Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Newsroom

Manhunt Continues For Arizona Couple; James Mattis' New Book; No Charges Against James Comey; Florida Braces For Hurricane Dorian. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired August 29, 2019 - 15:00   ET

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

[15:00:01]

ANA CABRERA, CNN HOST: Dorian is expected to make landfall somewhere along Florida's east coast by Monday as a powerful Category 4.

Right now, the storm remains a Category 1. It's out in the Atlantic. But the entire state of Florida has been warned to prepare for the worst.

Floridians from Key West to Jacksonville are now buying up everything in sight.

Look at those store shelves. They are empty.

The governor has declared a state of emergency. He's telling residents to stock at least one week's worth of supplies.

They are not taking any chances.

(WEATHER UPDATE)

CABRERA: Florida officials are so serious about making sure people are ready for this storm, they have sent out a disaster supply checklist. So far, no evacuations have been called for. Again, we're watching where this storm goes in the next couple of days. And officials may make adjustments.

Businesses, even Florida tourist spots are heeding the warnings. Multiple cruise lines are adjusting their itineraries. Florida's Kennedy Space Center began moving equipment to a safer location and will close its visitor complex. Military bases are also relocating aircraft to other states.

CNN's Leyla Santiago is on the ground in Port Canaveral talking to businesses about what they're doing to prepare -- Leyla.

LEYLA SANTIAGO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes.

You know, Ana, as we have spent the day here, we're hearing some of the same responses not only from businesses, but also government officials and residents, who are saying, look, we're used to hurricanes. It's still a little bit early.

But when you ask them, what is your biggest concern, every single person responded with the same answer, and that is a direct hit. So, while some people may feel that it's still a little bit early, they're certainly getting ready.

We have seen waste management going around trying to pick up any tree branches that may be out there in the stores. We're seeing that they are starting to limit the amount of water that you can buy. The city is planning on bringing in sand tomorrow, so that folks can get bags and prepare for what may come here.

[15:05:01]

And you may have noticed this behind me. We are at Port Canaveral, and there is a cruise ship here. But depending on how this storm goes -- or where this storm goes, you may -- this may be one of the last ones you see around here, if changes are made to adjust.

Now, of course, with those cruise ships come a lot of tourists. And that is where many are concerned the impact could be. Listen to part of the conversation I had with one hotel manager.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DEBRA GREEN, INTERNATIONAL PALM HOTEL: The whole weekend's ruined.

SANTIAGO: In terms of money, how much have -- will you lose here?

GREEN: This hotel, in excess of -- excess of $120,000.

SANTIAGO: For this hurricane?

GREEN: Yes, for this hurricane, two days in August, and then September, because the 1st of September, Sunday, Monday, another $50,000, $60,000.

SANTIAGO: Yes.

GREEN: It's costly to the whole area. It's bad timing. And this could be a scary one too.

SANTIAGO: Yes. What's your biggest concern?

GREEN: A direct hit.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SANTIAGO: Told you. That was the response, direct hit.

Now, remember, this is an area that remembers very well the impact of a hurricane, many folks bringing up Hurricane Irma. In fact, there is still one hotel here that hasn't opened since Irma, hoping to do so by the end of the year.

And now Dorian could come and cause quite a bit of damage. But, again, a lot of folks closely monitoring, paying attention to what the county, the city, the state is -- are advising and waiting to see what will come this way -- Ana. CABRERA: OK, Leyla Santiago for us in Port Canaveral, Florida, ahead

of Dorian, thank you.

Much more on that story just ahead.

But, first, when Robert Mueller was appointed special counsel, it fulfilled the hope of former FBI Director James Comey. In fact, he testified it was the reason he leaked details of his memos detailing his meetings with President Trump.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JAMES COMEY, FORMER FBI DIRECTOR: My judgment was, I needed to get that out into the public square.

And so I asked a friend of mine to share the content of the memo with a reporter. Didn't do it myself for a variety of reasons, but I asked him to, because I thought that might prompt the appointment of a special counsel. And so I asked a close friend of mine to do it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CABRERA: Now the inspector general of the Justice Department says Comey's action violated policy. It's long-awaited. This report just came out today.

And Comey will not be facing any criminal prosecution for breaking the rules.

CNN's Sara Murray joins us now with the details.

Sara, explain how Comey's actions went against Justice Department policy and why, though, they are deciding not to prosecute.

SARA MURRAY, CNN NATIONAL POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Ana, I mean, this report is pretty damning when it comes to Comey's behavior. It says he said a dangerous example for current and former members of the FBI in the way that he handled these memos that he wrote.

Remember, he wrote memos at the time, contemporaneously documenting his conversations with President Trump. But the I.G.'s concern, the inspector general's concern was the way that he retained that information and disseminated that information, some of which included classified material.

Now, I want to read to you a portion of what this report says. It says: "Comey had several other lawful options available to him to advocate for the appointment of a special counsel, which he told us was his goal in making the disclosure. What was not permitted was the unauthorized disclosure of sensitive investigative information obtained during the course of FBI employment in order to achieve a personally desired outcome."

