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Comey Indicted after Pressure from Trump; Hegseth Summons Top Military Officers; More Information on the ICE Facility Shooter; Rep. Jamei Raskin (D-MD) is Interviewed about the Comey Indictment; Humberto Now a Category One. Aired 9:30-10a ET

Aired September 26, 2025 - 09:30   ET

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

[09:30:00]

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: "Insufficient evidence to indict." So, that's the background here.

Tom, let me start with you.

What about the indictment itself, now that you've had a chance to see it, all of, like, a page and a half long?

TOM DUPREE, FORMER DEPUTY ASSISTANT ATTORNEY GENERAL: It didn't take me long to read the indictment. It is pretty thin soup, to be honest. It basically alleges two counts against Comey, one count of false statements, one count of obstruction. And it rests entirely on his testimony to Congress.

So, look, I think based on the indictment, there's not a lot in here that sets forth information or evidence that we didn't know before. It's possible that the Justice Department has evidence kind of in its back pocket that it's saving for trial. Although I tend to doubt it. I think that the insufficiency of the evidence is what prompted the career prosecutors in that office to recommend against an indictment, saying, look, we don't think we have enough evidence against Comey to support a finding of probable cause by the grand jury, let enough to prove our case beyond a reasonable doubt to a jury.

BERMAN: Yes, they didn't want to do -- go for the indictment because we think they didn't think they could prove it in court.

But again, Sarah, how would they, again, just on this case, insofar as we understand the parameters of it, how could they prove that in a federal court to a jury?

SARAH KRISSOFF, FORMER ASSISTANT U.S. ATTORNEY, SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK: Yes, this is going to be a difficult pill for them to climb. And I think a lot of people recognized that before this case was brought. I mean, this is, I think, going to be a he said/he said situation. Those are very difficult cases to prove to a jury, to -- which has to be unanimous in its decision. And so, Comey is going to fight this all the way through. You know, he's already started fighting from the moment that indictment was brought. And he will fight this as long as he has to. BERMAN: Sarah, and quickly, what does it say that apparently the grand

jury decided not to indict on a separate count? How unusual is that for grand juries to say, not this one, but maybe these?

KRISSOFF: Yes, I mean, we have this paperwork from the court that shows that the grand jury declined to bring charges on one -- in one count, and then they agreed on the other count. So -- but I think the -- the -- all of this paperwork, the indictment itself, and that -- what to be -- what it call a no true bill from the jury on count one shows that this was just incredibly hasty, right? It shows real errors in the process here. And the -- the former FBI director is going to exploit those, right? He's going to -- he has a hard time challenging this case on sufficiency of evidence, tell the time of trial, but he has a lot of process complaints he will likely bring very quickly to the judge handling the matter.

BERMAN: And on that point, I just want to make clear, I just wanted to touch briefly on the actual case itself, which is why I set up with that "New York Times" quote exactly the background here. And the background, in the end, is -- is very, very important. And also, Tom, maybe legally significant. Everything the president has said on social media and out loud before the indictment, and the things he's just written about the indictment now, what impact could they have on this case?

DUPREE: Well, the president's public comments are going to color both the jury's perception of this case and the federal judge's perception of this case. Look, jurors and federal judges don't operate in a vacuum. They read the newspapers. They watch TV. They will be well aware of the history that brought us to this point in time. And I think the consequence is that it will cause them maybe to look at the evidence through a slightly more skeptical lens than they otherwise look, because they may say, this indictment was brought, not because the prosecutors felt there was sufficient evidence, but because the president demanded that this case be brought. That will color the jury's perceptions and the judge's perceptions of this entire proceeding.

BERMAN: And it may provide a case for selective prosecution. We'll see.

Tom Dupree, Sarah Krisoff, our thanks to both of you. Appreciate it.

Kate.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: One official quipping, "its being referred to as the general squid games. The mystery meeting, the hundreds of military officers being called to Virginia to be face to face with the defense secretary. None of them told what it's all about.

We'll be back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:38:08] SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: This morning, CNN learning new details about a rare and urgent meeting called by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. He's ordered hundreds of U.S. generals, admirals and senior military officers stationed around the world to meet in Virginia next Tuesday.

CNN's Natasha Bertrand joining us now.

Is there any clue here as to what this meeting might be about? Because, clearly, some of these generals very concerned that something negative is going to happen in this case.

NATASHA BERTRAND, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Sara. So, the most kind of information we've gotten on this mystery meeting came from President Trump yesterday when he was asked about this meeting, he kind of downplayed it. He said, isn't it wonderful that all of these generals and admirals are coming from all over the world to meet with Secretary Hegseth. And he gave a little bit more information about what that could possibly entail, including potentially looking at some new military equipment.

