Return to Transcripts main page

CNN News Central

Interview with Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY): George Santos Now Free, Trump Denies Ukraine Tomahawks, Calls on Both Sides to Stop War; Amazon, Services Restored After Global Internet Outage; Top U.S. Nuclear Weapons Agency to Furlough Staff Starting Today. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired October 20, 2025 - 08:00   ET

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

[08:00:00]

JOEY JACKSON, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: So you're going to hear a lot of questioning of the jurors. You'll hear them, hey, I saw it. I think this.

I think the other. OK, ma'am, Miss Jones, I know you heard it. I know you saw it.

Can you leave that aside and base it upon what you hear in the courtroom? If I, as a prosecutor, established that the officer's actions were unreasonable, what would you do?

Defense. If I established that the officer was in immediate fear, what say you? And so that is what's going to happen when they select the jury. It'll be a challenge, but I think they can get jurors and panel and get the show on the road.

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: All right, Joey Jackson, we will see, and I'm sure we will have you back. This case made a lot of headlines, and the family is really, really devastated. Thank you so much.

A new hour of CNN NEWS CENTRAL starts right now.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: So the breaking news. A massive outage breaks the internet overnight. Some of the world's largest websites, apps, gaming platforms offline.

What Amazon is saying about the root cause that they have now pinpointed and the fix.

And a wild jewelry heist at one of the most famous museums in the world. Now an urgent manhunt is unfolding in Europe to find who did this and what they've done with the crown jewels.

Plus, President Trump has a new threat for another country, now targeting Colombia, with cutting aid and adding new tariffs after Colombia's leader accused Donald Trump of murder.

I'm Kate Bolduan with John Berman and Sara Sidner. This is CNN NEWS CENTRAL. JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Major political headlines this morning, including former Republican Congressman George Santos beginning a new week as a free man. Santos was released from prison on Friday after President Trump commuted his sentence. As you may recall, Santos was serving a seven-year prison term for the fraud charges that resulted in him getting kicked out of Congress.

There is also new fallout from the huge No Kings rallies that brought millions to the streets from coast to coast to protest against the president and the administration. This was the president's response. He posted an AI-generated video featuring himself in a crown, flying a fighter jet, and appearing to drop raw sewage on protesters.

With us now is Congressman Mike Lawler, a Republican from New York. Congressman, good to see you. Hope our communications hold out for this interview.

Listen, when Mike -- when George Santos was undergoing his problems, you were one of his fiercest opponents. And when he was sentenced, you wrote, "I was proud to lead the effort, along with my New York colleagues, to remove Mr. Santos from office after he conned voters and defrauded donors. As I said at the time, it was clear he was guilty of conduct unbecoming a member of Congress and broke the law. With this guilty plea and sentencing, one thing is clear, this conduct cannot and should not be tolerated ever."

You were proud then, are you proud now that he's out?

REP. MIKE LAWLER (R-NY): Look, my words speak for themselves. You know, as far as I'm concerned, George Santos was guilty and deserved jail time. Obviously, the president has the right to issue commutations and chose to do so.

I disagree, but ultimately, it's not my decision. At the end of the day, George Santos defrauded voters, he defrauded donors and was not fit to serve in Congress. And, you know, as far as I'm concerned, should never be involved in public life ever again.

BERMAN: He's out there talking. I want to play a little bit of a clip from him speaking with Dana over the weekend.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The way it is, it's cut up --

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: That was President Trump. We have a clip of George Santos. I think -- no, we don't have that bite.

Well, he was talking over the weekend as well. How do you feel, Congressman, about George Santos being out and being a prominent supporter of President Trump?

LAWLER: Look, the decision was made. So he obviously is going to be out and ultimately it is what it is. My view is that he should not be engaged in public life, but he's going to do what he's going to do and he's going to say what he's going to say.

Ultimately, he pled guilty to the crimes that he was accused of because he was guilty. And the evidence was overwhelming and clear and it's why I was proud to lead the effort to remove him from Congress.

BERMAN: All right, I'll move on, but do you think he paid his debt to society?

LAWLER: At this point, whether I do or don't, the decision has been made.

BERMAN: You have been a fierce defender of Ukraine since the Russian invasion and a fierce proponent of supplying Ukraine with just about everything they've been asking for in terms of weaponry.

[08:05:00]

Volodymyr Zelenskyy came, asked for Tomahawk missiles, left without them and left with President Trump talking about basically freezing the situation where it is with Russia occupying a chunk of Ukraine. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Let it be cut the way it is. It's cut up right now. I think 78 percent of the land is already taken by Russia.

