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FEMA Pauses Some Aid in Some North Carolina Counties After Threats; Trump Continues to Spread False Claims About Disaster Aid; Sean Diddy Combs Accused of Sexually Assaulting 16-Year-Old Boy; NASA Launches Europa Clipper Mission to Jupiter's Moon. Aired 3:30-4p ET

Aired October 14, 2024 - 15:30   ET

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

[15:30:00]

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: There are some disturbing reports of threats against FEMA workers in North Carolina that are now prompting some of them to no longer go door-to-door to help survivors of Hurricane Helene. And now we're learning of an arrest.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN HOST: 44-year-old William Parsons is facing charges for allegedly threatening FEMA workers while he was armed with two weapons. Let's bring in CNN's Gabe Cohen and CNN chief media analyst Brian Stelter. So Gabe, what did this guy do to FEMA workers?

GABE COHEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: So Alisyn, the sheriff's office down there is saying that Parsons, they initially got a call about him on Saturday afternoon saying that he was outside of a gas station making threats saying he was going to harm FEMA workers who were in the area for Helene's recovery, passing out resources to people. And then just about an hour later, Parsons was located and then arrested in his car outside of a grocery store that's being used right now as a relief site where people are getting donations, people are getting food. He had a couple firearms on him, including a rifle.

And as you mentioned, he has now been charged with going armed to the terror of the public, a misdemeanor. We don't know. The sheriff's office has not said that he was there specifically at that point to harm FEMA workers, but it was enough that FEMA called back a lot of its crews. Said we do not want these response teams going door-to- door. You are only to work in secure facilities where you have security around you. And that is currently the situation right now. That's because they're worried about these threats.

SANCHEZ: Yes, and this arrest coincides with reports that came in of people, armed militias, saying that they were hunting FEMA.

COHEN: Yes, this is where it gets a little bit messy. So there was this Washington Post report yesterday that said there were concerns that National Guard troops had encountered armed militias that were -- that claimed to be out there in Western North Carolina hunting for FEMA workers.

Now, according to the sheriff's office, they say there were not these truckloads of armed militias that really, this was a game of telephone and this was Parsons that they were looking for. But again, it speaks to the heightened level of concern FEMA, these workers have been dealing with harassment, dealing with threats. And so it is -- it took very little for them to say, we are now on high alert and we do not want people just out in these communities without security and safety.

CAMEROTA: Brian, it also, of course, speaks to the deluge of disinformation and misinformation that is surrounding these hurricanes from people with huge platforms, such as former President Trump and Elon Musk of X. And I mean, I don't even want to play what Donald Trump said over the weekend because I don't want to give it more oxygen on the airwaves for people who are susceptible to it like that guy who was just arrested.

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But it's impossible for FEMA workers to be doing fact checking while trying to save lives.

BRIAN STELTER, CNN CHIEF MEDIA ANALYST: Yes, here's the way I think about it. Donald Trump and Elon Musk are at the top of the funnel of the outrageous lies. Trump has been saying for weeks that the Biden- Harris administration is failing the people in North Carolina.

His not so subtle claim is that Democrats are letting Republicans die on social media sites like X, a little bit further down the funnel. There are crazy conspiracy theories about FEMA workers trying to hurt citizens, maybe even trying to kill people.

Those crazy conspiracy theories. It is a little bit like a game of telephone, online rumors that spread and spread and spread. But the funnel is all connected. And Trump at the top of the funnel makes those conspiracy theories more believable.

We saw CBS polling over the weekend showing most Trump voters believe his lies about the federal response to the hurricanes.

SANCHEZ: So what can be done to stop the threats and to persuade folks that these federal agencies aren't out to get them?

STELTER: I grew up a mentor named David Carr, who taught me that the solution to poor journalism is more journalism. I always think about that slogan, even in this age of social media, in the disinformation age, where in a very poisoned environment, have more information, right? The government is trying in this case, for example, the FEMA administrator to get out accurate information to dispel some of the lies.

But lies and liars and lawbreakers oftentimes win in the court of public opinion. So ultimately, these cases have to fall to actual physical courts. Think about January 6th and the huge federal response trying to hold people accountable for those crimes.

Most of the accountability for those lies has been in the actual court system. I think that's why it was important to see this arrest today as well in North Carolina. It's another example of how to hold people accountable when disinformation actually leads to real world harm.

CAMEROTA: Yes, and it's also helpful when local Republicans break with Donald Trump and have to tell their community, don't listen to this. This is not true. FEMA is here to help you. And we've seen some of that.