Here's what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: It's good -- you act like this is a bad thing. Isn't it nice that people are coming from all over the world to be with us? They're going to be talking about the newest weapons, et cetera, et cetera. But I think it's great when generals and top people want to come to the United States to be with our now called secretary of war.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERTRAND: Now, the question, of course, is why this meeting is so urgent that it had to be called at such short notice, and with virtually no information at all provided to these generals and admirals around the world about just why they're being summoned to Virginia, to Quantico military base there on Tuesday.

And, of course, it's raised a lot of concerns among these officers about just what's going to happen. Is there going to be some kind of test of their loyalty, for example, given that Secretary of Defense Hegseth has previously expressed a lot of disdain for many of these officers, many -- the general and flag officers in the military, saying that they are the ones who are responsible, in large part, for the politicization, in his words, of the military.

[09:40:11]

He is also called for a 20 percent reduction across the board of general and flag officers. And he has already fired a large swathe of generals and admirals since coming into office as secretary of defense. So, these officers are coming to this meeting knowing that they don't necessarily have a fan in Secretary Hegseth. And that's why you have some of them quipping that this is likely to be a general Squid games, referring there to the possibility that we could see some firings come out of this.

But all of this is just speculation. But it really underscores the anxiety they're feeling about this unprecedented meeting and why they need to be there in person at such short notice, not to mention, of course, a lot of the security risks that might come with such a gathering of high-level military officials in one place.

Sara.

SIDNER: All right, a lot of questions there. Natasha Bertrand, I know you'll be following it all. Thank you so much.

Kate.

BOLDUAN: This morning there's new information coming in about the deadly shooting at that ICE facility in Dallas, Texas. Investigators say that the gunman left behind a handwritten -- handwritten notes revealing his hatred for the federal government and hinting that ICE staff were his targets.

CNN's Ed Lavandera is live in Dallas with this latest reporting.

Ed, tell us more about what you're picking up.

ED LAVANDERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Kate. Good morning. Well, federal investigators say they are convinced that even though it was three immigrant detainees that were wounded, one killed in this attack, that it was actually ICE agents and ICE employees who were the intended targets. Investigators say the entire building of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office here in Dallas was riddled with bullets. And they say also, as they searched several properties connected to the 29-year-old gunman, Joshua Jahn, that they discovered handwritten notes where the gunman expressed a deep hatred for the federal government. Also talked about ICE agents as collecting, quote, "a dirty paycheck." And also wrote about wanting to instill fear and terror among the ICE agents out in the field, always wondering if there might be a sniper lurking around to inflict harm on them.

And because of that, and federal investigators are convinced that this was a -- an intended attack and a targeting attack of ICE agents and they say simply designed to inflict terror on them.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOSEPH ROTHROCK, FBI DALLAS SPECIAL AGENT IN CHARGE: The clearest indication of motivation are his own words. He wanted to cause terror. He wanted to -- he wanted to harm ICE personnel.

NANCY E. LARSON, ACTING U.S. ATTORNEY FOR THE NORTHERN DISTRICT OF TEXAS: The tragic irony for his evil plot here is that it was a day -- a detainee who was killed and two other detainees that were injured when he fired into the sally port.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LAVANDERA: And we should also point out that as much as we've now kind of learned about the -- perhaps motivation -- the motivation and the gunman itself, we've actually learned very little about who the victims are in this, other than it appears that one of the victims is a Mexican national. The identities and the names of those -- those shooting victims have not been released yet. But as we mentioned, one of the Mexican -- immigrant detainees was killed and two others are wounded and remain in serious condition. And we're just still waiting to get more information on them as well.

Kate.

BOLDUAN: Absolutely.

Ed, thank you so much for your reporting on this.

John.

BERMAN: All right, we got one heck of a meteorological cocktail in the Atlantic. One hurricane over there. One storm over there that could soon be a hurricane. These things are set to collide, maybe. And some of the possible outcomes, dangerous for millions of people.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:48:29]

BOLDUAN: This morning, who might be next? That is the question many are asking after James Comey, the former FBI director, was just federally indicted. And that is after President Trump had put very public pressure on the Justice Department and the attorney general to go after and prosecute people he considers to be political enemies.

Comey is now facing two counts, making a false statement and obstructing a congressional proceeding. It stems from testimony that he gave involving leaks to the media back in 2020.

