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ChatGPT to Allow Erotica for Adult Users; Trump to Hold News Conference With FBI Director Patel; Feds Seize $15 Billion Crypto From Criminal Organization; Journalists Turn in Press Passes to Protest Pentagon Rules. Aired 2-2:30p ET

Aired October 15, 2025 - 14:00   ET

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

[14:00:00]

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": -- There are some concerns, Clare, about humans becoming too attached to chatbots. Our own Pam Brown did a really fascinating story about someone who had like a spiritual experience with a chatbot. Are there safeguards in place that protect users' mental and emotional health here?

CLARE DUFFY, CNN TECH REPORTER: Yeah, it's a really important question and I think especially to ask right now as all of these big platforms are competing to try to get people to spend as much time as possible on their platform. Allowing users to talk about erotica on your platform could be a good way to get more people to spend more time there. So, the company does say it has safeguards to prevent sort of going down rabbit holes, but I think the question about protecting kids is especially important.

ChatGPT has rolled out a number of kids safety features in recent months. It has new parental controls where parents can toggle on and off certain features, but it requires teens and parents opting in to link their accounts. OpenAI also says it's rolling out this age gating technology, this A.I. estimation technology where it will guess users ages. And if it thinks you're a teen, it will put you under content restrictions.

And that's supposed to roll out later this year. But we don't yet know how well that works. And so, I think that's going to be the key here as we start to see them loosen up the reins a little bit, how good are they at actually making sure kids don't access this content.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": Yeah. I foresee many future stories for you Clare Duffy, and we will welcome them as they come along. Clare, thank you so much. And a new hour of "CNN News Central" starts right now.

SANCHEZ: Months into President Trump's crime crackdown using federal law enforcement and National Guard deployments, he and FBI Director Kash Patel set to hold a news conference this afternoon. We will preview what you may hear from them.

KEILAR: Plus, details on how the Fed sees $15 billion in stolen crypto from a criminal organization that uses forced labor camps in Cambodia. And turning in their badges, journalists from major outlets, including CNN, are saying no and turning in their Pentagon press passes. We're following these major developing stories and many more, all coming in right here to "CNN News Central."

KEILAR: Exactly one hour from now, President Trump is scheduled to hold a news conference at the White House with FBI Director Kash Patel.

SANCHEZ: And CNN has learned that Patel is expected to talk about national crime statistics. This, of course, comes at a time where more than a million Americans are missing paychecks during the government shutdown now in Day 15. Of course, the fragile ceasefire in Gaza is facing hurdles as well. So the president is likely going to face all manner of questions. CNN's Alayna Treene is live for us at the White House. Alayna, we are roughly an hour now out from this event. What more are you hearing about it?

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Well, look, I'll tell you this, the White House has been pretty light on the specifics, apart from saying that there are going to walk through crime statistics. I think you can anticipate, particularly the FBI Director Kash Patel to walk through some of the things that the Trump administration has done to lower crime across American cities. They'll talk about, we're told, specifically partnerships that the FBI has engaged in with state and local law enforcement.

But I do think the most interesting part of all of this is likely going to be the question-and-answer session. Now this is being dubbed, as you mentioned, as a news conference. I should note that it's not really a news conference. They're going to be taking questions. They're expected to take questions from reporters, but it'll only be a select group of reporters, reporters who are typically assigned to covering the president today.

But that's why I think it's very interesting because this comes, as we know, a number of things are happening at the same time. One, if you think about just crime in general, we're seeing the president sending troops to different cities, mainly Democratic-led cities and states, states and governors and cities who are saying that they do not want this. So there's probably going to be a lot of questions about that and a lot of work on Patel and the president's part to try and show why they're doing that and show some of the data that comes along with it.

But it also comes as we saw the recent indictments of some of the president's political opponents, people like the former FBI Director, James Comey, also the New York Attorney General, Letitia James. Yes, that's more of a DOJ type of question. FBI falls under that though and we know that Kash Patel was involved in some of the indictments there.

And then of course, there's also one of the big questions that has really been overshadowing a lot of this administration, and that's the Epstein files. We know that Patel has been very involved in some of the discussions, particularly as it relates to the Justice Department about the memo that they put out earlier this year saying that Epstein did not -- that he died by suicide and that there are -- is no Epstein client list. Some of those questions potentially to come up. And so stay tuned for that.

