thing to resolve here is what happens in this case, in the way the indictment is written now. Let's get to the meat of the allegations and talk about whether there's immunity around using Mike Pence in this case as the vice president, around you using text messages, speech that Donald Trump was making after the election. So, the Justice Department, they're not putting any time stamps on what exactly they want, but they're saying, hey, we're ready to go as soon as you are, Judge. We can start filing things, including facts and evidence in this case, put them into the record.

So, we're waiting to see if Judge Chutkan wants to do that, which side she goes with, and how quickly she wants filings to come in, what's next, what's the plan. That is all to be decided by the trial judge in this case. Sara? SIDNER: In the meantime, we are taking ever closer to the election, which is going to be one of the things that Trump argues this should not go anywhere until after the election happens.

Katelyn Polantz, thank you so much. I appreciate your reporting on this.

All right, ahead, former President Trump set to talk about his economic policies today, but there is one proposal in particular that scares economists the most. We will talk about that.

And a beluga whale who some claim to be a Russian spy is dead. Why animal rights groups are calling this an assassination.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:20:00]

BERMAN: All right. Donald Trump is set to talk to the Economic Club here in New York today. Overnight, he touted the tax cuts passed during his administration, also found a way to attack Vice President Harris.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT, 2024 PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: If you let the Trump tax cuts expire, which she wants to do, she wants to terminate them, if you do that, you will suffer the biggest tax increase in history.

This country will end up in a depression if she becomes president, like 1929. This will be a 1929 depression.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: All right. CNN's Matt Egan is here. What actually has a lot of analysts concerned, Matt, Donald Trump's economic plan and the huge reliance on tariffs.

MATT EGAN, CNN REPORTER: Yes, that's right, John. I mean, he's got a lot of bold campaign promises on the economy, but, hands down, it's really his trade policy that is alarming to most of the mainstream economists that I've talked to. Remember, he waged this massive trade war during his first term. And he's basically calling for tripling down on tariffs. He wants a 10 to 20 percent tariff on all $3 trillion of U.S. imports and up to 60 percent tariff on all imports from China, right? That is massive.

In theory, these tariffs, they could be used to raise some revenue to pay for his also massive tax cuts. They could also be used as a way to try to punish China for trade tactics that Republicans and Democrats say are hurting working class Americans. But in reality, a lot of economists I've talk to, they're worried that all this is going to backfire, right? It's going to raise costs on families and on businesses. It's going to cause a global trade war, and it's going to kill some jobs. JPMorgan's David Kelly, he told me this is a really bad idea. He described it as, quote, magical economic proposals that can actually cause inflation and put you in a recession at the same time. Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former adviser to John McCain, George H.W. Bush, he told me this is quote, terrible economic policy.

The concern is that all of us are going to be paying the price. There's this new research from Peterson Institute and they find that Trump's tariffs, they would cost the typical middle class family $2,600 a year. And that does not even account for the almost definite retaliation you're going to get from other countries because they're obviously not going to take this lying down.

Now, the Trump campaign responded by saying that Trump imposed tariffs on China and he was able to cut taxes and he would do it again, creating millions of jobs.

[07:25:00]

But the campaign spokesman said, so-called economists and experts doubted Trump's economic plans in the first term. They were proven wrong then and they'll be proven wrong again. We'll see.

BERMAN: And, Matt, quickly, what's interesting, Vice President Harris had a speech in New Hampshire yesterday. She split from President Biden on the issue of capital gains.

EGAN: She did. It was sort of an obscure choice of policy to decide to break with her boss, but she did. 28 percent tax on long-term capital gains is what Harris is calling for. Listen to what she said in New Hampshire yesterday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KAMALA HARRIS, U.S. VICE PRESIDENT, DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: If you earn a million dollars a year or more, the tax rate on your long-term capital gains will be 28 percent under my plan, because we know when the government encourages investment, it leads to broad based economic growth.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

EGAN: John, this is a break from her boss and notably, it's not a break to the left. It's a break towards the middle. President Biden, he wants to lift the top rate on capital gains from nearly 24 percent today to almost 40 percent. Harris is proposing a hike, but a more modest one. So, perhaps this is a way for her to show that she's her own person and she's not the radical liberal that she's painted us.

BERMAN: Interesting positioning right there. Matt Egan, always great to see you, thank you very much. Sara?

SIDNER: All right. I had new details this morning about a previous investigation into the teenage suspect in that awful Georgia school shooting over online threats he made last year, according to authorities. Former Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney announcing she will vote for Kamala Harris in November and she's urging swing state voters to do the same.

Those stories and more ahead.

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