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Police: 2 Dead, 5 Wounded in Shooting at Florida State University; Rubio: Time to "Move On" If Russia-Ukraine War Can't Be Ended; Maryland Senator Meets With Mistakenly Deported Man in El Salvador. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired April 18, 2025 - 08:00   ET

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

MOIRA WEIGEL, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, HARVARD UNIVERSITY: In the e- commerce sector, which is where I focus specifically, there's a lot more state coordination and support and planning around building out the sector. There have been various kinds of support to develop e- commerce from both the state and then big tech firms like Alibaba or Pinduoduo, which owns Temu. So I think maybe that's -- those are a few reasons why we might see what feels like a more calculated or measured response.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, Moira Weigel, Assistant Professor at Harvard University, the president's favorite college. Thank you so much for being with us this morning. Appreciate your time.

A new hour of CNN News Central starts right now.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Breaking overnight, time to move on from peace talks to bring Russia's war in Ukraine to an end. That is what the Secretary of State is saying it might be time to do. Is the U.S. about to abandon the push for peace?

And proof of life, the senator and the Maryland man mistakenly deported sitting down together in El Salvador. And we are standing by now for more detail on what the Senator learned. He's expected back in the U.S. this morning.

And the tragedy at FSU, a campus today is waking up just shattered from a mass shooting as investigators search for really the impossible answer to the question, why?

I'm Kate Bolduan with Sara Sidner and John Berman. This is CNN News Central.

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: This morning, a campus community shattered after a mass shooting at Florida State University. Police say two men were killed, five others wounded. The gunshot sent terrified students running for safety. Some use desks, as you see here, and other things to barricade themselves inside classrooms. Authorities say the suspect, a 20-year-old believed to be a current FSU student, now hospitalized after he was shot by officers. And according to Leon County Sheriff, he is the son of one of their own deputies. And they say a handgun the suspect was carrying is his mother's old service weapon. CNN's Nick Valencia is at the FSU campus in Tallahassee, the state

capital there. Nick, what have you been seeing this morning there?

NICK VALENCIA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: There's an incredibly eerie scene here, frozen in time, Sara. We just came from the backside of the Student Union, where we believe that shooting happened yesterday morning. And it was clear that people just took off running.

There's student booths that are still set up there, half-drank cups of coffee. People literally ran out of their shoes. In fact, we saw a leftover shoe just laying there on the sidewalk.

A memorial has been set up here just a couple hundred yards from where I'm at, as students are waking up this morning and processing what they went through, a lot of shock, a lot of sadness. And they will be allowed back on campus today to pick up those belongings that they left as they tried to escape the shooting.

No new details from investigators yet this morning. That gunman is not cooperating with police, invoking his Fifth Amendment right. But the big question this morning, of course, is why. What may have inspired this 20-year-old son of a Leon County Sheriff's deputy to use her personal gun, a former service weapon, in this mass shooting rampage? It was a stunning detail that was revealed yesterday at the press conference by the Sheriff's office.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SHERIFF WALTER MCNEIL, LEON COUNTY, FLORIDA: The alleged shooter was also a long-standing member of the Leon County Sheriff's Office Citizen Advisory or Youth Advisory Council. So he has been steeped in the Leon County Sheriff's Office family, engaged in a number of training programs that we have. So it's not a surprise to us that he had access to weapons.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VALENCIA: Classes are canceled for the rest of the day, and there will be a vigil held at 5 p.m. later today. Not lost on this community, Sara, is that this happened during Holy Week. In fact, I talked to Father Luke Farabaugh, who provided shelter. He turned into a first responder. There's a Catholic church just behind me here, where hundreds of students ran. He says that it was -- he saw terror on the faces of these students that he'd never seen before. He believes, though, that everyone that, you know, was thrust into a line of service yesterday, did what they could to help those affected by the tragedy.

Sara?

SIDNER: Nick Valencia, it is certainly a disturbing development there on the FSU campus. Thank you so much.

Kate?

BOLDUAN: Joining us right now to talk about where this investigation goes from here is CNN Senior Law Enforcement Analyst, former Deputy Director of the FBI, Andrew McCabe.

Andy, thank you for being in this morning. It's so sad that we're -- here we go again, right, as we've been discussing. What's the key focus right now, do you think, for investigators, at least this morning?