Now, Comey has since responded to the indictment, saying that he is innocent and saying this quote, "let's have a trial."

Joining me right now, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, Democratic Congressman Jamie Raskin of Maryland.

Thank you so much for being here, Congressman.

Yesterday, I saw that you called this move an outrage and a scandal. This morning, the president is weighing in further, saying there's no way Comey's going to be able to explain his way out of this one, saying that he's left himself, quote, "zero margin of error," and he's complaining about the judge assigned to this case.

I'm wondering if you think the outrage, in your view, is that James Comey was indicted, or how this all came about.

REP. JAMIE RASKIN (D-MD): Well, both of them clearly -- look, we're still waiting for the Epstein files to be released. We have a strong bipartisan majority in Congress waiting for the Epstein file. We also are trying to get a hold of the Tom Homan tape, the videotape and audiotape of him allegedly taking $50,000 in a kava (ph) bag.

Meantime, Donald Trump dismissed. through Pam Bondi, his own U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, whom he had appointed to the job.

[09:50:09]

A Republican -- a well-respected Republican U.S. attorney, who found that there was not sufficient evidence to bring precisely this prosecution.

So, they sacked him. They replaced him with a lawyer who had never been a prosecutor one day in her life. And a couple days later, she brings the very prosecution that the prior U.S. attorney said was unjustified and unwarranted.

So, the process is egregious. It will jump out to any judge or any jury that looks at it as clearly a case of vindictive and selective prosecution. So, it's very hard to contemplate, in the United States of America, a former FBI director being convicted after such a completely contaminated process.

BOLDUAN: I also just saw that you've now sent a letter to the attorney general, Pam Bondi, demanding documents and communication regarding what happened with that acting U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia, Eric Siebert. He resigned under pressure and then was replaced by the attorney you're talking about, Lindsey Halligan.

What are you looking for in this request from Pam Bondi -- to Pam Bondi?

RASKIN: Well, we want the back room correspondence, which essentially backs up what everybody was able to see in public, which is, President Trump had appointed Eric Siebert, who was recommended by the Republican governor of Virginia, endorsed by the Democratic senators from Virginia, a well-respected prosecutor. And he got sacked. And it very clearly was because he refused to issue this indictment. That is not how justice works -- works or has worked in the United States of America. There's always been a separation between the political function of the White House and the president, and then the independent law enforcement function of the United States Department of Justice and the U.S. attorneys that operate under it. And suddenly the president essentially commanded one of his prosecutors to bring an indictment. And Mr. Siebert investigated it. Did a full vetting of the situation and said there simply wasn't sufficient evidence to bring a criminal indictment against the former FBI director. And then he got sacked. He got terminated.

And what do you know? He's replaced with a U.S. attorney who had no prosecutorial experience in a field where people wait decades to become a U.S. attorney. And she brought the prosecution overnight. So, I think it's going to be very tough to get past a judge on those preliminary threshold procedural objections in court, much less past a jury, if it is alerted to the background to the case.

BOLDUAN: Let me ask you on Comey specifically. Republican Senator Chuck Grassley, he put out a statement. And unlike other Republicans, he did not attack Comey personally. Instead, he said this in part. He said, "if the facts and the evidence support the finding that Comey lied to Congress and obstructed our work, he ought to be held accountable." If that pans out, do you agree with the senator?

RASKIN: Well, of course. Absolutely. I mean this is why we are looking for all of the evidence in the Epstein files, which had been promised to us by President Trump and by Pam Bondi and by Kash Patel. This is why we want the videotape and audiotape turned over of an apparent attempt to set up a bribery scheme where, you know, the -- now the czar for immigration and border issues apparently was selling prospective government contracts to people. And the FBI happened upon that completely accidentally where either they overheard somebody talking about it in another investigation, or somebody came forward from another investigation.

But in any event, apparently they've got him on videotape and audiotape. We want to see that because the Department of Justice has dismissed what sounds like a very serious crime by a member of the administration.

BOLDUAN: But, Congressman, can I -- wait, I just wanted to ask you really quickly -- I want to ask you really quickly. When I was asking you about -- about James Comey, you've now -- you've twice now brought up the Epstein files and the -- and Tom Homan. Why?

RASKIN: Oh, because the Department of Justice is in full cover up mode. And just like they're doing the bidding of President Trump with respect to Mr. Comey, they're doing the bidding of President Trump with respect to covering up cases.

I mean, the administration started off by having Trump basically force out the U.S. attorney for New York, another Republican, Danielle Sassoon, because she wouldn't quash a grand jury indictment against Mayor Adams because he had become, you know, a political friend of Donald Trump's.

