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Violent Attacks On People Of Faith Across America; New York Times Reports, Bolton, Pompeo, Esper Tried To Convince Trump To Release Ukraine Aid; Civil Rights Icon Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) Diagnosed With Pancreatic Cancer. Aired 10-10:30a ET

Aired December 30, 2019 - 10:00   ET

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

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: -- on people of faith in the U.S.

[10:00:01]

First, investigators are still looking for a motive after a man barged into a rabbi's home in New York during a Hanukkah party. He stabbed five people before fleeing the scene. He was arrested shortly after.

One of the survivors who fought back against the attacker is now describing those harrowing moments. We're going to bring you his words, his account in just minutes.

And in Texas, new video this morning of the very moment, and you can see it there in the upper hand of the screen, of a gunman opening fire in a crowded church. He killed two people before members of the church's security team shot back and killed the attacker. All of it happened in just six harrowing seconds.

Let's get to CNN's Lucy Kafanov. She is in White Settlement, Texas. That's where this took place. Those quick responders there in the church, they were armed, able to take him down within six seconds, but he was still able to kill two people. Tell us what we're learning about the circumstances this morning.

LUCY KAFANOV, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Jim, it's incredible just how quickly all of this unfolded, That shooting taking place at the church behind me less than 24 hours ago. The gunman dressed in dark clothing came in during the Sunday services before 11:00 A.M. local time. He sat down, listened to some of the sermon before getting up, interacting with one of the members of the church then pulling out a weapon, opening fire. Two armed church security volunteers opened fire back, they took him down, the whole thing captured on camera. And I should warn our viewers, this is very difficult, disturbing video to watch. Take a look.

Now, Jim, this was not the first attack on a church here in Texas. In 2017, 26 people died in the Sutherland Springs shooting. In the wake of that, Texas enacted laws that effectively allowed armed licensed gun owners to bring their weapons into houses of worship and for churches and places of worship to create volunteer armed groups to protect themselves. That is why this happened so quickly, the takedown of the shooter. The two men who shot him being praised as heroes.

Take a listen to what the pastor had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JEFF WILLIAMS, TEXAS DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC SAFETY: The citizens who were inside that church undoubtedly saved 242 other parishioners.

BRITT FARMER, SENIOR PASTOR: Today is one sermon I'll never preach. It will go away. It was called leaving a legacy. And two men today left a legacy. But a congregation is going to build on that legacy.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KAFANOV: So we don't know the identity of the shooter or the victims. We know that he's been arrested in previous incidents. We don't know what those were. He wasn't on any known watch list.

We do, Jim, know that the congregation will be meeting this evening for prayer services. There will be some speeches afterwards, and so this community is moving forward, trying to remember their heroes, trying to move on. Jim?

SCIUTTO: Lucy Kafanov on the scene, thank you.

For more on the attack at the New York Hanukkah party, which left five people injured, let's go to CNN's Brynn Gingras. She is in Monsey, New York where this took place. What do we know this morning about the circumstances of this attack, the motive of the shooter and how he chose that home where he carried this out?

BRYNN GINGRAS, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Jim, that's a big question is why did he choose this home? The attacker is actually from about a town 40 minutes from here. So it's unclear why this Rabbi's home was his target.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

But this home behind me is where the attack happened on Saturday night, 100 people were gathered inside when police say this attacker came through the door. Reports are, he was holding a knife so big, some people said it looked like a broomstick. And the people inside who were lighting the seventh night of Hanukkah were fighting him off. Take a listen to someone who was one of those people and who actually helped police catch this suspect. He was on New Day this morning.

JOSEPH GLUCK, SURVIVED STABBING ATTACK: First, we started hearing people right and left with his big machete knife. I don't know what it was. And then that's when I started to run out through a side door together with all the people in the dining room. We ran out through the back of the house, through of the back door outside. I ran back to the front door to see if I could help anyone from the other side.

I saw him coming back towards me. I ran out. And I saw that he went to the old guy. I came back in and grabbed the coffee table that was on the floor, hit him on his face, and that's when he came back outside after me. He told me, hey, you, I'll get you. And he started walking towards me.

And I was running -- I was going before him, like a few feet, screaming, he's coming, he's coming. Everybody in the synagogue should run away. He went almost to the door of the synagogue. He reached the door, it was locked, and he got to the next door, it was locked too.

