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Lindsay Clancy Back in Court; Jack Smith on Capitol Hill; President Trump Hosts AI Executives. Aired 1-1:30p ET

Aired September 29, 2026 - 13:00   ET

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

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BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: Soon, a critical summit at the White House, the president hosting top AI executives, as pressure mounts to regulate the technology. He calls warnings a hoax, but Anthropic's own leaked IPO filing says its models could pose an existential risk to humanity.

Plus,: defiant testimony. Former Trump prosecutor Jack Smith stands by the criminal cases he brought against the president and tells senators he won't be silenced by threats.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: And a pivotal hearing, Lindsay Clancy returning to court. What happens next after a judge declared a mistrial in her murder case?

We're following these major developing stories and many more all coming in right here to CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

KEILAR: Any moment, President Trump is expected to join with the nation's top AI executives at the White House, as two of the companies are sounding the alarm, and they're sounding the alarm on themselves.

According to a leaked filing obtained by Reuters, Anthropic says its AI models could pose a -- quote -- "catastrophic or existential risk to humanity" and adding it can -- quote -- "resist shutdown."

SANCHEZ: Also, new questions today after OpenAI scrapped the release of its latest AI model over safety concerns. For weeks, the president has been downplaying the risks of rogue agents and other warnings.

Let's go to CNN Hadas Gold, who's standing by with more on the concerns, and also CNN's Kristen Holmes, who is at the White House for us.

Kristen, are you hearing any new reaction ahead of this meeting?

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: We're not hearing any new reaction, but I do think it is notable that one of the people who is attending today's lunch is Anthropic's Dario Amodei, who is one of the people who really raised alarms over artificial intelligence.

In fact, he had dinner at the White House with President Trump on Sunday. Clearly, that went well enough for him to be invited back to this lunch in particular. And what I'm hearing from my sources inside the White House is that this is really the starting off point.

And I do want to show you something that President Trump just posted, which is the seating chart to this pivotal lunch. And look who he's sitting next to. You have Elon Musk on one side, and you have Jensen Huang from Nvidia on the other.

The reason why this is so interesting is that Musk himself has said that there should be more guardrails on AI. We know that they have had a tumultuous relationship, but they are close again. And Jensen Huang, he is somebody who has been advising President Trump on a strategy for artificial intelligence, and not necessarily saying that there should be guardrails in place.

I do want to tell you why this moment is so pivotal for artificial intelligence and for the administration. They have to figure out how they're going to handle this. And I want to show you some recent polling that exists on artificial intelligence and how Americans feel about it; 75 percent of Americans feel fear and concern when they are thinking about artificial intelligence, with only 25 percent feeling hope or excitement.

And then you get to the regulation part of this, which is 71 percent of Americans believe that the federal government is not doing enough to regulate AI. And part of this belief is likely something from the fact that you're hearing the calls from inside the house.

These heads of these companies are saying there are issues here. We need more guardrails. This isn't safe. And yet the federal government, as you noted, President Trump, has continued to say, we don't need that. It's just going to slow us down in the race with China.

KEILAR: And, Hadas, if you can tell us more about this leaked Anthropic filing, what have you learned there?

HADAS GOLD, CNN A.I. CORRESPONDENT: Yes, so we have all been anticipating Anthropic's IPO, which could value the company at something like $2 trillion.

But Reuters got its hands at one version of this IPO filing. And it shows how Anthropic really thinks that the AI will change the world, but that will be very expensive to do so. And what's really notable is how much time Anthropic spends on safety in this filing. In fact, 80 pages out of the 261-page main body of this prospectus is about safety.

There is less on the actual business compared to the safety. And, in this, Anthropic warns that AI can pose catastrophic or existential risk to humanity, talking about how AI models have shown self- preserving behaviors, have attempted to conceal or manipulate information, and have engaged in behavior resembling blackmail.

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It's kind of stunning to think of a company that's trying to go to the public market, raise a bunch of funds, and saying, oh, by the way, the product we're building, it might kill us all as well. But that is all -- that has always been sort of Anthropic's M.O.

It was founded on the idea of trying to create the safest possible AI company, saying that this technology is amazing, it can change the world, it can change our lives, but it is dangerous, and they're trying to present themselves as the ones best suited to try and control it in the safest way possible.

SANCHEZ: And perhaps in a bid to show similar restraint, self- restraint, we should point out, OpenAI just announced it would scrap plans for its latest model over safety concerns. What's going on there?

GOLD: Yes, so OpenAI had planned to launch the latest version of its GPT Astra 6.1 in the coming weeks. Just so you know, these companies release new versions of their models seemingly every few weeks. So this wasn't supposed to be some sort of major, huge, brand-new model.

But OpenAI says that they found that this model wasn't as good as previous model on two key safety issues. One is on alignment, which is where the model does what the human actually intends for it to do. They found that this version of their model showed higher levels of deception, trying to -- it wasn't always completely honest about its actions.

The other thing was scope authorization, which they say that the model would push ahead on a task without asking the user, the human, for permission and would take actions on their own that were out of the scope of what the human wanted them to do.

