Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Newsroom

Barr Comments on Blake Case; Trump Threatens Funding over Unrest; Arrest in Cyberattacks on Miami-Dade School System; Parents Grapple with Back to School; Arenas Used for Voting Centers. Aired 9:30-10a

Aired September 03, 2020 - 09:30   ET

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

[09:30:00]

SHIMON PROKUPECZ, CNN CRIME AND JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: He used the words armed, referring to Jacob Blake, and felon. Two words that would almost certainly, in the eyes of the law, in the eyes of any prosecutor and investigator, give justification to the officers that were involved in this shooting. So that is a very dangerous thing to do because the investigation is still very much ongoing.

And what we know from the investigators here who have come out and the little information that they have provided, they say they did find a knife in the vehicle, in the car that Jacob Blake was using, and that it was on the floor, that it was on the driver's side floor, and that Jacob Blake admitted to possessing the knife. That's all they've said.

They do not explain how the knife may have been in any way threatening or in any way how the officers found the knife to be threatening. And that is the key question here because, remember, in the video that we've seen, Jacob Blake, his back is to the officers, when they grab him by the shirt and the one officer then fires those seven shots.

The knife is a big thing here. And the circumstances that are leading up to those moments at the car, those are the key questions that the state attorney general is seeking to answer, Jim.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: And as you note, it's still an ongoing investigation.

PROKUPECZ: Yes.

SCIUTTO: Thank you, Shimon, for helping clear up some of those questions.

Well, President Trump is issuing a new threat, vowing to withhold federal funding from several U.S. cities. The catch, those cities, run by Democrats, located in blue states. His justification, he claims the leaders there are allowing anarchy, violence and destruction. You might say, you might want to visit some of those cities to fact check the president's claims.

CNN's John Harwood joins me with more. John, what's notable is that Minneapolis and Kenosha were left off the list, though run by Democrats. Do we know why?

JOHN HARWOOD, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, it's pretty clear why, because both Minnesota and Wisconsin are key targets in the presidential campaign. President Trump won Wisconsin in 2016. He wants to hold it this time. Minnesota, he fell just short. He's targeting. Joe Biden's trying to defend that Democratic turf.

What the president clearly wants to do is pick a fight with Democratic cities. He's said so out loud. And these are in places typically, Seattle, Portland, Washington, D.C., New York, where he has no shot of winning, so there's very little cost or very little risk of local backlash. And, in fact, he triggered backlash last night from Andrew Cuomo, the governor of New York, which is probably something the president wanted.

Here's what the governor had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. ANDREW CUOMO (D-NY): President Trump has actively been trying to kill New York City ever since he's been elected.

It really does speak volumes about him. He changed his residence to go to Florida. Why? He can't come back to New York. He can't. He's going to walk down the street of New York? Forget bodyguard, he'd He better have an army if he thinks he's going to walk down the streets in New York.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARWOOD: Now, seems irresponsible for a governor of any state to be raising the suggestion of physical harm to the president. But, nevertheless, this is an order the president's issued. It looks like a campaign document. Very unlikely to be vindicated in court when the jurisdictions would inevitably challenge it.

SCIUTTO: Right. And you are right about those words from the governor.

The president, another comment, remarkable, from a sitting president, but encouraging people in North Carolina to vote twice, once by mail and once in person, which I believe is against the law.

What's happening here?

HARWOOD: Well, the president is losing the election. He's behind in North Carolina. We had a fresh poll yesterday. He's behind nationally in most of the battleground states. And so what he's trying to do is raise a cloud of doubt about the legitimacy of the outcome. He encouraged people to vote twice to test the security of the mail-in voting system. It is a felony to attempt to vote twice in North Carolina.

He got some backup yesterday from his attorney general, Bill Barr, in his interview with Wolf Blitzer. Barr said he didn't know if it was illegal in particular states to try to vote twice, although it obviously is. And he also encouraged the president in suggesting that mail-in balloting was illegitimate and posed a risk to the election.

Here's the attorney general.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WILLIAM BARR, ATTORNEY GENERAL: This is playing with fire. This is playing with fire. We're a very closely divided country here. And if people have to have confidence in the results of the election and the legitimacy of the government, and people trying to change the rules to this -- to this methodology, which, as a matter of logic, is very open to fraud and coercion, is reckless and dangerous. And people are playing with fire.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[09:35:00]

HARWOOD: Now, the fact is that mail-in voting has been on the rise in the United States for a long time. As Wolf pointed out, some states, five states, do mail-in voting exclusively. And so this is, again, an attempt by the administration, both from the Justice Department and the White House to raise doubts on a voting method that has not been shown to have widespread fraud and they're doing it because they are fearful of losing the election.

SCIUTTO: Yes. And, notably, of course, the president has accepted states, for instance Florida, from that criticism, run by a Republican. He initially criticized all of it except in Republican-run states.

John Harwood, thanks very much.