You leave it the way it is right now. They can negotiate something later on down the line, but I said cut and stop. At the battle, I go home. Stop fighting, stop killing people.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: How do you feel about one, Volodymyr Zelenskyy not getting the Tomahawks and two, leaving the lines where they are right now in Ukraine?

LAWLER: Look, when you look back, it was President Trump that got Ukraine the Javelin missiles that they needed before the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Over the course of the three-year war, the challenge has been, going back to the Biden administration, they slow walked the weapons to Ukraine and prevented them from getting the necessary weapons they needed to conduct the war proactively as opposed to just defending. And limited their ability to actually strike within Russia.

That set the stage for where we are today. And so the question becomes, how do you actually get this war to come to an end? There's two ways to do it.

You either negotiate a ceasefire and a settlement, or you aggressively arm Ukraine and NATO forces come in. That really is the only way to deal with this. And unless the U.S. is willing to send troops, it becomes a question of how aggressive will NATO actually be.

So look, there is a lot of challenges here. I want Ukraine to be successful. I want Vladimir Putin to be out of Ukraine.

Vladimir Putin is a vile dictator and thug. The president has been trying to get a negotiated settlement. We saw, obviously, a peace deal in the Middle East took nine months to broker.

These are not easy subjects and certainly require a lot of hard work. And the president has been trying to end this war, understandably. But from my vantage point, if Vladimir Putin is not serious about negotiating, if he is not coming to the table to end this conflict, then the U.S. should take all necessary measures, including secondary sanctions and further arming Ukraine.

That has been my view from the very beginning. The Biden administration should have implemented secondary sanctions from the moment this war started. They did not.

And so three years plus on, this is where we are. And so there's going to have to be a decision made. If Vladimir Putin will not negotiate an end to this conflict, then we need to take very aggressive measures moving forward.

BERMAN: Very quickly, because we are running out of time. There's been a lot of heated partisanship about the government shutdown, some of which you've been involved in, but you also, Congressman, are someone who does speak with members of the other party. What talks are you involved in right now with Democrats to find a way to end the shutdown?

LAWLER: Well, I still talk to a number of my colleagues, both in New York and around the country. I'm a member of the Problem Solvers Caucus. So we talk quite frequently.

But right now, the challenge really stems in the Senate. Chuck Schumer refuses to do his job. For 50 years, Chuck Schumer has been in office.

And for 50 years, Chuck Schumer has always said, you keep the government open and funded. He changed his position to appease his far-left base because they want the Democrats to show that they are fighting back against President Trump. That's all this is about.

And ultimately, the American people are suffering as a result. We're losing about $15 billion per day in GDP growth. You see funding running out for critical programs like SNAP, like WIC.

This could all end today, John, if Chuck Schumer would tell his conference, it's time to reopen the government and pass the clean CR that has been sitting in the U.S. Senate for over three weeks. Enough already.

BERMAN: Congressman Mike Lawler from New York, appreciate your time, sir -- Sara.

SIDNER: All right, coming up, take a look at this. A frightening image there. After a cargo plane skids off the runway and into the sea, how did this deadly crash happen?

And if you couldn't get on Snapchat or order Starbucks or access your Facebook account, there's a reason for that. Amazon Web Services experienced a major tech outage this morning, the latest on that disruption.

[08:10:00]

Plus, smoke grenades and fireworks tossed onto a soccer field ahead of a match between two rivals, leaving more than a dozen people injured and nine people arrested.

Those stories and more ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BOLDUAN: Breaking this morning, slowly coming back online. That is the latest update after a massive outage at Amazon Web Services, the provider of cloud services for all sorts of companies. It all started while most of the United States was sleeping.

[08:15:00]

The outage impacted a slew of companies. Just take a look on your screen. From Amazon to AT&T to Delta Airlines to Hulu, Snapchat, Venmo, and everything in between.

AWS said it has pinpointed the root cause of the problem, and they just put out a new update. CNN's Brynn Gingras is back with that. What is the latest, Brynn?

BRYNN GINGRAS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It's fully mitigated. That's the latest update, which is good news. But that doesn't mean necessarily if you go on your phone and click on an app, it's not going to necessarily be working perfectly.

It'll come back online soon, hopefully. That's the hope. But there is now a backlog of issues that they are trying to deal with as they worked on the main issue, which from the time it went down to the time it's back restored, three and a half hours.

So, again, this is AWS, Amazon Web Services, a cloud computing service that really just is huge in that marketplace. It affected so many companies that you just laid out for so many people, anything from gaming services to Delta. People were standing lines at LaGuardia trying to check into their flights to Snapchat.