ANDREW MCCABE, CNN SENIOR LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Sure, Kate. So this -- this one is a little bit different than many of the mass shootings we've been reporting on over the last weeks, months, years, in the fact that the shooter, of course, is still alive. So this -- this case has got to go to a criminal prosecution. So that changes to some extent the stakes on -- on the evidence that investigators are looking for right now.

[08:05:14]

So undoubtedly, they will do some of the same things you've, you see in every case. They'll execute a search warrant at his residence where they'll try to collect everything they possibly can that could shed some light on his planning, his intent, people he may have spoken to before the attack took place, whether or not he was conspiring with anyone else. That does not seem to be the case so far. Law enforcement has said they don't think that anyone else was involved.

But nevertheless, all that evidence is essential to proving his intent, that he intended to stage this attack and to do so in a lethal matter. So we'll see that play out over the next few days. They've also spent a lot of time identifying potential witnesses, people who could testify in a trial or must testify in a trial. Those will be everyone from victims to just people who knew him, friends and associates, things like that.

BOLDUAN: One of the people who saw it play out, a witness to how it all unfolded was a junior at FSU, McKenzie Heeter. I spoke with her last night. I want to play a little bit of what she told me.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MCKENZIE HEETER, STUDENT AT FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY, WITNESSED SHOOTING: I look back and I see him waving around a larger gun, which I at first thought was a rifle, but I guess it was a shotgun. And he let off a shot kind of in our direction as we were walking away from the union. And me and my boy, there was only like a couple of us who just kind of looked at each other like, is this real? Like, what was that?

BOLDUAN: Did it appear he was -- the woman you saw shot, did it appear she was -- he was targeting her? Did that -- did you get that?

HEETER: No, when he turned to the woman and shot her, that's when I realized there was no target and that it was anybody he could see. And I took off.

BOLDUAN: Did -- I mean, did the -- did that woman even know that she was in danger, do you think?

HEETER: She was shot in her back. She was just walking and he just turned around and shot her.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: Andy, there's always a question of, when it comes to an attack like this, was it a targeted attack or not? How does McKenzie's description help get maybe towards something of an answer there?

MCCABE: Yeah, well, that was an absolutely riveting and painful interview. And, but it shows you the complexity and really the sensitivity of what investigators are trying to piece through right now. If an attack is targeted, it can affect the sort of charges that are brought against a defendant later in the prosecution.

And so these are definitely details that investigators are going to want to hear, which unfortunately requires dragging these witnesses through this unbelievable trauma again and again. And Kate, I really think like, this is an aspect of these mass shootings that we forget about too quickly. It's the lasting impact that surviving or witnessing or just being connected in any way to something like this has on all of the people involved.

Certainly the family members of people who are killed or wounded, but even witnesses and bystanders, this is something that will affect them for the rest of their lives. And this happens, you know, weekly, at least in this country.

BOLDUAN: To exactly that point, I mean, that poor girl, she said at the very end, and I've been thinking about -- how can you not think about it? She said, I just want to know how the woman in the purple scrubs is doing. And that's the woman that she saw who was shot. She's like -- I just want to know how she's doing. It was -- the poor thing was just clearly just processing through it all. That's for sure. You'd mentioned --

MCCABE: Yeah --

BOLDUAN: Yeah, go ahead, go ahead.

MCCABE: Yeah, she's never going to forget the woman in the purple scrubs. She'll be thinking about that decades and decades from now. Just one of the reasons why the FBI many years ago developed the Office of Victim and Witness Assistance, we realized in responding to these events that one of the most important things we had to do is tend to the witnesses and the victims and their families.

And so we deploy these teams of experts who go there just to do that, to help them arrange logistical things, to get them counseling, to bring -- we bring therapy dogs with us. These dogs who deploy to crisis after crisis just to help people get through this incredibly stressful moment.

BOLDUAN: Yeah, the way Chief Ramsey said last night, he's like, as you're saying, we underappreciate the tentacles of the trauma from these mass shootings and how far and how long they reach.

Andy, thank you for coming in. John?

BERMAN: All right, breaking news this morning, a threat from the United States with the major question really being a threat against whom? Secretary of State Marco Rubio says the U.S. will walk away from efforts to end Russia's war on Ukraine if progress on a peace deal is not made within days.

