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Former President Clinton Soon Gives Deposition Over Epstein Ties; Pentagon Uses Laser to Shoot Down Border Protection Drone; Instagram Previews New Safety Feature Amid Social Media Trial. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired February 27, 2026 - 08:00   ET

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

[08:00:00]

MARK MORALES, CNN REPORTER: 24, 25, and now we have this latest incident, so now it really remains to be seen what's going to happen now.

ERICA HILL, CNN HOST: Yes. I mean, maybe she wanted to get to the Olympics. I joke. I shouldn't joke, but it is. She's picking good destinations, but this is really -- it's really something, and it does raise serious concerns about the security, too, in terms of how she was able to get there. Mark, good to have you. Thank you.

A new hour of CNN NEWS CENTRAL starts right now.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Breaking overnight, news that the U.S. military, the U.S. military shot down a U.S. drone near the border. How does the U.S. violate its own airspace?

Plus an historic deposition, former President Bill Clinton answers questions this morning before a congressional committee to explain his ties to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

And new drama between U.S. hockey and the White House, one of the gold medal winners now distancing himself from an AI video posted on the White House official TikTok account that appears to show him trashing Canadians. The thing is, he plays in Canada.

Kate and Sara are out today. I'm John Berman with the esteemed Erica Hill. This is CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

HILL: This morning, a former president in the hot seat, Bill Clinton, is set to answer questions from the House Oversight Committee, this historic deposition, of course, about his ties to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Now, Clinton appears in multiple photos with Epstein, flew on his private plane at least 16 times, according to a CNN analysis. Of course, on Thursday, it was Hillary Clinton who was questioned.

She spent more than six hours being questioned Thursday. She says she had no knowledge of Epstein's crimes at the time and does expect that her husband will say the same today. Now, John Berman just spoke with Congresswoman Nancy Mace, a Republican on the committee, and asked her if the former first lady testified, should the current first lady, Melania Trump, who is also seen in photos with Epstein, be called to testify, too?

Here's the Congresswoman's response.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. NANCY MACE (R-SC), OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE: I don't believe so, and I don't believe that President Trump, because it should be called before the Oversight Committee, he has answered questions. And the victims that I've spoken to actually exonerated President Trump. And so the victims I've spoken to, and their family members have not exonerated people like former President Bill Clinton, who's denied being on the island.

But I will bring out some documents today that show that Jeffrey Epstein was the directing victims and or witnesses to deny he ever was at the island. And I think this is going to be -- there are going to be a lot of people that need to come before the Oversight Committee.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HILL: Hillary Clinton's testimony was temporarily paused on Thursday when another Republican congresswoman, Lauren Boebert, shared a photo from inside that closed door proceeding. She shared that photo with a conservative influencer. The Clintons, it's important to note, have not been accused of any criminal wrongdoing here -- John.

BERMAN: All right, with us now, CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig and Andrew Desiderio, a senior congressional reporter for Punchbowl. And Andrew, I just want to start with you.

Bring us up to speed with what happened yesterday with the former secretary of state and what's expected today.

ANDREW DESIDERIO, SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL REPORTER, PUNCHBOWL NEWS: Well, first, yesterday, the former secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, basically repeated herself many, many times saying that she had never met Jeffrey Epstein, never had much contact with him. She had to respond to a lot of claims from Republican members of that committee about the Pizzagate scandal from 2016, for example. The deposition had to be shut down at a certain point when Congresswoman Lauren Boebert shared a photo from inside of the room with a conservative provocateur named Benny Johnson.

So you know, there was a lot of partisan hackery involved in this, right? And Hillary Clinton is very sort of well-skilled when it comes to these congressional depositions and investigations. Just think back to Benghazi, for example, right?

That didn't turn out great for her, obviously, but she has a lot of experience in dealing with a lot of this. And I think she's learned a lot of lessons in the past about how to deal with them. And looking forward to today, of course, I think lawmakers are much more interested, including Democrats, by the way, in hearing from her husband, of course, the former president, Bill Clinton. BERMAN: We'll come back to Bill Clinton, Andrew, in just a second here and what members from both parties want to get. But Elie, first I want to check in with you a little bit to clean up over Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of state, and her questioning. And I did ask Congresswoman Nancy Mace, look, if you're going to talk to Hillary Clinton about what your husband did, why not talk to Melania Trump about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein?

Her answer was that witnesses to her have exonerated Donald Trump and they haven't Bill Clinton. To be clear, no one's, first of all, neither have been charged with any wrongdoing. Both deny everything, but neither has been exonerated legally either.

[08:05:00]

ELIE HONIG, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: Yes. There's a difference between somebody saying, I don't know that person to have done anything wrong versus exoneration. I mean, these witnesses are not omnipotent. They only know what limited amount they know. So that's part one.

The other thing that Nancy Mace said to you was, well, Donald Trump's been questioned about this many, many times. OK, but by the media, that's not the same as sitting for hours on end under oath being questioned by lawmakers or other lawyers. So that's a bit of a talking point that I think we've heard quite a bit to try to draw this distinction.