So many companies were impacted. I have to say, I did just go to Starbucks. We were talking about that last hour, and I couldn't get on to actually pay.

So there are some glitches.

BOLDUAN: OK.

GINGRAS: -- but I have a news you can use this morning, and that is if you go and clear your caches in your web browser, that might help trigger it to start working again. So maybe give that a try if you're trying to get into an app.

BOLDUAN: That'll be helpful for a lot of people. What did Amazon say happened?

GINGRAS: It's still trying to troubleshoot exactly what was going on.

BOLDUAN: OK.

GINGRAS: -- but basically they said it was an operational issue, and they went a bunch of different courses to try to get it fixed, and it looks like it has been fully mitigated. So that is good news.

But, again, have a little patience this Monday morning as you're trying to use some of these apps.

BOLDUAN: That's impossible. It's Monday morning, people.

GINGRAS: Do we know how John did with his FanDuel?

BOLDUAN: He was very excited when he said it was back online. That's all I know. FanDuel is back online.

John Berman is a happy man. We can all go home now. Thanks, Brynn -- Sara.

SIDNER: Kate, what's your Starbucks order?

BOLDUAN: You know what my Starbucks is.

SIDNER: I do.

BOLDUAN: Every day, I'm on 12 times a day.

SIDNER: All right, ahead, 20 days into the government shutdown, and we're learning that furloughs could come today for those who maintain our nuclear stockpile, really.

And a jewel heist like we've never seen before. Priceless jewels snatched from the crowded Louvre Museum in Paris. Ahead, we talk to a former jewel thief who has some ideas on who might be behind the theft and how they might unload those historic jewels.

Those stories and more ahead.

[08:20:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SIDNER: All right, this morning with the government shutdown now stretching into day 20, some very critical staffers are about to be furloughed. The Department of Energy, the federal agency that oversees the U.S. nuclear stockpile, says furloughs are coming for the vast majority of its workers today. About 1,400 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration are expected to receive furlough notices today, while fewer than 400 will remain on the job.

CNN's Rene Marsh is joining U.S. now. I mean, this sounds bad. What dangers could this pose?

RENE MARSH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, good morning, Sara. I mean, 1,400, again, as you said, that's the vast majority of the employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration, and that means a skeleton crew of staff in the field offices, and that will all start happening today. That essentially means that federal workers tasked with overseeing contractors who are building and designing nuclear weapons, and they have to approve all of that work, now they will be furloughed.

Historically, this is not an agency that has been impacted by shutdowns. Its critical work has not been disrupted by government shutdowns. A Department of Energy spokesperson tells CNN that since its creation in 2000, NNSA has never before furloughed federal workers during funding lapses.

The agency also said that they were left with no choice, that they had extended funding as long as they could. Now, one source within the agency tells me this essentially will mean that the day-to-day rhythm of federal oversight, the approvals and monitoring of these contractors, will grind to a halt. And depending on just how long this shutdown continues, there could be another wave of disruptions for this agency.

In about another week or so from now, contractors will begin to run out of money, and their work actually building and designing weapons, that would come to a halt at that point. And that could essentially mean delays in delivery of weapons to the military. It is very important to point out to your original question, Sara, the sources are telling U.S. that the furloughs will not impact national security at this moment.

Security guards will continue to guard facilities that hold weapons. But the longer this shutdown drags on, the greater the impact will be on the reliability of the nuclear stockpile, keeping on schedule for building and maintaining and refurbishing weapons in the stockpile. So the impact is quite long term -- Sara.

SIDNER: Rene Marsh, thank you so much. Great reporting from you from Washington this morning -- John.

BERMAN: All right, new U.S. military strikes off the coast of South America, and now new threats from the president.

A high rise, 64 stories, engulfed in flames. The intense battle to extinguish the blaze and get people to safety.

[08:25:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BOLDUAN: Breaking overnight, a cargo plane skidded off the runway and into the sea at Hong Kong International Airport. Just look at this. As it slid, the aircraft actually hit an airport security patrol car, pushing it into the water and in doing so, killing two airport workers that were inside.

The plane also broke into two as it came off the runway. Officials say that it happened as the Boeing aircraft veered off course after arriving from Dubai. I'm going to show you, as you can see very clearly -- we'll show you in some of the video you saw -- that the aircraft was left partially submerged.

The tail section completely snapped off. And the front section of the plane, below the cockpit, also suffered significant damage. As I mentioned, two airport workers were killed.

The four crew members on board the plane, they were hospitalized. The airport suspended operations on its north runway until the aircraft was removed from the sea. And they have security checks they clearly need to do during their investigation.

[08:30:00]