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Interview Rep. Laura Friedman (D-CA): House Ethics Committee Opens Investigation into Rep. Swalwell; Attack on OpenAI CEO's Home Spark Conversations About AI Mistrust; Multi-Day Severe Storm Threat to Batter Central U.S. Aired 2:30-3p ET

Aired April 13, 2026 - 14:30   ET

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

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ERICA HILL, CNN HOST: ... lawmakers force out one of their own, as four women accuse Congressman Eric Swalwell of sexual misconduct. We'll discuss with one House lawmaker. That's next.

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BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: Returning to the mounting pressure on California Democrat Eric Swalwell to resign from Congress, the House Ethics Committee has now launched an investigation after four women accused him of sexual misconduct, including a former staffer who says he raped her while she was heavily intoxicated.

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Swalwell denies those accusations, but he did drop out of the California governor's race yesterday, saying the allegations against him are his to fight, not the campaign's.

Joining us now to discuss is Democratic Congresswoman Laura Friedman of California. She's endorsed one of Swalwell's Democratic opponents for governor. Congresswoman, thank you so much for being with us. Do you think that Congressman Swalwell should resign?

REP. LAURA FRIEDMAN (D-CA): I think that given the evidence that I've seen, and I will commend CNN and the San Francisco Chronicle for doing a very rigorous investigation of their own, there seems to be enough evidence that if this came to a floor, I would vote to expel. Look, he deserves due process, and I'm glad that ethics is going to be looking into this very quickly. But what I didn't hear when he released his video recording yesterday, I think it was, he denied any criminal charges against him, but I didn't hear him deny that he had an affair with one of his staffers.

And that is absolutely outside of our rules of ethics. It's abhorrent. It's taking advantage of a young staffer.

And assuming that he is indeed admitting to that, that is worthy of expulsion.

SANCHEZ: Just to be clear, Congresswoman, would you wait for the result of the House ethics probe, or are you in favor of expelling him, just given what you know now?

FRIEDMAN: Well, look, I'd rather have the due process. Everybody deserves due process. And if he came out and he denied having an affair with one of his staff under his employment, then he should absolutely have all the due process that's afforded.

But if, like in the case of Representative Tony Gonzalez, he admits to breaking the ethical rules of the House, then I'd be ready to expel him now.

SANCHEZ: As you know, Congresswoman, the Manhattan D.A. has said that they are looking into some of the claims brought by one of his accusers that he raped her. We just heard from CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig, who suggested that there is potential for collaboration between the Manhattan D.A. and congressional investigators. He did note that some prosecutors may also ask congressional investigators to hold off while they conduct their own probe.

Do you have a preference? Do you think that it's possible that any investigation by Congress may interfere with a New York investigation?

FRIEDMAN: Well, let me say, first of all, that in the California legislature in 2017, when we had our MeToo moment, when three members of the California legislature were accused of really awful misdeeds with their staff, I led a bicameral response and bipartisan response and reformed the California legislature's process. This is something that I've been very involved in for quite a while. And so it's very important that the House follow its processes, for sure.

And a criminal process can happen concurrently, but we should always defer to that criminal process because the most important thing is that the victims get justice. And in the case of rape, that's beyond what the House can do. That is a criminal investigation, and it would be an adjudication from a jury.

And given that these accusations are very serious, I'm glad to see that they're being investigated as criminal charges by the correct agencies.

SANCHEZ: You mentioned the case of Congressman Tony Gonzalez a moment ago. He confirmed that he had an inappropriate relationship with his staffer. I believe it was roughly a month ago that staffer later died by suicide.

Do you see these two in any way linked? Do you think that the potential expulsion of Tony Gonzalez, also under investigation by House ethics, may factor into whether or not more Democrats would support the expulsion of Swalwell?

FRIEDMAN: Look, these charges are so serious, and harassment is so damaging to the victims that it should not be a partisan issue. And these kinds of behaviors happen in many different occupations, particularly ones where you have an imbalance of power, whether it's in the tech industry or where I used to work in Hollywood, industries that have people who are seen as being very powerful, untouchable, very important. And then you have people who are desperate to get into the field, are ripe for this kind of predatory behavior.

And it's even more important in those cases that you have strong workplace protections because that tends to be where people are taken advantage of. So, of course, these cases are linked, and it should be troubling that they're coming to light right now. Clearly, the House of Representatives has to do more to protect their staff.

And we need to do more as a body to police our own and to make it clear that this kind of behavior is not going to be tolerated. And that means making sure that people who act this way have to pay the price in public opinion and in terms of their ability to continue representing their constituents.

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If you cross a moral line, you should not be able to have the privilege of representing people in Congress or at any elected body.