And, guys, these are the exact same issues that we saw in those cases of the AI models going rogue, breaking out of their test environments, trying to cheat on these exams, and hacking into other companies. So OpenAI said they scrapped this model because of these safety concerns. They say there will be other versions of this Astra model, maybe 6.2, 6.3.

But they say this is all part of their efforts to try to pace themselves, to try to really take safety into account, because they are worried that, if they had released this model as it stands, it could have led to more of those incidents of AI going rogue.

SANCHEZ: Hadas Gold, Kristen Holmes, thank you so much and keep us posted on how this meeting goes.

Still to come this afternoon: a heated hearing on Capitol Hill, as former special counsel Jack Smith faces lawmakers, defending his decision to prosecute President Trump. These are live images of the hearing as we speak. We're going to show you some of the fiery exchanges between Smith and lawmakers.

Plus, a rare show of bipartisanship, the Senate passing a bill that would overhaul college sports. We're going to break down what this legislation could mean.

KEILAR: And if you're afraid of heights, you may want to look away, riders forced to climb down from the top of a roller coaster after it got stuck in a vertical position.

We have that and much more coming up on CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

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SANCHEZ: Right now, former special counsel Jack Smith is on Capitol Hill testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Smith has been staunchly defending the two criminal investigations he led into Donald Trump, the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case, and Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

Watch this.

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JACK SMITH, FORMER SPECIAL COUNSEL: Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in serious crimes against our nation. If asked whether to prosecute a former president today based on the same facts, I would do so, regardless of whether that president was a Republican or a Democrat.

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SANCHEZ: So far, during the hearing, Republicans have used much of their time attacking the former special counsel, accusing him of political bias.

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SEN. JOHN KENNEDY (R-LA): You sought just the records of the Republicans. And you knew that that violated the Speech and Debate Clause, didn't you?

SMITH: That is incorrect.

KENNEDY: You make me want to throw up in my mouth.

ERIC SCHMITT (R-MO): You have weaponized the Department of Justice against political enemies to an extent that has never happened in the history of this country. You will go down as a total dirtbag.

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SANCHEZ: We're joined now by former FBI senior intelligence adviser Phil Mudd.

Phil, thanks so much for being with us.

Among those complaints from Republicans, we also heard the Senate Judiciary chair, Chuck Grassley, accuse Smith of running a partisan operation that broke the rules. Do you see it that way?

PHILIP MUDD, FORMER COUNTERTERRORISM OFFICIAL: I don't really.

I mean, if you look at the facts in the two cases, let me just give you a couple of facts. One, remember those photos from Mar-a-Lago of the boxes of documents, some top secret documents in open locations? If I did that in my house, I'd be prosecuted.

The second is, remember the famous Brad Raffensperger call. That's the official down in Georgia when the president called him and said, find the votes to overturn the election. The issue here is politics. It's not about the law. If you look at the facts in the cases, I don't think that the Trump administration would want to see progress in a case against Jack Smith, because they're just going to dig up again Jack Smith saying, look at the facts. I win.

SANCHEZ: Yes.

I just want to let our viewers know it appears that this testimony from the former special counsel has wrapped up. He is now about to exit the room. We will keep you posted if he makes comments to reporters on the outside of that room upon exiting.

Phil, Smith was asked about some of these controversial subpoenas for lawmakers' phone records. You heard it there in his exchange with the senators. Those records include details about calls made and their duration, but not the actual contents of the conversations.

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Smith argued that the records corroborated evidence that Trump and his team wanted to exploit violence on January 6 as part of a criminal scheme. I wonder if you think collecting those records in the way that Smith did was centrally relevant, as he's argued, and whether it showed any sign of bias.

MUDD: Boy, this is a tough one. When I was at the FBI with Director Mueller, there were questions about how to gather information from Congress, from acting members of Congress. The question wasn't whether the information supported the case. The question was whether it violated sort of separation of powers, the executive branch going after the legislative branch.

I'm not sure this was a good decision -- he's a great prosecutor -- for the political angle. From the angle of an investigator, it's really valuable, because you want to know who talked to the White House when, so that, when you go have a conversation with those witnesses who might be senators or congressmen, you know exactly when they called, and if they lie, they say they didn't talk about the White House, you know it.

So I think the information is valuable. The politics of it is, is where this a little bit squirrelier, Boris.

SANCHEZ: Yes, you saw Smith there exiting that Senate office building, not taking questions from reporters or acknowledging that they were even there.

Of course, Phil, the overarching concern with Jack Smith and others is the question of weaponization of the Justice Department. Do you think DOJ was weaponized under President Biden? How would you compare it to some of the steps that President Trump has taken when Democrats accuse him of weaponizing DOJ?

MUDD: Boy, as someone who's been attacked by the president on social media, whether you're a Democrat or Republican, being attacked by the president, legalities aside, really messes up your life, Boris.

But I think, in terms of weaponization, I think some of the Russia investigation, I would view in retrospect, went on too long, despite the fact that it was run by the best person I ever worked with. That's Director Mueller.