We have to take a moment now. Yesterday on this broadcast I spoke to Trump 2020 Campaign National Spokesperson Hogan Gidley. I pressed him on why the president isn't taking the simple step of reporting -- warning Russia against meddling in the upcoming election as U.S. intelligence assesses it is attempting to do.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HOGAN GIDLEY, CAMPAIGN NATIONAL SPOKESPERSON, TRUMP 2020: He's talked about that many times and he's told them not to meddle in our elections.

SCIUTTO: He has never warned Russia. He's never warned Russia (INAUDIBLE)?

GIDLEY: That is -- I am sorry, that is incorrect. I swear, you've got to stop being --

SCIUTTO: When has the -- when has the president -- when has the president uttered the words Russia, do not interfere in our election? If he -- if you have, I will happily play that tape on this broadcast. GIDLEY: Good, I'm going to hold you to that. You guys have to stop

peeing on my boot and telling me it's raining. The fact is the president said that to Vladimir Putin. It's on tape. He literally said, don't meddle in our elections.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCIUTTO: We keep our word here. So we're going to play the video he was referring to and let you make your own judgment.

Have a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

QUESTION: Mr. President, will you tell Russia not to meddle in the 2020 election?

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Yes, of course I will.

Don't meddle in the election, please, Don't -- don't meddle in the election.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCIUTTO: Now we assume that he wasn't referring to that single, joking exchange, which, as you can see, Trump delivered with a smile and Vladimir Putin laughed at.

So that, according to his campaign, is President Trump standing up to Russia.

We should note this. Here's what the president said about Russian election interference when he wasn't joking.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I have President Putin. He just said it's not Russia. I will say this, I don't see any reason why it would be. I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCIUTTO: In that infamous Helsinki moment, the president denied Russia had interfered at all, taking the side of Vladimir Putin over the intelligence community.

I should note, I asked Gidley why the president has not publicly warned Putin on a host of other provocations since then. I'll list a few, Russian bounties paid to the Taliban to kill U.S. troops in Afghanistan, Russian arm sales to the Taliban to kill U.S. troops in Afghanistan, dangerous Russian confrontations with U.S. aircraft and warships, which have been continuing for weeks and months and even in recent days, Russian interference in Belarus, Russia's suspected poisoning of the opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

Hogan Gidley didn't cite any such public comments regarding those provocations.

A look at the facts. We'll continue to do so.

We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:42:32]

SCIUTTO: This breaking news just in to CNN.

An arrest has now been made following the cyber-attacks targeting Miami-Dade Public Schools which interrupted remote learning for thousands of children that they and their families are depending on.

CNN's Rosa Flores following the story from Miami.

Rosa, as we were talking about this yesterday, I asked, did they have a sense of where this was coming from. So who's been arrested here?

ROSA FLORES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: You know, we just learned this from the Miami-Dade County Public Schools. They say that a 16-year-old, a junior in high school, has been arrested here in Miami and on two charges, Jim. First of all, computer use and an attempt to defraud, a third degree felony, and also interference with an educational institution, which is a second degree misdemeanor.

Now, according to the school district, this teenager admitted to at least eight attacks and, according to the district, these are distributed denial of service attacks and that this teenager used some sort of online application to execute these attacks.

Now, just to give you an idea of what these are, imagine a million people knocking at your door at the same time trying to enter. That's exactly what these types of cyberattacks do, which then bottle neck the system and don't allow anyone to enter, in this case students and teachers trying to just learn, their virtual learning online.

Now, according to the district, the FBI, the Secret Service and the FDLE, which is the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, are involved and they are helping with this investigation.

Now, the superintendent said in this statement that we just received moments ago that other attackers are out there, Jim. And you and I talked about this yesterday. Where are these attackers coming from? We learned late yesterday that the -- that the police chief from the Miami-Dade County Public Schools say that they believe that they have traced some of those IP addresses to foreign and domestic sources. Now we know, of course, the breaking news coming out of Miami is that a 16-year-old has been arrested with two charges in this case.

Jim.

SCIUTTO: Wow. Remarkable. Remarkable damage done there too.

Rosa Flores, thanks very much. Well, health officials in Los Angeles County will now allow in-person learning for at least some students this fall. Public school buildings will be opened for those with individualized education plans and those with special needs.

[09:45:01]

This as the education secretary, Betsy DeVos, says that parents have the right to choose the education option that is best for their families.

CNN's Bianna Golodryga has more on what is a very tough choice for parents.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ISABELLA AYBAR, STUDENT: I feel so happy that I want to explode.

BIANNA GOLODRYGA, CNN SENIOR GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST (voice over): For five-year-old Isabella and her 13-year-old brother, Kelvin, going back to school is a long-awaited return to some form of normalcy.

KELVIN ESPINAL, STUDENT: It's at the schoolhouse from 8-2:20. I think I'm going to learn more.

GOLODRYGA: Like millions of other students across the country, remote learning has been a struggle for the Brooklyn, New York, siblings.