SANCHEZ: Lastly, Congresswoman, now that Swalwell has dropped out of the governor's race, he was broadly seen as the frontrunner in that race. Trump-backed Republican Steve Hilton is now more positioned to claim one of the two top spots in the general election. Given that there's a broad field of Democrats who are running, would you support some of those Democrats dropping out in order to consolidate support?

FRIEDMAN: Look, people have a right to run, and candidates will continue to run if they think that they have a path to winning. And it's not my call whether or not people are going to run for governor or against me for Congress or for any other position.

SANCHEZ: Understood. Congresswoman Laura Friedman, thank you so much for the time. I appreciate you sharing part of your afternoon with us.

FRIEDMAN: Thanks for having me.

SANCHEZ: Of course.

Still to come, police say a 20-year-old man threw a Molotov cocktail at Sam Altman's home before heading to the offices of Open AI, threatening to burn the building down. Altman is speaking out. We'll bring you his remarks in just moments.

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HILL: Conversations about the public view of artificial intelligence are heating up after a man was arrested for allegedly throwing a Molotov cocktail at Open AI CEO Sam Altman's home in San Francisco on Friday. Now, police say the man also threatened to burn down the Open AI offices, and they also stress they have not identified a motive.

Altman, however, wrote this on his blog, quote, "I empathize with anti-technology sentiments, and clearly technology isn't always good for everyone. But overall, I believe technological progress can make the future unbelievably good for your family and mine." Adding, "While we have that debate, we should de-escalate the rhetoric and tactics and try to have fewer explosions in fewer homes, figuratively and literally."

Joining us now is Laurie Segall. She's the CEO of Mostly Human Media and also has known Altman for more than a decade. Lori, you've interviewed him a number of times, including earlier this month for your podcast "Mostly Human with Lori Siegel." Good to have you here, my friend.

When we look at where things stand, I do just want to pick up there on, you know, Sam Altman's reaction to what happened at his home. It's important to stress again, we have not been told that there is a motive that is known at this point. Has he spoken to you about it?

LAURIE SEGALL, CEO, MOSTLY HUMAN MEDIA: No. What's interesting is I spoke to him for an in-depth interview about a week before. We spoke for an hour and a half.

And to give you a sense, I've known Sam for 15 years. I've covered him and interviewed him at different points in his career. He's a longtime entrepreneur.

But I said to him when we sat down, I said, this is the most high stakes seat you've ever sat in. And he agreed. And, you know, we talked about this world where is AI going to be good for all of us or is it just going to be good for some of us and the anxiety around it?

And so I want to play a little bit of that interview for you because I think I asked him an important question, given that he's kind of like the face of this movement that a lot of folks have anxiety about. Listen to what he said.

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SEGALL: What do you stand for?

SAM ALTMAN, CEO, OPENAI: I think this technology has to be democratized. I can see a world where this is either something that is concentrated from a perspective of wealth, but also power over the future in the hands of a small number of companies. I think the democratization and empowerment pieces are linked importantly.

Maybe the tradeoff between safety and agency, there'll be periods where we have to say, ah, this technology went in a different way than we thought. We really love empowering people, but not at the risk of destroying the whole world. So we're going to have to do something differently for a while.

Abundance is something that I care a lot about. If I look at my career and the stuff I've been interested in and kind of what I believe about what it takes to have a better world, and I could pick only one word, I'd pick abundance.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SEGALL (on camera): Yes, I mean, and what I think the follow up to that is, is what I said before, which is there is so much anxiety about the fundamental shift that's happening in society around artificial intelligence and what that means for folks who aren't in Silicon Valley, what that means for jobs, what that means for cybersecurity. And so the real question is, how do you create that abundance, so it impacts everyone? And later, I would say OpenAI, Sam Altman, put out a proposal, basically trying to propose different ideas, some of them more controversial than others, about how we as a society beyond just government can get there.

So it's such a fascinating time, but also, I would say a horrific time when there's actual violence due to a lot of this anxiety, and that has to change.

HILL: Yes, it absolutely does. And questions for a lot of people too about whether people like Sam Altman do fully grasp the amount of their anxiety and their fear, not the violence part, right, but just sort of among people who are not resorting to violent measures. You mentioned government.

You also spoke with him about government, and I think this is something that a lot of people have questions about. He talked about OpenAI's deal with the Pentagon, about what he sees as the importance of working with government. But he's getting a lot of backlash, right, too, because there are a lot of people who do not trust government to follow the law.

Does he trust the government to follow the law?

SEGALL: We have -- and if you watch the interview, we have a real exchange on this, you know, and I really pressed him on this because he said he strongly believes that government should be more powerful than these AI companies and they should make these decisions. And I push Sam and say, well, you know, do you trust? We're in a fractured society.

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This seems like a different ball game. Do you trust the government to? And he really, you know, really kind of plants the flag and says he believes that the government should be more powerful than these tech companies.