I think it's gotten worse since, because if you look at the personal attacks on James Comey and the former CIA Director John Brennan and now Jack Smith, boy, when you put the weight of the government against private citizens for years at a time, it really is damaging not only to sort of the judicial process in this country, but to private citizens.

I wish both sides, the Republicans and Democrats, would stop asking the Department of Justice to conduct investigations. Let them do what they have to do on violent crime, on white-collar crime and leave -- leave members of administrations alone, by and large, unless they committed a crime.

SANCHEZ: I think it it's probably too early to come away with a full picture, but I'm still curious to get your thoughts, as one of these senators says that Jack Smith will go down in history as a dirtbag, how you think history might remember the former special counsel and the investigations that he led.

MUDD: You know, I find this fascinating. I'm 65 years old. It's one of the only reasons I would like to live for another 30 years is to see how history judges this.

But the reason is, is that if you look at what happened in the White House for the first and second administrations, and you look at the amount of information we don't know about these investigations, what happened in internal conversations, presumably people will write those histories in future years.

Documents will be declassified. I suspect, in retrospect, that people will say quite clearly that the Department of Justice was used too often at the president's behest to go after private citizens. I'm not sure about that, but it's hard to escape that impression when people the president hates consistently are attacked by the Department of Justice.

I don't know when this has happened in American history, but I don't remember it.

SANCHEZ: Phil Mudd, fascinating to get your perspective. Thanks for joining us for the conversation.

MUDD: Thanks. See you.

SANCHEZ: Still ahead -- of course.

Still ahead: Lindsay Clancy returning to court, as the judge in her case looks to decide what happens next. We're going to take you live to Plymouth, Massachusetts, after a quick break.

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SANCHEZ: The Massachusetts mom who killed her three kids was back in court today for the first time since her murder trial ended in a hung jury more than three weeks ago.

Attorneys for Lindsay Clancy have filed a motion to get her case dismissed. But today in court, the judge set up another hearing to discuss a date for a second trial.

KEILAR: Clancy's defense blames the mistrial on a holdout juror who opposed the 11 others on the jury planning to acquit Clancy. The defense argues she is not criminally responsible for killing her children because she was in postpartum psychosis when she strangled them.

CNN's Jean Casarez is outside of court in Plymouth, Massachusetts.

Jean, what's happened during today's hearing?

JEAN CASAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: So much. So much happened.

I think one of the big things that we need to put front and center is that the prosecution did not stand up and say that we are going to retry this case, but the judge kept pushing. Let's set a new trial date. We don't want this to just roll on down the road. Let's set a new trial date.

And the parties didn't want to do it because there are motions left to argue. They're going to take it on an appellate level, some of these motions. Now, outside, Tim Cruz, the elected district attorney of Plymouth County, was asked after the hearing are, you going to retry this case? He said, we have not decided yet. Nonetheless, this open criminal case, prosecution is going forward with hearings.

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And, today, the defense was arguing a motion to not only dismiss the case entirely, but try to find a directed verdict, wanting the judge to find a not guilty verdict, the defense saying that there is not a jury that could find beyond a reasonable doubt that she knew right from, wrong because all of the medical experts said -- the experts said that she had a mental disease or defect.

And the prosecution said, but that's not the whole story. Take a listen.

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SHANAN BUCKINGHAM, MASSACHUSETTS STATE'S ATTORNEY: The case law is clear that not every defendant with a mental illness lacks criminal responsibility. A defendant who has mental illness can commit crimes and can be criminally responsible.

That's why the court, the SJC has repeatedly addressed this issue and identified various ways in which the commonwealth can prove that a person does have criminal responsibility despite suffering from a mental disease or defect.

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CASAREZ: And although the arguments really evolved around the motions the defense had filed, it kept going back to that lone holdout juror. And they kept talking.

His attorney, his counsel in Massachusetts, spoke at the hearing. She will write a memorandum on his behalf of what they want. But, also, the prosecution said all the focus on this juror, people aren't going to want to be jurors anymore. There is going to be a silencing, a freezing out, a chilling effect in the commonwealth of people wanting to do their duty as jurors.

SANCHEZ: Jean, let's talk about these other motions. The defense wants to see the jury notes from the first trial, but the prosecution is opposed. Tell us more.

CASAREZ: Well, he -- they want to make public the jury notes, which we have not seen at all. We have heard them summarized a bit in court, but also the sidebar conversations, where they actually spoke about what they were learning was happening in deliberations from those notes.

The defense wants them public for everyone to see, and he's basing that on Lindsay Clancy's constitutional rights here, because he believes that double jeopardy should take ahold and there should not be a secondary prosecution.

And the prosecution in this case is saying they should not be public. There are some things that are not possible to be public because you're invading rights of privacy. You're talking about things that are remaining at sidebar at this point. So that's another big issue.

But it's November 2. Multiple motions are going to be heard at that time, and then also maybe an update on whether in fact a retrial will happen.

SANCHEZ: Jean Casarez, from Plymouth, Massachusetts, thank you so much.

Happening now: a key luncheon at the White House, President Trump meeting with leading AI executives, as concerns grow about the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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