Like I said, it's going to be broadly them talking about crime statistics, but the question and answer is going to be probably the most interesting part.

SANCHEZ: Alayna Treene at the White House for us, thank you so much. We're also monitoring a major case before the Supreme Court today, one that could change the balance of power in the House and potentially further erode a civil rights law that has stood for decades.

[14:05:00]

The case centers on Louisiana's congressional map and a district drawn with a black majority.

KEILAR: And based on some of the arguments, it appears the court's conservative majority may be ready to undercut the Landmark Voting Rights Act. CNN Chief Supreme Court Analyst Joan Biskupic is here on this story. And Joan, Justice Brett Kavanaugh in particular appears to be signaling where this may be going.

JOAN BISKUPIC, CNN CHIEF SUPREME COURT ANALYST: Right, and let me tell you first why we're looking at Justice Brett Kavanaugh. He cast the decisive vote two years ago in an Alabama case that was just like this Louisiana one. And even as he cast the vote, he expressed some hesitancy saying, isn't this the kind of law that maybe should have a durational limit on it? Maybe the time has come to end these kinds of voting rights protections because the country has changed so much. Let's listen to a little bit of one of his concerns.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BRETT KAVANAUGH, ASSOCIATE JUSTICE OF THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES: The issue, as you know, is that this court's cases in a variety of contexts have said that race-based remedies are permissible for a period of time, sometimes for a long period of time, decades in some cases, but that they should not be indefinite and should have an endpoint. And what exactly do you think the endpoint should be, or how would we know for the intentional use of race to create districts?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BISKUPIC: You know, the answer to that, I'm not sure if it satisfied him, but there is an answer to that. He was referring to how in school integration plans and campus affirmative action, the justices have ended those after saying there should be a limit to them. But what the lawyer from the NAACP Legal Defense Fund said as she argued the case and other -- and some of the liberal justices said is, this law, this provision of the Voting Rights Act that's hanging in the balance here is actually tied to current conditions.

So if there are current conditions in a state in which there's been discrimination in the voting and drawing these congressional and legislative districts, only then can the state -- should the state legislature come in and take account of race to remedy that. That's the whole issue here, is that there has to have been a violation of the Voting Rights Act as there was in Louisiana.

A lower court had found that that Louisiana had drawn just a single black majority district in a state that is one-third black, and that it should have drawn a second to give the black minority voters a chance to elect another preferred candidate. And what happened was a group of white voters then challenged it and said, no, that you drew a race-based district to meet that, to meet that violation. And they said, that's unconstitutional.

And in this court that -- if this court then rules that any kind of race-based remedy for a Voting Rights Act violation cannot be drawn, that would indeed gut it. But I have to say, Brianna and Boris, I don't know if they're going to go that far. I just sensed enough hesitancy that it would be such a completely new reading of the Voting Rights Act from 1965 that has made such a difference, especially in the South.

They might make it harder for states to draw these districts through the formula for when a Voting Rights Act violation is found. But I don't know if they're really ready to do what Brett Kavanaugh is suggesting there, that to put a time limit, a final time limit on a race-based remedy, when in fact there has been racial discrimination shown.

SANCHEZ: You also have to imagine that the potential wide-ranging impacts of this, nationwide, far beyond just Louisiana, has to weigh on the justice's minds.

BISKUPIC: Yeah. I think that's a really good point, Boris. And that's another thing that Justice Kavanaugh brought up. He asked about the consequences because the lawyer with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund had used the word catastrophic, saying you're just not going to get minority representation out of the south because the states will be able to fight these kinds of districts.

And so, it would have an impact definitely in elections in the South, but it will also nationwide will affect just whether -- just what kinds of increased maybe partisan gerrymandering can go on if they're not -- if there is not a race-based remedy when, as I say, a state has been found to have violated the Voting Rights Act by diluting the voting power of blacks and Hispanics with the way they've drawn districts to -- there's this -- they call it packing and cracking, packing a minority group into a single district and then spreading out, some of their members elsewhere, so that they simply don't have the same electoral power as the white residents would have.