So, what we see is the complete politicization of the Department of Justice.

[09:55:04]

But we're in the midst of trying to get this information with apparently real crimes. And we've got a strong, bipartisan majority saying, stop the coverup of the Epstein files. Just go ahead and release them.

BOLDUAN: Congressman Jamie Raskin, thank you for coming in this morning.

Sara.

SIDNER: All right, thank you, Kate.

Outrage after a confrontation between a federal agent and a woman goes viral online. A warning, it is disturbing. A woman and a girl were seen clinging to a man, reportedly the woman's husband. This all happened at the ICE district office in an immigration courthouse in lower Manhattan. After separating, you see there, the man, woman and girl, agents lead the man away, and an agent eventually grabs the woman. Another leads the girl away. And the woman is taken into a nearby room. And then agents shut the door. The video cuts and resumes to show an agent grabbing the woman and then pushing her into a wall before they fall to the ground, and he falls on top of her. There's a lot of screaming there. You can hear the person they believe is her daughter just yelling. Several congressional Democrats are now calling on the Department of Homeland Security to discipline the agent that did this right there. The city comptroller says the agent did not identify themselves, did not present a warrant, and did not give any lawful grounds for detaining that man.

All right, Amazon will have to pay an historic two and a half billion dollar settlement. The Federal Trade Commission says Amazon tricked customers into signing up for a Prime account, then making it exceedingly tough to cancel. Affected customers could get up to $51 apiece in refunds, and Amazon will have to have some easy ways to cancel Prime subscriptions.

Now, you may be downing a cold brew while watching our show -- I hope not -- and doom scrolling on your phone before heading off to your job to do some serious adulting. Those are just some of the more than 5,000 words and phrases Merriam-Webster has added to the newest edition --

BOLDUAN: (INAUDIBLE).

SIDNER: Kate says that's her morning. She's been drinking brewskis all day. This dictionary -- these words were added to the dictionary. Also added, let's see if you know these definitions. If you have kids, you probably do, especially if you have sort of younger kids. Rizz, a person's romantic appeal or charm, beast mode, an extremely aggressive or energetic style of manner that someone adopts temporarily to overpower an opponent in a fight or competition, and dad bod. That one might be self-explanatory, but I'll read it for you here. A physique regarded as typical of an average father, especially one that is slightly chubby and not extremely muscular. So unfair, because look at our John Berman.

BERMAN: I am much more familiar with rizz than I am with dad bod. Let's just say that.

SIDNER: All righty then.

BOLDUAN: Oh, really.

BERMAN: I'm just saying, people have said. Some people say.

All right, breaking overnight, Humberto is now a category one hurricane in the Atlantic. But I got to say, that's not even the biggest thing cooking out there. There's a whole lot going on. Let's get to CNN's Allison Chinchar tracking all of it.

And this time it is really all of it. ALLISON CHINCHAR, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Yes. Yes. Now, we take a look at both of these. Obviously, this one looks like the much more organized system, but it's actually the more disorganized system that's the one we're keeping a closer eye on. And that's because of an anticipation of it further developing as we go through the next 48 to 72 hours.

Now, here's a look at the two storms. We've got this high pressure system here and a very deep trough with the front that's impacting much of the United States. What that means is, it's going to provide a very narrow corridor for not one but both of the storms to slide up through. This means they're going to get very, very close together. And when they do, you end up getting something called the Fujiwhara effect, where they could end up influencing each other as they make their way through that narrow channel.

Now, normally, if they are both of equal status, equal strength, size, all of those things, they really just kind of interact around each other and then go their separate ways. But if one of them is larger or stronger, it can end up influencing the smaller, weaker one. Perhaps even pulling it closer to it, sliding it one way or another. It has an impact.

And so, this is one of the concerns we have going forward with our forecast because of the interaction between these two, Humberto and potentially even what could become Imelda.

Now, here's a look at the forecast. The vary -- the models vary greatly on this. The American model is not really feeling the Fujiwhara. It basically has them go up together. One makes landfall. The other goes its separate way. And we have an entirely independent situation here between the two storms.

The European model, however, is looking more into the Fujiwara, in that as the storms kind of slide up, you'll see future Imelda starts to make landfall. But then Humberto, being the stronger one, starts to pull it back out to sea. Again, there's a lot of inconsistency here with the models, so we really don't know exactly what's going to happen over the next few days. But one thing is for certain, there is definitely going to be a lot of water along the coast over the next several days.

BERMAN: I got to say, it's so interesting to look at all that and think about