[08:10:16]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARCO RUBIO, SECRETARY OF STATE: The President has spent 87 days at the highest level of his government repeatedly taking efforts to bring this war to an end. We are now reaching a point where we need to decide and determine whether this is even possible or not, which is why we're engaging both sides. We need to figure out here now, within a matter of days, whether this is doable in the short term because if it's not, then I think we're just going to move on from our perspective.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: We're just going to move on. Left unsaid is whether this would also mean the U.S. would move on from aid to Ukraine. The secretary's comments come as President Trump says a minerals deal with Ukraine could be signed as early as next week. That full agreement is still being worked on, though, apparently.

Let's get right to CNN Chief National Security Correspondent Alex Marquardt in Washington. So this threat, Alex, how do you read it?

ALEX MARQUARDT, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, John, I think you're absolutely right that some clarification is needed about what the U.S. intends to do in the coming days. But it's clear from these very dramatic words from the Secretary of State that he believes that time is running out, that a deadline is fast approaching to figure out whether Russia and Ukraine can come to some kind of deal. You can hear the frustration in Rubio's voice talking about the 87 days that they've been working on this.

He says he doesn't want to keep talking about negotiations without any progress being made. That echoes the frustration that we've heard from President Trump, who has accused Russia of dragging its feet. But we also heard him talking about President Zelenskyy yesterday, saying that he's not a fan of Zelenskyy's.

But the big question now is, does this mean that the U.S. is going to abandon Ukraine, abandon the process, just walk away? Rubio talked about getting to a point soon where the President may simply say that the U.S. is done.

Here's a little bit more of what Rubio said today earlier in Paris.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) RUBIO: If it's not possible, if we're so far apart that this is not going to happen, then I think the President's probably at a point where he's going to say, well, we're done. You know, we'll do what we can on the margins. We'll be ready to help whenever you're ready to have peace. But we're not going to continue with this endeavor for weeks and months on end.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MARQUARDT: John, a framework has been presented to both sides, both the Russians and the Ukrainians, about how the U.S. sees some kind of compromise deal. So the U.S. clearly wants to get an answer to that framework. I was just speaking with a U.S. official who said that once those answers come back or don't, that's when the U.S. administration, the Trump administration, will have to make these decisions about how to proceed. Could that be more sanctions on the Russians? That is something that President Trump has talked about. Could that mean ending military aid to the Ukrainians? The U.S. has also said that they won't support Ukraine indefinitely.

So clearly getting to a very important moment where the Trump administration will be making these decisions. We do know that another round of talks is planned in London next week. Rubio indicating that the U.S. will attend those talks. Whether he goes or not remains to be seen. But clearly that impatience is reaching a very significant point. And they do want to get answers from both the Russians and the Ukrainians.

BERMAN: Yeah, although we should note the history during this two months of the administration has put much more pressure on Ukraine than Russia. So unclear if that's how we should be reading this as well. One might think, yes, based on the history, but we'll see. We'll see over the next day.

Alex Marquardt, thank you so much for your reporting on this.

All right, this morning, quote, "I love chess." The President of El Salvador really trolling on social media after an overnight meeting between a U.S. senator and the mistakenly deported man who's been in a prison there. And quote, "We are all afraid." The new message from a Senate Republican as members of the party choose between speaking out or facing retribution from President Trump.

And a judge finds Google in violation of antitrust laws. How the ruling might affect your online searches.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:18:49]

SIDNER: Breaking overnight, we are standing by to hear more details this morning about the meeting between a U.S. Senator and the Maryland man wrongfully deported to El Salvador. Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen shared this photo from last night's meeting you see there. It's the first look at Kilmar Abrego Garcia since he was sent to a notorious prison last month. The two met at a hotel in San Salvador a day after Van Hollen said he was denied entry to the prison to meet with Abrego Garcia. El Salvador's president, Bukele, posting photos of the meeting on social media, including this one, and also taking a dig at Democrats critical of Abrego Garcia's incarceration, writing, Kilmar Abrego Garcia miraculously risen from the death camps in torture, now sipping margaritas."