Now, the report notes that the section of the memos that ultimately James Comey through a friend shared with reporters did not contain classified material, and Comey has taken to Twitter to say, see, I'm not a leaker and a liar because he didn't share that classified material.

But you can see the I.G. still had a number of concerns with Comey's behavior. They referred this over to the Department of Justice to decide if they wanted to prosecute it. And, ultimately, DOJ said that they were not going to bring charges against Comey because they said they didn't feel the evidence was there that Comey actually knew and intended to violate the rules on handling classified material.

CABRERA: Sara Murray, thank you.

So, ahead: The president considers yet another move that would please Vladimir Putin.

Plus, powerful words from a U.S. attorney in response to threats made against a Jewish community center. Hear his stern warning for white supremacists.

And 200 companies tell President Trump: What you're doing will cost jobs.

I'll speak with the CEO of one of them.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:14:20]

CABRERA: Tough words and now federal charges for the 20-year-old accused of making threats against a Jewish community center in Youngstown, Ohio.

Last month, James Reardon posted a video on Instagram where he appeared to be threatening gun violence at that center. His Instagram account also contained anti-Semitic and white nationalist comments.

Today, the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Ohio spoke directly to white supremacists during his briefing on this Reardon case.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JUSTIN HERDMAN, U.S. ATTORNEY: Now let me speak generally to those who are advocates for white supremacy or white nationalism. I am talking directly to you. The Constitution protects your rights to speak, your right to think and your right to believe.

[15:15:02]

If you want to waste the blessings of liberty by going down a path of hatred and failed ideologies, that is your choice. Democracy allows you to test those ideas in a public forum. If you want to submit your beliefs to the American people and get their reaction, please be our guest.

Keep this in mind, though. Thousands and thousands of young Americans already voted with their lives to ensure that this same message of intolerance, death and destruction would not prevail. You can count their ballots by visiting any American cemetery in North Africa, Italy, France, or Belgium, and tallying the white headstones.

You can also recite the many names of civil rights advocates who bled and died in opposing supporters of those same ideologies of hatred. Their voices may be distant, but they can still be heard.

Threatening to kill Jewish people, gunning down innocent Latinos on a weekend shopping trip, planning and plotting to perpetrate murders in the name of a nonsense racial theory, sitting to pray with God-fearing people who you execute moments later, those actions don't make you soldiers. They make you cowards.

And law enforcement does not go to war with cowards who break the law. We arrest them and send them to prison.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CABRERA: Reardon remains in federal custody and is now charged with a federal account of transmitting threatening communications by interstate commerce.

And now to a school shooting plot that was foiled at a North Carolina university. Police say they found a pistol, a shotgun and ammunition in a student's dorm room on the campus of High Point University. And court documents claim the student, 19-year-old Paul Steber, had a plan to kill.

CNN's Martin Savidge is covering this story for us.

Martin, what are you learning about this student and his possible motivation?

MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, a number of things, Ana.

First and foremost, he had only been on campus less than two weeks. He was a freshman, and he had come from Boston, Massachusetts, but he specifically went to High Point, North Carolina.

And according to the authorities, the reason he says he went to that school was in part because this is where he wanted to carry out his alleged plot of mass killing, the reason being because he thought that, that state, it would be easier to obtain a weapon.

In other words, he didn't go to the school there because of its school. He went there because he thought it would be easier to get the weapons he was going to use to carry out the attack. And the authorities say he was not just planning something which they claimed he has said started back in December, but that he was preparing.

So he had purchased the two weapons you described, a shotgun and a .9- millimeter semiautomatic. Then, on top of that, they say that he had been watching videos of other mass killings, such as the one that took place in Charleston, South Carolina, apparently to learn what the mistakes were, at least the ones he believed that were made, in carrying out those attacks.

Now, he has also reportedly told police, as far as the motivation, he said he was not going to be an outcast any longer. He also said that he had been rushing for a fraternity there and depending on how that turned out -- in other words, if his roommate got accepted, but he was not, that might have been a potential triggering point that would launch this alleged attack.

And we also know that now he is being held without bond. He has been expelled from the university. And there is likely to be some sort of psychological profile that's being done.

All of this was discovered, thank goodness, because of another student that saw the weapons and realized there was something terribly wrong. Authorities moved in on Tuesday. They found the weapons and the ammunition in his dorm room -- Ana.

CABRERA: Wow, just goes to show, if you see something, say something.

SAVIDGE: Exactly.

CABRERA: The what-ifs here are just chilling.

Martin Savidge, thank you.

Former Defense Secretary James Mattis is out with a new book, "Call Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead." Although people are interested in reading Mattis' account of his military service, he is finding they're most keen to talk about his last job as secretary of defense for the Trump administrations.

And "The Atlantic" has a new article titled "The Man Who Couldn't Take It Anymore." In it, General Mattis says he had no choice but to leave eight months ago, after he disagreed with the president over leaving Syria.

But that's about all you can get out of him regarding his former boss.