COHEN: Yes, we heard that from Chuck Edwards, who's a congressman in Western North Carolina, a Republican who put out a fact check last week. And it was stunning reading through this fact check where he's telling people, no, the government is not manufacturing the weather. They have no plans to bulldoze your communities that have been affected here.

They have not given away all FEMA relief money to undocumented immigrants. And again, this is a Republican congressman in this area. But this is what people are hearing.

And look, there's also a major concern, not just for the safety of these FEMA employees, not just for the people who are now maybe going to have to wait longer because of issues of delays now that FEMA's work had to stop a little bit. But what about the people who are vulnerable, who are hearing these rumors, who are saying maybe I won't apply for assistance, even though they're entitled to thousands, maybe tens of thousands of dollars?

CAMEROTA: Gabe Cohen, Brian Stelzer, thank you very much for injecting some reality.

All right, this just in to CNN, music mogul Sean Diddy Combs facing a new wave of lawsuits accusing him of sexual assault, including against a 16 year old boy. Details ahead.

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CAMEROTA: Breaking news into CNN. At least six new lawsuits filed today in New York accusing Sean Diddy Combs of sexual assault against men, women and a 16-year-old boy.

SANCHEZ: CNN's Elizabeth Wagmeister is following this story for us. Elizabeth, what are the details here?

ELIZABETH WAGMEISTER, CNN ENTERTAINMENT CORRESPONDENT: Some very graphic details, Boris. And I do want to note, I have reached out to Combs' team. Have not heard back yet. But these are six brand-new lawsuits just filed today coming from Houston-based attorney Tony Busby, who I interviewed a few weeks ago.

You may remember, this was the attorney who alleged that he had at least 120 victims that were going to come forward with suits against Combs. And these are the first six of these suits that he alleged and told us that he was going to be filing.

Now, one of these lawsuits comes from a John Doe, who alleges that he was 16 years old at the time. He says that in 1998, that he was at a white party, one of Diddy's infamous parties in the Hamptons in New York. And he alleges that he was sexually assaulted by Combs there.

Now, another lawsuit coming from a Jane Doe, who alleges that she was 19 years old. She was a college student. She alleges that she was raped by Combs back in 2004 at an after-party for a photo shoot in a hotel room.

Another one of these suits, an allegation coming from 1995 from another Jane Doe, who says that she was violently attacked by Combs, who in this suit, she alleges, threw her up against a wall so that she fell and was hurt. And that is when he raped her, according to this allegation.

Now, as you said, these coming from both men and women. There are four John Does, two Jane Does in these six new lawsuits.

Again, no comment yet from Combs, but I do want to state that he has denied all wrongdoing from these civil suits that have come out. By my count, I believe that we now have 18 civil suits that are against Combs, but there is one that has been settled. That is the one that came from his ex-girlfriend, Cassie, back in November of last year.

CAMEROTA: And Elizabeth, one more thing as we read through some of these reports right now. It sounds like some of these Jane or John Does actually told people at the time of the incident. They reported it.

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WAGMEISTER: That is a common theme that is coming up in some of these lawsuits, whether that was telling employers. One of these lawsuits comes from a male John Doe who alleges that he was at a Macy's when he was allegedly sexually assaulted by Combs. And he says that he told his employer and then was fired after.

Now, in that case, we have reached out to Macy's. We have not heard back. But, Alisyn, you are correct that in these lawsuits, some of these people did say that they did make various reports, whether that was to an employer or otherwise.

SANCHEZ: Yes, significant pieces of evidence in these cases. Elizabeth Wagmeister, thanks so much for the update.

CAMEROTA: Still ahead, the new mission to one of Jupiter's moons. Will it support life? Stay with us.

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(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: 3, 2, 1, ignition. And liftoff.

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CAMEROTA: That is NASA's Europa Clipper taking off today from Florida. Its mission is to study the ice-covered ocean of its namesake, Jupiter's Europa moon, to see if it could be habitable for life as we know it.

SANCHEZ: Now this Clipper is going to travel 1.8 billion miles over the span of about five and a half years. Today's liftoff marks the largest spacecraft NASA has ever built for a planetary mission like this one.

Let's discuss with Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Rochester and the author of "The Little Book of Aliens," Adam Frank.

Adam, thanks so much for coming on with us. What are your thoughts on this launch?

ADAM FRANK, PROFESSOR OF ASTROPHYSICS, UNIVERSITY OF ROCHESTER: Super excited. You know, everybody's all excited about Mars. Mars, Mars, Mars.

But really, the really exciting place for life in the universe, or in the solar system, is these ocean-covered moons. There's a bunch of them, a bunch of moons orbiting Saturn and Jupiter that have subsurface oceans with ice or icy mud on top. And since we think water is really essential for life, these things have more water than the Earth does.