Abrego Garcia's wife, not thinking that's funny, issuing a statement saying the meeting answered her and her children's prayers, just to see that he was all right.

Katelyn Polantz is joining us now from Washington. Katelyn, tell us about the Senator's meeting, because the U.S. just, you know, sort of slammed the Trump administration when he was there for its refusal to follow a judge's order to make sure and facilitate that Abrego Garcia is brought back to the United States. What did the court actually say here?

[08:20:09]

KATELYN POLANTZ, CNN SENIOR CRIME AND JUSTICE REPORTER: Yeah. Well, Sara, what is supposed to be happening is that the U.S. is supposed to be facilitating the return of Abrego Garcia to the U.S. They have admitted that the Trump administration mistakenly sent him to that Salvadoran prison, and Senator Van Hollen, a judge, in the federal court in Maryland, as well as the lawyers and the family of Abrego Garcia. They are all trying to get answers as to what is being done.

And yesterday there was a -- a really searing court opinion that was written by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, one of the most conservative, longest serving members of that court, outlining that it appears that they -- the administration is doing nothing to try and facilitate the return of this man. And that the lower courts can continue to seek evidence of what is being done, what has been done so far, and how this should be moving forward now.

Now, what that court writes, it is a -- judge named J. Harvie Wilkinson, he's been on the bench since the Reagan administration. He says, "If today the executive claims the right to deport without due process, as it does with Abrego Garcia, and in disregard of court orders, what assurance will there be tomorrow that it will not deport American citizens, and then disclaim responsibility to bring them home? And what assurance shall there be that the executive will not train its broad discretionary powers upon its political enemies?"

As you can hear in this opinion, Sara, it is not just about what's being done with Abrego Garcia, it is a bigger warning to the executive branch of how American democracy will crumble if court orders aren't followed. Still, the question is being asked, what is the administration doing? Here is Donald Trump responding to a reporter yesterday who asked.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REPORTER: If a court holds you in contempt, will you take steps to return Kilmar Abrego Garcia to the United States and put him in front of a judge?

DONALD TRUMP (R), U.S. PRESIDENT: Well I'm not involved in it, I'm going to respond by saying you'll have to speak to the lawyers, the DOJ. I've heard many things about him, and we'll have to find out what the truth is.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

POLANTZ: So Trump's lawyers at the Justice Department are to be providing daily updates as well as further evidence about what is being done. We're waiting to see exactly what else they might say, but there are those warnings from the court that the American presidency just -- is not listening to what the rule of law is right now.

Sara?

SIDNER: And it is not fair to say that he is not involved in it in any way. We know that he met with the president there as well and could have made the ask. Katelyn Polantz, thank you so much, really appreciate it.

John?

BERMAN: All right, with us now, Democratic Strategist and CNN Political Commentator Maria Cardona, and Maura Gillespie, former Press Advisor to then-House Speaker John Boehner. And I want to read to you "Politico's" take on the El Salvadoran President and his social media posts on this.

Bukele, of course, made two posts on social media. "Now that he's been confirmed healthy, he gets the honor of staying in El Salvador's custody," Bukele wrote. And finally, "I love chess." That last one was approvingly retweeted by, among others, Dan Scavino and Steven Cheung, who would presumably rather be talking about this issue than say the fact that Dow Jones industrial average dropped by another 500 plus points yesterday.

Maria, what do you think about that?

MARIA CARDONA, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Look, I think, John, this is an indication that every U.S. citizen needs to be incredibly concerned about what is happening. This case is much more than just about Kilmar Abrego Garcia, which is what the administration wants everyone to focus on. It's much more than that. It is about the stripping of due freaking process, John, of U.S. citizens and of every person who is in the United States legally right now.

What this administration, frankly, this Trump regime is doing to Kilmar Abrego Garcia means that the foundational and fundamental rights and values upon which this country was founded are in jeopardy. The U.S. Constitution is being shredded as we speak by this administration. They are ignoring a court order that says that this man, and they even admitted it, deported him on error, is there in El Salvador currently illegally when this man has not been convicted of any single crime in the United States. So again, this is much more than just about this man. This is about

the rights of every single person in the United States right now, including U.S. citizens. And we have seen already that a U.S. citizen was detained in Florida under ICE. And again, this underscores just how egregious this Trump administration is treating the due process rights and the Constitution of the United States of America. And Democrats need to be underscoring that every person's rights and due process are in jeopardy right now under the Trump regime.