KEILAR: Really interesting. We'll be watching this case with you. Joan Biskupic, thank you so much.

BISKUPIC: Sure.

KEILAR: And still ahead, the Justice Department is calling it the largest ever forfeiture action in its history, seizing $15 billion in crypto from a scam known as Pig Butchering. We'll explain.

[14:10:00] SANCHEZ: And new cars hitting record prices, what's causing a surge? And when will cost possibly come down. That and much more coming your way in just moments.

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SANCHEZ: Federal prosecutors have seized a whopping $15 billion worth of cryptocurrency from what they describe as a pig butchering scheme. That's where scammers gain the trust of their victims over time, usually after texting from a random number, and then lure them into investing into fake crypto assets. The Justice Department says that a Chinese-born businessman ran at least 10 forced labor camps in Cambodia as part of this scheme.

[14:15:00]

KEILAR: CNN Correspondent Kara Scannell is with us now. I mean, that is incredible, Kara. What do we know about this scheme and how it operated?

KARA SCANNELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: So much about this scheme is really incredible from the size, which the Justice Department says is the biggest seizure in its history, to exactly how this was allegedly carried out. And what authorities allege is that this businessman in Cambodia had run a legitimate business, but was really a cover for what was one of the biggest transnational or criminal organizations in the area.

According to authorities, he ran about 10 of these forced labor camps where people were threatened with physical force and actually endured physical harm. There are some images that were included in the indictment of people being -- of the injuries that people had sustained who were forced to work at these camps. And what these individuals were forced to do was to work phone banks where they would spam and reach out to a number of people, hundreds, thousands of people, and try to gain their trust, make contact with them, sustain this contact for days, weeks, or months, and then ultimately ask them or offer them an investment opportunity.

And once these people then agreed to transfer their cryptocurrency, that money was then eventually stolen. I spoke with the Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI's field office in New York, Chris Raia, and he said that these scams are everywhere.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHRISTOPHER RAIA, ASSISTANT DIRECTOR, NEW YORK FBI OFFICE: You know, it's kind of like jaywalking. There's a lot of people that are doing this. And just the sheer volume of it, we can't possibly -- we can't possibly arrest our way out of this problem, but we do take the bigger cases, the ones that where more money is lost and those are the ones we tend to focus on and kind of cut off the head of the snake, if you will, which is why it's important for our folks, even if you are a victim of one of these pig butchering scams, to report that.

(END VIDEO CLIP) SCANNELL: And he also told me that they are going to try to get money back to some of these victims, but that is a long, difficult road to try to unravel all of this and trace it. But the most important message that he wanted to convey was that for potential victims out there, people who are receiving messages from folks on social media about investments, he said, be skeptical of people that you don't know and to do your homework before making any investment decisions. Boris, Brianna?

KEILAR: Yeah. Be so careful. All right, Kara Scannell, thank you for that report. And ahead, journalists from nearly every media outlet in the country are handing in their press badges at the Pentagon, refusing to sign on to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's new policy that severely restricts press access at the Pentagon. We'll discuss the impact next.

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[14:22:00]

KEILAR: Dozens of news reporters who cover the Department of Defense gave up their press passes today in a sign of solidarity, protesting Secretary Pete Seth's restrictive covenant to cover the Pentagon. Nearly every major media outlet, including CNN, has refused to sign a mandatory pledge, vowing not to report unauthorized information even if it's unclassified, and to have all reporting approved by the Pentagon.

Let's talk about the impact here with Sabrina Singh. She's a former Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary and she's a CNN Global Affairs Commentator. OK, first off, just what are your concerns with all of these outlets turning in their Pentagon press badges? What -- explain first though --

SABRINA SINGH, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS COMMENTATOR AND FORMER DEPUTY PENTAGON PRESS SECRETARY: Yeah.

KEILAR: -- what that means in real terms for them day to day and what impacts you're concerned about.

SINGH: In terms of real terms day to day, there's no press in the building anymore, with the exception of one outlet that decided to sign that pledge.

KEILAR: OAN?

SINGH: OAN, that's correct. So that means that there's no press corp. there anymore. So if something were to happen anywhere around the world, an emergency, if the press secretary to the == the secretary wanted to turn on a press briefing, there's no press to cover that briefing if there were to be something that needed to be turned on right away. So that's one.