So getting a chance to study these up close is really important.

CAMEROTA: But Professor, if it's an ice-covered ocean, how is it going to be habitable for humans?

FRANK: Yes, that's interesting. Well, it's not really so much for humans that we're interested in. It's whether or not life has formed anywhere else in the universe.

So the real question here is, under that 10 miles of ice is a 100- mile-deep ocean. And is it possible that over billions of years life has formed in those oceans and perhaps there's a complex ecosystem there? You know, we don't know whether or not there's life anywhere else in the universe except on Earth.

So finding an example in our own solar system would change the course of history.

SANCHEZ: No, no question about that. Kind of a basic question, though, Adam. How do you figure out if there's life underneath all that ice? Because that's 10 miles deep.

FRANK: Yes, that's the $3 billion question, or however much this spacecraft costs. You know, what you really want to do is you want to land like a nuclear reactor and just have it melt its way through the 10-mile ice. But, you know, that's probably 100 years from now being able to do that.

So what we'll do now is we're going to orbit, you know, send this spacecraft and have it get very close as it flies around the moon, Europa. And we're going to look for cracks in the ice. And we see that.

It's like icebergs, you know, that are constantly shifting, buckling. And we think that there's water upwelling, you know, through the ice and forming new ice -- sorry, from the ocean to the top of the ice. And that may carry chemical signals of what's going on below.

So this first step is to, as the spacecraft passes, do deep spectroscopic imaging, all kinds of scientific instruments, to tell something about what's going on in the surface of the ice. And maybe that'll tell us what's going on 10 miles below.

CAMEROTA: I don't want to wait five and a half years. Do you think that it's, I mean, how possible do you think it is?

FRANK: I think it's really possible. You know, one of the most dominant theories of how life formed on Earth was deep in the oceans in what we call deep-sea thermal vents, places where magma from deep in the Earth, the heat comes up. And then all with that heat, when it reaches the ocean bottom, it comes up and you get all kinds of chemical shenanigans there, which may have started biochemistry.

So on Europa, because the gravity of Jupiter is so strong, you're constantly squishing the inside of Europa like a silly putty. So that means you have a lot of heat being generated. So you could get these deep-sea thermal vents in Europa, you know, at the bottom of that 100- mile deep ocean, and maybe the same processes happen there.

So it's really possible that life may have formed inside these, at the bottom of these oceans. And then, who knows?

SANCHEZ: Who knows what shenanigans are going on underneath Europa's 10-mile ice surface. Adam, quickly, what are some of the milestones NASA's going to be looking for as this clipper gets closer to Jupiter?

FRANK: Yes, well, I mean, you know, with a mission like this, it's so complicated that you're just going to have to, you know, test out all the equipment. There's going to be actually a couple of flybys of Mars, even come back around the Earth. You know, to get to that deep in the solar system, we end up swinging around various planets and getting energy from them to boost them to getting all the way to Jupiter.

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So each one of those orbital corrections is very important, very dangerous. You could lose the spacecraft. And then the thing about Jupiter, its environment is so dangerous. There's so much radiation, like 20,000 times more radiation than the Earth environment. So just getting the spacecraft to survive in that environment is going to be, you know, one of the major hurdles that the mission's going to have to overcome.

SANCHEZ: That is so neat. I feel like we just learned so much. Adam Frank, thank you so much for joining us.

FRANK: My pleasure. CAMEROTA: I love it because he also puts it into our language, like silly putty, for instance.

SANCHEZ: Yes, shenanigans.

CAMEROTA: I got that. Shenanigans and silly putty, I understood.

SANCHEZ: Love a good shenanigan.

CAMEROTA: That was great.

SANCHEZ: Up next, if you love Indiana Jones, you'll love this next story. Stay with us.

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SANCHEZ: If it sounds like the plot of a blockbuster action film, well, it's pretty close. A team of archaeologists have dug up previously hidden -- a hidden tomb estimated to be at least 2,000 years old in the ancient city of Petra Jordan. If that isn't cool enough, the site itself, which is below a monument carved into pink sandstone cliffs, is famously featured in the 1989 film Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

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CAMEROTA: And you want to know what they found? At least 12 human skeletons, along with artifacts made of bronze and iron. And listen to this.

One of these skeletons was found holding a ceramic chalice, resembling the Holy Grail. Yes. So it's not only like Indiana Jones, it's like Monty Python.

Monty Python is basically the reference for all of this.

SANCHEZ: No sign yet of the Knights Husseini, but we do have "THE LEAD" with Jake Tapper, which starts right now.

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