[08:25:17]

BERMAN: Maura, do you think that's how the White House sees it? And do you think that's how the American people writ large now see this?

MAURA GILLESPIE, FOUNDER AND PRINCIPAL, BLUESTACK STRATEGIES: The White House knows that they actually have -- this is a winning issue at large, the issue about border security, where they made the mistakes here was, one, admitting that they made a mistake and then not rectifying it when they could have. Two, obviously, you know, not following the court order. But three, Tom Homan was out there today and last night talking on this network and others about how he doesn't think a mistake was made when the White House and members of the White House have already admitted it as such.

But more than that, he said that the, you know, agreement or the conditions about not sending him back to El Salvador doesn't matter anymore because the gang that was, you know, potentially targeting him is no longer there. Well, they don't exist anymore, is what he said. Well, they don't exist because they're in the prisons where you sent him.

That is one of the biggest issues. They violated the court order of sending him back to El Salvador. And I think that if they had just followed the letter of the law and, you know, as Maria said, followed due process, yes, he may still -- if he comes back, he may still be deported, but he wouldn't be deported to El Salvador. And I think that, again, following the letter of the law is really important when you talk about law and order. And the Trump administration's kind of refusal to do so right now.

BERMAN: Maura, I want to ask you also about some comments from Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski. Technically an independent, though she votes with Republicans and is a long-time Republican before that. She says -- she acknowledges that sometimes there are those on her side of the aisle afraid to speak out. Listen.

OK, I guess we don't --

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. LISA MURKOWSKI (R-AK): We are all afraid, OK? It's quite a statement. I'm oftentimes very anxious myself about using my voice because retaliation is real. And that's not right.

(END VIDEO CLIP) BERMAN: Anxious about using her voice because retaliation is real.

Maura, I wonder if you're anxious about using your voice. How real do you think the retaliation is?

GILLESPIE: I'm not, because I think that being a Republican -- and I'm not going to just give up on being a Republican. I think that Lisa Murkowski is also in the same boat of recognizing that the party is going to exist and stand long beyond Donald Trump. But what it will look like is to be seen, because there are so many people who have sat by and been quiet and refused to stand up against him.

You're seeing, you know, Jerome Powell, who has recently just said, you know, he can't fire me. It's illegal. There are very few people in the Trump administration and Trump world who will say and stand up to him.

And that's why you see the problems that we're seeing, right? He's surrounded by yes men. And because of that, there have been so many mistakes made because every idea that he has is given this, oh, it's gold. It's great. And instead, it's not thought out and pushed back on a little bit to nuance it and finance it to make it a better idea, because some of the ideas that come out are sound. But I do think that Murkowski is saying there is what a lot of Republicans feel, and she's giving it a voice as far as being worried about the repercussions. But again, if it's your job to the line, OK, that's one thing. But I think that having a moral compass is more important.

BERMAN: Maria, very quickly, we have about 30 seconds left. The statements that we heard from Marco Rubio, the secretary of state this morning on Ukraine, saying the United States might just move on from the idea of finding peace. How do you read that?

CARDONA: I read that, John, as the one of the final moves in this administration handing Ukraine to Russia on a silver platter. Let's understand what's happening here. The administration is, frankly, negotiating in public, talking about how Ukraine needs to give up land to Russia, even before everyone has been brought to the table for a deal.

We've known from the very beginning that this administration is in bed with Putin, and what they are doing right now is indicative of that. And I think every American, again, who is for due process and democracy on a global scale needs to be very concerned about this and needs to speak up, regardless of what the repercussions are. And there are repercussions, even as we have heard from Senator Murkowski, but that cannot keep Americans from speaking up.

BERMAN: Maria Cardona, Maura Gillespie, thanks so much for coming on this morning.

Kate?

BOLDUAN: Coming up for us, President Donald Trump's attempt birthright citizenship in the United States is headed to the Supreme Court. What to expect when the justices take up this huge constitutional fight. And a battle over evidence, in the coming trial of Sean "Diddy" Combs,

his defense team is now asking the judge to block from the courtroom one of the most dramatic pieces of evidence.

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