[10:05:01]

That's when he walked down a side street towards this car. I didn't know where he was walking to, but I walked with him slowly. And he started this car, I looked at his plate number, called 911. And I came back up the street, the police officers were already there.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

GINGRAS: That attacker now behind bars on five counts of attempted murder. He is behind bars on $5 million bail. And, Jim, this is a community that isn't going to let this incident stop them. I can tell you that they were out here last night in the streets with the parade lighting the menorah for the final night of Hanukkah. Certainly, it's shaken this community, but they are standing their ground. Jim?

SCIUTTO: Brynn Gingras, thanks very much.

Joining me now to discuss, Steve Gold, co-president of the Jewish Federation Foundation of Rockland County. Mr. Gold, thanks so much for taking the time this morning.

STEVE GOLD, CO-PRESIDENT, JEWISH FEDERATION AND FOUNDATION OF ROCKLAND COUNTY: Thank you for having me.

SCIUTTO: So it's in the statistics that attacks, anti-Semitic attacks in New York State, but also nationally, have increased in recent months and years. Why? What do you blame this on?

GOLD: I think that social media is a big part of it. Social media, you can post whatever you want under any assumed name and not get called out by it. And the posts are horrible. Like even after the stabbing in Rockland County on one of the local Facebook groups, somebody wrote that the guy didn't stab enough of those Jews, that he should have stabbed more, you know.

We had an incident about a year ago when somebody posted that Hitler didn't do enough -- didn't put enough Jews in the ovens. My parents were holocaust survivors, Ruth and Emanuel Gold. And growing up, my father always told me to make sure you do whatever you do to make sure it never happens again and never to forget.

I feel I failed him with what's going on. I feel Rockland County failed them.

SCIUTTO: Let me ask you about what you believe will make a difference. Governor Andrew Cuomo said on this network earlier this morning that he's considering at categorizing these attacks as domestic terrorism. And it does strike me having covered terrorism for some time that there are commonalities here, radicalization online, that kind of thing. Would something like that make a difference? And if not, what do you want to see?

GOLD: I think we need a lot of different rules and regulations to start happening, a lot of legislation to start happening. But I believe social media needs to -- it needs to be some type of regulation, just as you have, you know, on CNN and in the newspapers, that if somebody wants to write you or you want to write an op-ed, there's a background check, you know, to make sure what you're saying is true.

Facebook, you know, now you can say whatever you want and it doesn't matter. And you can even put a fake political ad on and it's okay. So there has to be something that needs to be done to hold these Facebook groups and these administrators and the people that post accountable. Not to say, when we call them out, oh, we don't monitor our Facebook group. And that's, I believe, a big reason of what's going on.

SCIUTTO: You saw that shooting in Texas that there were armed volunteers, in effect, in the church. And in that particular case, they made a difference. They got to the shooter very quickly. But having covered shootings and attacks a number of times in my own career and variably afterwards, you will have some who say, even in a school, arm the teachers. Are synagogues in your community saying today, well, maybe that's something we should think about?

GOLD: Yes. Some synagogues do have armed security now. As a matter of fact, in Monsey, you saw people with long-range rifles yesterday. The big issue with security, you know, speaking to our sheriff, Lou Falco, his main concern is, if there is an incident, how do you know who's the good guy and the bad guy? You know, the officer walks in, sees somebody with a gun, and so it needs to be identified. And it needs to be strict training what it is to be armed in a place of worship when there's hundreds and hundreds of people there.

SCIUTTO: Do you feel -- before we go, do you feel that people in your community feel something -- they feel scared in the wake of this?

GOLD: Absolutely. Absolutely. There are people now who don't wear their yarmulkes walking to schools (ph). I spoke to a holocaust survivor last night and he told me just as he did when he was a kid in Germany, he packed a suitcase and has his passport on top of that suitcase in case he has to run, because they're out to get the Jews.

SCIUTTO: Goodness, that's an alarming thought to have in the year 2019. Steve Gold, thanks for your time and best to you and the community in the wake of this.

GOLD: Thank you.

SCIUTTO: Still to come this hour, new reporting from The New York Times detailing how acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney had a role in the decision to withhold aid from Ukraine. We're going to speak to one of the reporters on this important story. Of course, it relates to the impeachment inquiry. [10:10:01]

Plus, Iraq's prime minister condemning the U.S. for, quote, a violation of sovereignty after airstrikes hit Iranian-backed militias in Iraq and Syria. Why the U.S. says these attacks were necessary.

And civil rights icon and longtime Congressman John Lewis disclosing he is now battling Stage 4 pancreatic cancer. How he plans to fight it. we'll have more just ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SCIUTTO: A new New York Times report is giving a more detailed look into the White House's efforts to withhold millions of dollars in military aid to Ukraine. In one email reported by The Times, a White House aide warned acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, that, of course, the chief of staff to the president, that Congress would become unhinged by the hold in aid.