In reality, if the rationale is we're going to call Hillary Clinton in some substantial part, as we heard yesterday, because she would know about her husband's relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, that exact rationale applies, if anything, more forcefully to Melania Trump, because we know Melania Trump knew Jeffrey Epstein directly. Hillary Clinton apparently did not.

BERMAN: OK, Andrew, now to Bill Clinton, which is in some ways the main event here, because obviously we've got the pictures. We know that he had a relationship with Jeffrey Epstein prior, prior to his guilty plea for that sexual offense in Florida there. But what the members of both parties want to get from him today?

DESIDERIO: Well, I'll note that there were several Democrats on the oversight committee who actually voted to proceed with holding Bill Clinton in criminal contempt for initially resisting this effort by the Republican led committee to testify, right? So, again, it just shows that, you know, these days on Capitol Hill, it's very hard to get sort of a nonpartisan or bipartisan, if you will, investigation into these things, because, you know, both sides engage in sort of, you know, whataboutism.

They're trying to protect members of their own party. They're trying to go after members of the other party. And one thing I will say, kind of to Elie's point, too, about the setting of precedents, too, right?

Congress is an institution that relies on precedents. And once you set the precedent that a former first lady or a current first lady or a former president or a current president can be interviewed, can be deposed by a congressional committee going forward, that can be the case when Donald Trump, for example, is out of office one day, right?

There's a lot of talk all the time about whether Donald Trump, you know, just simply being president can sort of shield himself legally from a lot of these investigations and requests by Democrats to come in for these depositions. But once he's not president anymore, he could be dealing with this very same thing. And I think it's very important to sort of remember that.

BERMAN: Thank you. Let me just get one more to Elie here, because today is so important. What are you looking for today?

Now, we're not going to know exactly what happens till we get the transcript here, but we're going to get some real time intelligence on this. How do you think this is going to go?

HONIG: So first of all, Bill Clinton is well aware of the stagecraft of all this. He's been through processes like this before. He understands the videotape will come out fairly quickly.

I think the most difficult questions for Bill Clinton, first of all, are going to be about those photographs. We've seen they're in the Epstein files. He's in a pool with Ghislaine Maxwell.

There's a woman whose identity has been redacted. He's going to be questioned, I believe, in nuance about those photographs. What were you doing? Who was there?

The other thing is the timing is important here. The bulk of Bill Clinton's dealings with Jeffrey Epstein were the early 2000s.

So post Clinton's presidency, '02, '03, somewhere in there. Now, that's before Jeffrey Epstein was first charged in Florida with what ended up being a plea to prostitution with a minor. But it's also towards the end of the time when Epstein's crimes were still being committed.

So what did you see? What did you know?

BERMAN: Look, it's also not a time when Donald Trump had a relationship still, roughly, with Jeffrey Epstein. So there's a lot of comparisons here. Elie Honig, thank you very much.

You're going to be here all day.

HONIG: I'll be here. A lot of information coming in.

BERMAN: Thank you -- Erica. Andrew, our thanks to you as well.

HILL: Just ahead here, the U.S. military shooting down a drone near the southern border and a lot of questions this morning about what is getting lost in communication between the Pentagon and DHS and what that means for safety.

Plus, is it the bromance of, you know, just a couple of New Yorkers? President Trump, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani meeting up again.

And a new safety feature from Instagram they're testing out that could tell parents if their teen is searching for dangerous content. Just how effective could that be?

[08:10:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: All right, the breaking news this morning, word that the U.S. military shot down a U.S. drone. Right?

You heard that correctly. The U.S. military shot down a U.S. drone being operated by a different government agency. That's basically what we know.

And we know it because of the reporting of this man, CNN's Pete Muntean, our chief aviation correspondent. Pete, this is wild to me. Please fill us in on the details here.

PETE MUNTEAN, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: Well, John, I just got a very rare joint statement from the agencies involved in this. What signals the Trump administration and the White House, it's really playing clean up right now since this sounds a lot like the El Paso incident of two weeks ago when an anti-drone laser was used without concern for commercial flights. That incident led the FAA to trigger a chaotic emergency airspace shutdown and really highlighted the lack of basic communication between government agencies.

This new case is described by three Democrats in Congress as essentially a friendly fire incident involving a government drone. A congressional aide tells me that these members, including the top Democrat on the committees overseeing homeland security and also transportation, were told about this incident through official channels yesterday. And in a statement, they say the military shot down a customs and border protection drone using what those House Democrats call a high-risk counter-unmanned aircraft system.

What's interesting is that the FAA has now shut down the airspace over the border town of Fort Hancock, Texas. Like the El Paso restriction of two weeks ago, this prohibits all aircraft, which is unusual, but this is much smaller than the El Paso restriction. That was a ring 20 miles in diameter. This is only about nine miles wide.

Right now, still not clear when this incident occurred that these House Democrats described.

[08:15:00]

But here is the new statement from Customs and Border Protection, the Department of Defense and the Federal Aviation Administration, in which they all together say the shootdown did not happen near people or planes. The agency say this reported engagement occurred when the Department of War employed counter-unmanned aircraft system authorities to mitigate a seemingly threatening unmanned aerial system operating within military airspace. By the way, Congress has still not been briefed officially on that El Paso incident of two weeks ago, though there have been really major calls to do so.