Two, the tangible walking around in the Pentagon of just reporters getting to meet our men and women in military, in uniform, our civilian workforce, they're gone as well. So their stories are not going to be told as well as they would be if you had press in the building. But I think three, the larger issue here is this is a real detriment to the American people. There's a lack of accountability, a lack of transparency.

Now, this is a building that's demanding a $1 trillion budget that is accountable to the taxpayer, and yet they're not going to get those stories told because the press have been booted from the building.

KEILAR: OK. You are not a fan of Pete Hegseth's policies. I just want to be -- I want to be very clear about that.

SINGH: Yeah.

KEILAR: But you have been in the position of being on the other side of the press.

SINGH: Yeah.

KEILAR: -- during the Biden administration and that, is it sometimes an adversarial -- we try for that to be a mutually respectful position, but that's an adversarial position. I'm sure there were leaks you did not like. The goal of this policy is to prevent leaks, which Hegseth is railed against. Just from that perspective, do you think it achieves that?

SINGH: No, this policy is not going to stop leaks. And I mean, this policy is essentially telling reporters to be stenographers for the department, which is not the job of a reporter or an outlet. Certainly, as you said, there were times where I disagreed with the press, where we had contentious press briefings, where we'd go back and forth on stories, but at the end of the day, the press are there to tell the American people the story of what our military is doing and hold us accountable.

And yeah, we don't like it every time. And there are moments where I disagreed with some of the reporting, but that doesn't mean that, one, you kick reporters out of the building, and two, you make them sign a pledge that they're only going to report on statements that you give them.

[14:25:00]

I mean, some of the reporting that reporters have done in that building led to accountability when it came to the Afghanistan withdrawal. Something that, of course, was a contentious in issue for the Biden administration. But everything from that to a balloon we shot down over our coast to the war in Ukraine. I mean, that comes from stories that -- from reporters in that building.

KEILAR: It come -- I would ask you this, do they have to be in that building? Because I would ask you, I have a hypothesis of something that might be kind of scary from the perspective of Pentagon, which is taking a bunch of -- and that's a good press corps.

SINGH: It's a great press corps.

KEILAR: There are a bunch of very smart reporters over there, freeing them up from not having to commute to the Pentagon.

SINGH: Yeah.

KEILAR: Not having to go through the security line, which takes some time, not having to attend briefings or be at the Pentagon all the time, so that there are some sources they may not have some time to meet with, when you free them up to do that kind of enterprise reporting, have they actually been freed up to do reporting that this Pentagon ultimately may not like because of this policy? I mean, do you see --

SINGH: Yeah.

KEILAR: -- do you see that? Because I've heard that there are like more sources coming out of the woodworks to talk to reporters.

SINGH: I think it's yes and no. I think this Pentagon is not even doing briefings right now. We don't have a regular briefing schedule from the press secretary, from the deputy press secretary. I think Pete Hegseth has only briefed a handful of times. So, we don't have that cadence, so that's already gone. Yeah, you are freeing the Pentagon reporters up to cover different stories and frankly, delve into deep sources all around the world and deepen those relationships.

But you are still missing that tangible in-person relationship. I mean, nothing really beats going in and meeting our people in the hallways and hearing their stories. I mean, these are people putting their lives on the line every single day. And to not be able to interact with them and get that one-on-one feel, that is a loss. And that's not just a loss for the department, frankly, that's a loss for the American public.

KEILAR: What do you think ultimately happens here?

SINGH: I hope that cooler heads prevail and someone says to Pete Hegseth, this is just not what we should be doing. I mean, at the end of the day, this is an administration. Donald Trump likes to host media conferences pretty much on a daily basis. I think he likes his people out there. If the military -- if Pete Hegseth is not going to engage, other people will fill it. And I think this is -- I hope someone sees that this is a real detriment.

KEILAR: Sabrina Singh, thank you so much for talking with us about it. Really appreciate it.

And coming up, the Senate will finish voting at any moment on the Republican stopgap bill to reopen the government. It is expected to fail for the ninth time. We are live from Capitol Hill, next.

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