Joining us now with more is CNN's Pentagon correspondent, Barbara Starr.

And, Barbara, let me just read a few direct quotes from the book. And this was just Mattis kind of giving some lessons learned here, is my understanding.

It says: "Coach and encourage. Don't berate, least of all in public. Public humiliation does not change our friends' behaviors or attitudes in a positive way. Operations occur at the speed of trust. Nations with allies thrive, and those without whither."

And all these seem to be rebukes to the way Donald Trump runs his presidency, don't they? In a way, it's like Robert Mueller saying read the report, isn't it? Is this Mattis' way of protecting the country?

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, I think it's perhaps his longstanding views of military leadership, of leadership at the top.

[15:20:03]

And we will leave it to people to come to their own judgment, I suppose, about whether they do think he's referring to President Trump. I think an awful lot of people who know Jim Mattis think that he is.

He had -- never really was able to fully disguise his uncomfortableness at times in dealing with President Trump. He never wanted to talk about it. And, formally, officially, he still says he's not going to talk about the president.

But if you ran into Mattis around the hallways at the Pentagon, where he used to walk around, it was not a stretch to see that there were things that really concerned him and things that made him uncomfortable.

And, yes, the issue that finally made him feel he had to resign was when the president wanted to withdraw all U.S. troops from Syria, and Mattis felt that would be leaving U.S. allies that they had backed in Syria, leaving them behind.

And that's his ultimate lesson of leadership. You don't leave anyone behind. That was the thing that made him feel he had to leave.

CABRERA: In the "Atlantic" piece, Jeffrey Goldberg wrote this about Mattis: "His aides and friends say found the president to be of limited cognitive ability and of generally dubious character, but Mattis wouldn't go there himself in his conversations with Goldberg.

He's still quoted as saying: "You don't endanger the country by attacking the elected commander in chief. I may not like a commander in chief one fricking bit, but our system puts the commander in chief in there. I want people to understand why I couldn't stay. I have been informed by four decades of experience, and I just couldn't connect the dots anymore."

What do you infer from his remarks?

STARR: Well, look when you are serving either in the military or as the defense secretary, you simply are not allowed to publicly disparage the commander in chief.

And we have seen many former secretaries of defense and four-star generals write books and after the fact be very critical. There's nothing really new there.

But there is something very different. There's a growing number of very top officials, some recently retired, who are concerned that Donald Trump has brought politics into the ranks of the U.S. military, whether it's the red "Make America Great Again" hats that you see, albeit a handful of troops wearing, or Trump himself making political partisan speeches to a military audience, a lot of concern about, is the Trump administration fundamentally making the U.S. military an arm, if you will, of its politics?

I mean, right now, I think everyone would say that is not happening, but that is a concern. Is the military going down that road under Donald Trump? And those are the kinds of things that might start making top leaders come out more in public and talk more about all of this, because, if they remain silent, that can also be taken as acquiescence -- Ana.

CABRERA: And Goldberg says he kept on trying to get at the answer with Mattis of, is Donald Trump fit to be the commander in chief? And he wouldn't answer directly.

But at the end of his piece, he says, Mattis essentially said, I won't be silent forever.

So we will have to watch and see when he finally decides to come out and really, really speak his mind.

Barbara Starr, I really appreciate your reporting.

STARR: Thanks.

CABRERA: In another provocative move, the Trump administration ends automatic citizenship for children of some troops serving overseas. The question is, why?

Plus, a manhunt for this married couple. Both are accused of murder and on the run after a violent escape.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:28:27]

CABRERA: An urgent and nationwide manhunt under way right now after the brazen escape of two murder suspects.

This husband-and-wife duo are accused of killing a 72-year-old man in Tucson, Arizona, back in April. They were being extradited from New York to Arizona on Monday, when police say they overpowered two security officers in Utah and made a run for it.

CNN's Dan Simon at the latest on the search.

Dan, any sightings, any possible leads on these two?

DAN SIMON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Ana, at this point, they have been on the run for a couple of days now. So authorities think they could really be anywhere.

And what they fear is that they're desperate, in need of money and, because of that, they could really resort to anything in order to evade being recaptured.

As you said, this all dates back to April, when this couple, Blane and Susan Barksdale, they're accused of murdering a man in Tucson, Arizona. And then, about a month later, they're actually captured in Upstate New York. And then this week, you had the extradition.

And in Southern Utah, they pretended, according to authorities, to have some kind of medical emergency. And they got the guards in the van to pull over. And that's when they just overpowered these guards. They actually bound them and put them in the back of the van.

And, as you can imagine, this is not sitting well with the victims' relatives. I spoke to Frank Bligh's brother, and this is part of what he had to say to me. Take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WILLIAM BLIGH, VICTIM'S BROTHER: I know what it took to get him to be extradited back to Arizona, the paperwork and the courts and everything that were involved in this thing, and all the work that the -- Texas and everybody put into this thing.

And to have the thing happen the way it did, it was just -- it's just stupid.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SIMON: Well, the Pima County Sheriff's Office in Arizona, they have

[15:30:00]