Now a congressional aide tells me it's time for the military to brief them on this incident too, really highlighting maybe the military and the government has not learned its lesson about using these counter- drone systems at the border with so much concern there about drone incursions over the border.

BERMAN: Peter, very quickly here, in theory -- and maybe I'm naive here -- in theory, I would think there'd be communication between one government agency if it's flying drones somewhere, so they don't get shot down by the U.S. military. Am I being naive?

MUNTEAN: Well, in the El Paso incident, our reporting across multiple teams here, including our Pentagon team and myself, really highlighted that there was not a lot of talking between the two agencies. The part of government that runs aviation and controls the airspace and the military, which is now using this weapon. Our initial reporting said that this high-energy laser, which uses very concentrated heat to essentially melt the parts and innards of drones, can really be dangerous to airplanes.

And pilots are especially sensitive to the use of lasers because there are so often lasers used by pranksters on the ground. You can buy one on Amazon. The most important instrument in an airplane is the pilot's eyes.

So it can be of really, really high risk. And that is why the FAA initially shut down the airspace in El Paso for what was going to be several weeks, only turned it to a few hours. So we'll see as this develops, as more and more in Congress are finding out about this, and more and more pressure is put on agencies to really communicate better here.

BERMAN: Because in the meantime, we appear to be doing it to ourselves. Pete Muntean, great reporting on this. Update us as you get new information.

The mayor of Denver moving to shield his city from the president's immigration crackdown, barring ICE from city property and ordering protection for protesters.

Instagram rolling out new safety features to alert parents when their children may be at risk of harming themselves. This as social media companies facing intense scrutiny in a landmark trial.

[08:20:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HILL: New this morning, Instagram is preparing to roll out a new safety feature to alert a parent if their child is repeatedly searching for harmful content. This of course is the latest move by the parent company of Instagram, Meta, as it is facing intense scrutiny from critics who say its apps are harmful for teens. CNN's Clare Duffy is joining me now with more. There's some

fascinating timing here. But I mean, also just if there are repeated searches, you would think that one would be enough.

CLARE DUFFY, CNN TECH REPORTER: Yes, let's talk a little bit about how this is going to work. This is going to work for parents who have their accounts connected to their teen accounts through Meta's parental oversight tools. And they'll receive a notification if their teen, they say, repeatedly searches for suicide or self-harm content within a short period of time.

Now, we don't know exactly what a short period of time sort of looks like here in terms of this feature. Parents will get an alert on the app as well as through text message, e-mail or WhatsApp, depending on their notification settings. And look, I think there is a big question about the timing here.

This comes, of course, as Meta is in the midst of this trial, accusing it of addicting and harming the mental health of young users. Now, certainly this is a good feature. It's good that they're introducing it.

HILL: Smart.

DUFFY: But I think there is a question about how many times do teens need to search for suicide or self-harm content before their parents receive an alert? And I should also note that Instagram doesn't show search results for these topics. Instead, it directs teens to mental health resources.

HILL: So still some questions that the company needs to answer there. To your point, good to be notified. But we need a few more specifics from them.

You mentioned this this trial, right, that is underway that I know you've been covering extensively in terms of what's happening now. The plaintiff actually took the stand yesterday. What did we hear in court?

DUFFY: Yes, she, of course, is a really significant witness, being at the heart of this case that could set a precedent for hundreds of similar cases. Her name is Kaylee. She's a 20 year old now. She lives in California.

But she talked about getting on YouTube at the age of six on Instagram at the age of nine. By the age of 10, she had posted 200 YouTube videos, and she created multiple accounts so that her videos would look like they had more likes and attention because she talked about feeling anxiety and depression when her content didn't get attention from other people online.

She also talked about being drawn in by features like autoplay and these endlessly scrolling feeds talking about sneaking up late at night or sneaking out of class as a kid to scroll through the platform. She said even now she sneaks out of her job sometimes to continue to scroll through these platforms. Now, YouTube has alleged that she was not actually addicted, that their records show that she only spent a short amount of time on the platform.

But she talked about the fact that as a child, she mostly used YouTube while she was logged out so that there wouldn't be a record of her usage. She also talked about her difficult childhood and Meta has alleged that it is her difficult childhood that's responsible for mental health challenges, not the social media platforms.

[08:25:00]

But she said she really feels like the social media platforms isolated her from family and friends and hobbies. And that has led her to develop anxiety, suicidal ideation and body dysmorphia. So really more details that we're getting in this very important case.

HILL: Yes, absolutely. I'm glad you're continuing to follow it as well. Clare, thank you.

DUFFY: Thank you.

HILL: Just ahead here, will President Trump declare a national emergency in an effort to take control of the country's elections? New reporting about the push for a new executive order.

And Twitter founder Jack Dorsey just cut 40 percent of the staff from his new company. Why? Because of intelligence tools. And he says more companies will soon follow suit.

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