KARLA MONCADA, MOTHER: I had so much stress getting my daughter to learn in the remote learning. And she cried most of the time. My son, he distracted himself by talking to his peers and playing on the computer.

GOLODRYGA: But returning to in-person instruction is not without risk. Their mother, Karla, suffered a improbable case of Covid-19 in the spring, when tests were scarce. She says her asthma made her recovery much more different.

MONCADA: It was very scary. I thought I was going to die. So I don't wish that on anybody.

GOLODRYGA: She worries about sending her children back to school, especially Isabella, who also has asthma, but says the alternative, another semester online, would be even worse.

MONCADA: I don't have a choice. But it's either, you know, try to get her into this education phase that she is going through that is so essential, or, you know, just stay at home and do the same thing that we did last time.

GOLODRYGA: Two-thirds of the 100 largest school districts in the country are starting the school year entirely online.

EMILY OSTER, AUTHOR, "EXPECTING BETTER": School reopening is really important for our society. It's not that I think that we should reopen at all costs, but I think that trying to do this safely in places where we can do it safely seems just really important for kids, for getting people back to work, for the mental health of parents, for learning.

GOLODRYGA: As doctors continue to study how susceptible children are to the coronavirus and whether they transmit the disease as easily as adults, dozens of schools that have reopened have already experienced outbreaks and thousands of students and teachers have been forced to quarantine just weeks into the school year.

Some teachers unions have fought against returning to in-person learning, threatening not to return to the classroom unless additional safety measures are taken.

BECKY PRINGLE, PRESIDENT, NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION: We cannot open our school buildings unless it is safe.

GOLODRYGA: For parents like Karla, still haunted by scenes like this one in a Georgia high school, where packed hallways full of maskless students ultimately led to positive cases and a school shutdown, the decision to send her kids back to school wasn't an easy one, proof that there are no easy choices in a pandemic.

MONCADA: And we tried this. Let's see how this works.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

GOLODRYGA: It's so difficult for so many parents across this country, Jim. And as you know, here in New York City, the mayor has delayed the start to in-person classes, which would be one to three days a week by ten days. So they will resume September 21st.

This, of course, came from a lot of pressure from teachers unions who wanted more safety put in place and for ventilation and for nurses and for more testing around schools across the city. And this is just one example, of course, of one big city that the world whole and, of course, our country here will be watching closely as students start to go back to school. It does come with some risk, but we know the downside as well to online learning.

SCIUTTO: And New York has gotten its positivity rate down way down, which is one of those benchmarks for opening safely.

GOLODRYGA: Right.

SCIUTTO: Bianna Golodryga, thanks very much.

GOLODRYGA: Sure.

SCIUTTO: More than a dozen NBA teams are now planning to use their arenas as voting centers this November. How could this impact the 2020 race? How many voters will this be a service to? We're going to have more on this, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:53:35] SCIUTTO: The Orlando Magic are now the 17th NBA team planning to turn their arena into a voting center this fall. League owners vowing to help improve voting access across the country as part of an agreement with players following the police shooting of Jacob Blake.

CNN's Victor Blackwell joins me now from Atlanta from its State Farm Arena, home of the Hawks.

Victor, have we seen this before, you know, particularly this widespread and how many voters do we expect this to impact in November?

VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: So this is the first year that we've seen this. We saw this here in Atlanta during the primary. And the hope is that it increases access to thousands more voters.

You know, these 16,000 plus seats here at State Farm Arena have been empty for months, likely will be for the rest of the year because, of course, of the pandemic. But the Hawks were the first NBA team to offer up their arena as a voting location for early voting.

Imagine this, we've got some video from the primary, 300 voting machines, most of them here down on the floor. Thousands voted during the primary. So many more are expected.

You know, in Georgia, the law allows for mail-in voting without an excuse, but we know that there will be so many who want to vote in person. We saw the long lines. This is an attempt to alleviate that.

Beyond the Hawks though, we know that this now, almost a dozen and a half teams, this list that's growing, is the early fruit of that coalition between the NBA and the Players Association created after the boycott during the playoffs after the shooting of Jacob Blake.

[09:55:16]

The coalition focuses on social justice and racial justice and voting. We heard from LeBron James and Chris Paul and other players that voting in this election is the way to get some action, change the outrage and the energy into some effect (ph). So we will see that.

There is also the secondary impact of getting a lot of people back to work. The crews and the security needed to make this happen. Early voting starts here in Georgia October 12th.

Jim.

SCIUTTO: And you see some of those in key battleground states there too, North Carolina, Florida, Michigan. It's a good service to American voters.

Victor Blackwell, thanks very much.

Well, Dr. Anthony Fauci is making a plea now for the public to keep wearing masks, stay away from crowds and be vigilant heading into this coming holiday weekend. This as confusion grows over other guidance regarding everything from vaccines to testing. We're going to discuss all this with Dr. Fauci live on this program just ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)