Now, he also went on to say that, you know, in an ideal world, a lot of these tech companies -- or the government would be putting out these programs like the Manhattan Project like they did back in the day. But he said the government for now isn't equipped to do that. So we're hearing, I would say, a couple different things.

And one thing I think is just worth saying, having covered Silicon Valley for 15 years, you know, there is this optimism and sometimes almost like a delusion that has created the last generation of tech companies. You know, Sam Altman headed Y Combinator, which is a company that incubated companies like Reddit and Airbnb and fundamentally changed society. And you almost have to be so wildly optimistic about the future. And I think what's happening now is we're seeing where we are in reality. And it seems like there's a growing chasm between what folks in Silicon Valley are believing and what's happening in the real world. But I will say this, I interviewed Sam in 2020 before ChatGPT launched, and he said, no one's talking about AI, the good and the risks, and we have to start talking about this.

So it's a really interesting time. I think a lot of this anxiety is manifesting for the leaders of these companies. And I would say for good reason, just because of everything that's happening, but we, and according to OpenAI and what they've been putting out in Anthropic, putting out all of these, I would say, writings and warnings, you know, there really needs to be a societal response.

And sometimes easier said than done.

HILL: Yes, absolutely. Laurie, always good to see you. Appreciate it.

And you can catch Laurie's full podcast wherever you get your podcasts -- Boris.

SANCHEZ: Not as some of the other headlines, we're watching this hour. CNN has obtained new video showing the aftermath of a mass shooting in New Jersey. You see a man with a gun running by a car that was pulling into a Chick-fil-A parking lot in Union Township on Saturday night. You can see others also running from that restaurant.

The shooting killed one person and injured six others. Investigators say it does not appear to have been a random attack. They're still searching for the gunman.

Also today, prosecutors in Maryland announced the indictment against a quadruple amputee and professional cornhole player involved in a deadly shooting. Dayton Webber faces first-degree murder and various other firearms charges. He's accused of killing Bradrick Wells last month.

Wells was a passenger in the car that Weber was driving when the shooting happened. Weber's lawyers say that this was all a misunderstanding, an act of self-defense. If convicted of murder, Weber faces a maximum sentence of life in prison.

Meantime, New York Mayor Zoran Mamdani celebrating his first hundred days in office. The mayor held a rally on Sunday touting some of his accomplishments. He also announced the launch of the city's first government-subsidized grocery store in East Harlem in hopes of driving down prices.

In a new poll, 48 percent of New Yorkers approve of the mayor's job performance so far. 30 percent disapprove. Another 23 percent say they are still unsure about how to rate the new mayor.

Still to come, tens of millions of people in the threat zone for severe storms over the next several days. A look at your forecast next.

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HILL: A full week of dangerous weather looming for the central U.S. Multiple rounds of severe thunderstorms set to unleash destructive hail, winds, potentially even a few tornadoes. Meteorologist Derek Van Dam is joining us now. So, Derek, as we look at this, who is really expected to bear the brunt of this system?

DEREK VAN DAM, CNN METEOROLOGIST: So, Erica, we're focusing tonight for that window of time between roughly 8 p.m. to about midnight across the upper Midwest and stretching into the Great Lakes. But what's important here is that this is triggering a multi-day severe weather threat that will last right through the middle of the week and potentially beyond. Let's try to get to the details.

Here's the culprit. It's this kind of what's known as a stationary boundary. So, below it, we've got warm, very humid air mass.

To the north, it's cooler and much drier. So, when you get that collision, storms tend to fire off right around that area. You can time it out quite nicely.

Later this afternoon and into the evening, the thunderstorms will be developing right after sunset, local time, from basically the Minneapolis-St. Paul region southward towards Madison. I think that I- 95 corridor could be right in the bullseye of where we expect these thunderstorms tonight. Then tomorrow, we see some of the same locations, maybe just slightly further to the south and east, but also includes the greater Chicago area with our greatest risk of severe storms stretching southward into the Plains and into central Texas before those storms race off eastward into the upper Ohio River Valley.

So, very large hail, damaging winds, and a few tornadoes. Here's that level 3 of 5 right there across southern Minnesota, central Wisconsin. This is the area where we could have EF2 tornadoes or greater. That's according to the Storm Prediction Center.

That means winds of 111 to 135 mph, potentially with a tornado that develops this evening. Also, a great chance of golf ball-sized hail here. So, that's a concern.

So, we've talked about the severe weather threats in terms of the storms. Now, what about the heavy rain aspect to this? Well, it's already created damage.

This past weekend, the saturated soils with the combination of the melting snow and the heavy rain that moved through portions of northern Michigan have caused washouts in some of the roadways. That's known as the Tunnel of Trees.

If you've traveled this region just south of Traverse City, you know ...

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