[10:15:02]

Of course, laws required when Congress appropriates funds that those funds are spent.

And in a meeting, the president ignored a direct appeal to release the funding from three of his own senior appointees. Then National Security Adviser John Bolton, Defense Secretary Mark Esper, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

Joining me now, one of The New York times' reporter on that story, Eric Lipton. Eric, good to have you on this morning. Thanks very much.

ERIC LIPTON, INVESTIGATIVE REPORTER, THE NEW YORK TIMES: Thank you, yes.

SCIUTTO: As you know, the central defense from Republicans in the larger impeachment question is that, while there's really no indication or at least no proof or insufficient proof that this order to withhold the aid came from the president, you have three of the president's senior advisers going to the president trying to get the aide released and being refused. And you have his chief of staff here seemingly carrying out this order. What does this do to that defense?

LIPTON: Well, there is no ambiguity at all that this was an order from the president. That is entirely clear. It's clear through emails. It's clear through interviews. This was something that the president instructed his Chief of Staff's Office to implement on June 19th and it lasted for 84 days. And it also is the president who, at several points along the way, despite efforts by key advisers to lift the freeze, continued to insist that the freeze remain in place.

And there are a number of appeals made by John Bolton, by Defense Secretary Esper, by Pompeo to get him to release the freeze, but each time, he denied those requests, until, you know, September 11th, when ultimately it was lifted only after there was an announcement of a tentative investigation and the whistleblower complaint had been filed.

SCIUTTO: And you've heard a bunch of Republican lawmakers throughout this say, well, this was just a policy disagreement. The president has the right to do what he wants to do with this aid. But, in fact, you have the president's own advisers here, do you not, concerned that holding the aid appropriated by Congress, which is its constitutional right, would be illegal. Tell us how -- tell us what you saw as they were making that argument, in effect, to Mick Mulvaney and others.

LIPTON: Well, what was most interesting was the tension that was emerging between the Office of Management and Budget, which is a part of the White House, and the Defense Department which had a good chunk of this money to spend. And it was concerned that it was going to be unable to spend it before the end of the fiscal year on September 30th.

And there was quite a deal of tension of disagreement, of emails, of conversations back and forth. And, you know, an argument that sometimes they thought that the Department of Defense was bluffing them, saying that the money was going to expire unless they spent it. And at one point on August 12th, there was the DOD who said, we've got this hard deadline, $61 million, it has to go out the door. And so what the president's aide said, this is a POTUS-level decision. This is a decision the president has to make.

So it turns out that President Trump was at Bedminster, it was in August, it was a Monday. And that morning, he was out playing golf with a professional golf player. The meeting that the Defense Department wanted to take place to get this money released did not end up happening and the hold continued.

SCIUTTO: And we know that Ukraine was noticing it because there was sworn testimony where Ukraine officials were asking their DOD counterparts where this was. Did the White House react to your story?

LIPTON: We got some indications that generally that they thought the story was fair and that it was accurate. We didn't hear any significant pushback. So, I mean, one thing that did become very apparent was that what was happening with the aid hold and what was happening with Rudy Giuliani and the, quote, three amigos over in Ukraine was there were two different tracks that were happening.

And there was not a great deal of intermingling. The people at the Office of Management and Budget did not have much visibility at all, if any, into what was happening with Ukraine and any suggestion that the aid hold was contingent upon the Burisma investigation.

So, to some extent, there was more of a division than I think we expected to find between the aid hold and then the campaign to influence the president of Ukraine.

SCIUTTO: And yet those officials remain silent in public. Eric Lipton, thanks for your reporting.

Joining me now, Julie Pace, Washington Bureau Chief for the Associated Press, CNN Political Analyst, and former Republican Congressman Charlie Dent, he is now a CNN Political Commentator. Thanks to both of you. I hope you got a break for the holidays or will.

Charlie Dent, the Republican defense here, as I said to Eric, is that, well, insufficient evidence that this order came from the president. I mean, you have, you know, an email. This is a POTUS-level decision. You have the president's senior-most advisers going to him to try to get the aid released. Does this remove any doubt as to where this aid hold was ordered from?

CHARLIE DENT, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: No, I think this -- it's very clear what happened, just as you described it, that the national security leaders, Pompeo, Esper, and Bolton were -- wanted the aid released, and the chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, was implementing what appeared to be the president's order to withhold the aid.

[10:20:15]

No question about it.

But what is most stunning to me, Jim, as I watch this, is why did any of these folks at OMB think it was okay to withhold appropriated funds, passed into law, without a notification to the Congress. Congress must approve any rescission or withholding or reprogramming or transferring of funds, end of story. Congress wasn't notified. And that's why they were concerned about the legality of this.

This is, I think, an enormous issue. And the reporting is excellent and it virtually verifies what many of us had already thought. But was even more stunning, I guess, is that the national security establishment was pushing back hard. I'm glad to see that they were. But, clearly, this was the president, OMB and then the three amigos who were running this policy.

SCIUTTO: Well, Julie, we did not know until now that the DOJ was actually preparing a legal argument that the president could withhold this aid simply because he's commander-in-chief, seemingly violating the constitutional principle, right, that Congress has the right to disperse funds. Why didn't the DOJ take that route, do you think?

JULIE PACE, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: it would be a pretty extraordinary thing for the Justice Department to put forward, to give the president essentially a legal argument to work around Congress, to work around a co-equal branch of government, which is effectively what it sounds like he was trying to do here. As you've said, Congress appropriates the money and then the executive branch, the president has to spend the money. And the president was trying to say, hey, wait a minute, maybe I don't have to do that. Let's try to find a legal way around it.

We have seen over the course of the Trump administration, there's deep frustration in the halls of Congress about this, attempts by the administration to circumvent Congress, to not show up to hearings, to not provide documents and that culminated with an obstruction of Congress charge in the House impeachment probe. This is another example of that, where the president seemingly doesn't find Congress to actually be co-equal, despite that constitutional marking for them. SCIUTTO: And, Charlie, you know, I often say or preface things by saying, in a normal world, this would -- but we're no longer in that normal world. But you're a former Republican congressman here. I mean, this is -- this is information material to the impeachment trial presumably coming in the Senate here. Would you sense any openness from Republican senators to say, okay, we got to talk to Bolton, we've got to talk to Mulvaney, Esper, or based on I guess, I don't know, just people running out of patience or lack of interest or partisanship, has that ship sailed? Are they comfortable with where they sit here?

DENT: Well, I would certainly not be comfortable. I do think Congress should hear from some of these primary witnesses. I mean, heck, I think Esper, Bolton and Pompeo have seemingly a good story to tell based on what I just read in that article, that they were opposed to withholding the aid. They should hear it.

Now, to be fair, the House Democrats should not have forced and rushed this process. They set an arbitrary deadline of Christmas to pass the articles of impeachment. They really should have worked to bring those folks in and subpoena them, if they must, and then enforce those subpoenas. And now it's up to the Senate. But if I were a senator, I certainly would want to hear from these primary witnesses, because there is more to the story. They need to tie up some loose ends here.

SCIUTTO: Julie, you covered this story from the beginning here. Based on the court decisions, we're still waiting for, because several of these witnesses, in effect, are hiding behind the courts, Bolton among them saying, well, if a court orders me to do it, I can do it, although others have come forward, regardless. Does any of this happen in time based on what we know about a Senate trial compelling these witnesses to testify or is that just too far-fetched?

PACE: It's certainly possible that we could get one of these court decisions in time for the Senate trial. But I think what you really want to look for is any indication that Mitch McConnell is feeling political pressure from his members to call some of these folks as witnesses. We have seen very few indications of that so far. Senator Lisa Murkowski from Alaska, one of the few who has come out and said she feels uncomfortable with the fact that McConnell seems to be coordinating so closely with the White House on this process.

But I think, unless you get a court order, the only real pressure that I think McConnell would feel is from his own members, and we just aren't seeing really a ground swell from enough of them to push him to call some of these folks mentioned in The Times article.

SCIUTTO: Well, they could come on their own. We know that. And they've chosen not to. Julie Pace, Charlie Dent, thanks very much.

Civil rights icon and longtime Congressman John Lewis is in the fight of his life now, receiving a devastating cancer diagnosis over the weekend.

[10:25:00]

How will his battle with the disease affect his work in Washington? He's promising to stay with it.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SCIUTTO: Longtime Georgia Congressman John Lewis is now battling cancer. The civil rights icon announced his diagnosis of stage 4 pancreatic cancer on Sunday. He is expected to return to Washington in the coming days to begin a treatment plan.

[10:30:02]

Lewis says he will continue his work on Capitol Hill even as he fights this deadly disease. CNN Senior Medical Correspondent Elizabeth Cohen --