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Christian Aid Ministries Confirms Kidnapping in Haiti; Former President Bill Clinton Out of the Hospital; CDC Says 57 Percent of Americans is Fully Vaccinated; How Trump's Big Lie is Eroding American Democracy; Rare Interview with Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer; L.A. County Wants Kobe Bryant's Widow to Take Psych Team; Lawyer Alex Murdaugh Accused of Misappropriating Settlement Funds; Conspiracy Theories' Deep Roots in American History. Aired 6-7p ET

Aired October 17, 2021 - 18:00   ET

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

[18:00:24]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE JOHNS, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: As many as 16 American missionaries, including several children, kidnapped in Haiti.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Who is not vulnerable at this point in the country? And everything is so unpredictable with the lack of security.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Jury selection set to begin in the racially charged trial of three men accused of killing Ahmad Arbury.

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: The more people we get vaccinated, the less likelihood is there going to be another surge as we go into the winter. When you're in the family unit among people who are vaccinated, I think you should just enjoy the holidays as best you can in the family spirit.

NATASHA CHEN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Walking arm in arm with his wife, former President Bill Clinton leaves a California hospital.

DR. JONATHAN REINER, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: I think he's lucky to leave the hospital. A 75-year-old man can easily die of sepsis.

(END OF VIDEO CLIP)

PAMELA BROWN, CNN HOST: I'm Pamela Brown in Washington. You are live in the CNN NEWSROOM on this Sunday evening.

And we begin this hour with a growing sense of urgency over the mass kidnapping of Americans in Haiti. A source tells us that the FBI and State Department are working around the clock to secure their release, but admit that they don't know where they're being held at this hour.

A Christian ministries group in Ohio confirmed that 16 missionaries from the U.S. and one Canadian have been taken hostage. Five of those hostages are children. The aid group did not comment on ransom demands or negotiations. The group was captured yesterday after visiting an orphanage just north of Haiti's capital city. Since July kidnappings have tripled the impoverished country which has also suffered political turmoil since the assassination of its president. A source in Haiti's security forces blames gang members for this kidnappings and hundreds of others.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. ADAM KINZINGER (R-IL): We need to track down on where they are see if, you know, negotiations without paying ransom are possible or do whatever we need to, on a military front or police front, but, yes, I mean, I think probably everybody watching, at least one or two -- you know, I guess Kevin Bacon is away, knows somebody that has been a missionary to Haiti at some point. And so this is (INAUDIBLE). So we keep them in our prayers and the U.S. government will do everything we can to get them back.

(END OF VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: Let's go straight to the White House and CNN's Joe Johns.

Joe, we heard Congressman Kinzinger calling for an assessment of options including rescue efforts. Do we know about any discussions behind closed doors there at the White House?

JOHNS: Very, very limited. You said it at the top, and the questions of course is whether there are any type of ransom negotiations going on. Talk with the kidnappers. It's just not clear because the Haitian authorities are not saying anything. What we do know is that the United States government is in touch with the Haitian authorities, and it is the Haitian authorities who say this was a kidnapping conducted by armed gangs in the country.

It's a huge problem when I was there for the earthquake back in August. It was quite clear that one of the biggest concerns for first responders and medical personnel was driving on the roads in Haiti out of fear that they would be kidnapped and held for ransom. So the question, of course, is, where do we go from here?

It's also clear that the State Department has been very concerned about this for some time that they put out an advisory back in August, just a little about a week after that big earthquake, and that advisory read, do not travel to Haiti due to kidnapping, crime, civil unrest and COVID-19. So in the short term, of course, the question is, where are the missionaries? It's not clear. The answer of sorts would be to try to negotiate.

The long-term answer, of course, is to help the police in Haiti. It's a country where law enforcement does not have a lot of help, and especially lawlessness controls.

Back to you, Pamela.

BROWN: Yes. That is certainly the sad reality there in Haiti. Joe Johns, thanks for bringing us the latest from the White House.

Well, former president Bill Clinton has been released from a Southern California hospital after a health care that started last week. He is recovering tonight from a urinary tract infection, and after five nights of treatment, he walked out slow and steady with Hillary at his side.

Natasha Chen is covering this live from Orange, California.

So, Natasha, the worst is over but he still has some recovering to do.

CHEN: Yes, Pamela. He actually still has to continue an antibiotics treatment.

[18:05:02]

And you mentioned he was able to walk out of this hospital building this morning, but if you see the video of that moment, his wife, Secretary Hillary Clinton, had her arm looped around his. She actually gave us a wave first to say hello. We were stationed here across the street and one of the reporters on this side shouted to the former president, how do you feel, and that's when he gave a thumbs up.

So you could see that he was walking there, but very carefully, very gingerly. The couple did shake hands with the medical staff, and even gave some hugs there, showing just how grateful they are for the medical care he received here. In fact the chair of the Department of Medicine and executive director of this hospital released a statement through the Clinton's spokesperson, saying, that his fever and while blood cell count are normalized and he will return home to New York to finish his course of antibiotics.

"On behalf of everyone at UC Irvine Medical Center, we were honored to have treated him and will continue to monitor his progress." And to keep in mind, yes, he stayed here for five nights. And mainly we're told that a lot of that is because of the IV antibiotics treatment that he needed to receive. And this could have been very serious. It's not at all uncommon for someone of his age, 75 years old, to have a urinary tract system that then seeped into the bloodstream.

This could have been very dangerous. So everyone is showing a lot of gratitude here for the care that he received at this hospital over the course of the last five nights. And as we mentioned yesterday, his tests, daily tests were showing a lot of improvement and he was able to have some conversations and phone calls with his own vice president Al Gore and of course President Joe Biden -- Pamela.

BROWN: Good to see him on the mend. Natasha Chen, in Los Angeles, thanks so much.

And turning now to the fight against COVID-19, the CDC says about 57 percent of Americans are now fully vaccinated. But we're heading into winter, cold and flu season, and Dr. Anthony Fauci says we could still do better.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

FAUCI: We're going in the right direction. The problem is, as we all know, we still have approximately 66 million people who are eligible to be vaccinated who are not vaccinated. The degree to which we continue to come down in that slope will depend on how well we do about getting more people vaccinated.

(END OF VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: Joining me now is Dr. Ken Kim. He was on the Biden-Harris Transition COVID Advisory Board and a CEO at both R Clinical Research and Cosmos Health Solutions.

Dr. Kim, thanks for joining us tonight. Look, more than 18 months since the pandemic arrived in the United States, you believe COVID is here to stay and that we all just need to start living as normally as possible. What does that mean?

DR. KEN KIM, FORMER MEMBER, BIDEN-HARRIS TRANSITION COVID ADVISORY BOARD: That's a great question. I think COVID is going to be endemic, means we're going to have to live with it. And I think that Australia and New Zealand had a very interesting approach of trying to go to the zero COVID, I don't think that's going to be a sustainable approach. Our businesses need to open, our restaurants need to be open, our schools need to open. We need to see our families.

And I think that we need to be practical, we need to be really combining a number of different things. Each of us will have our own ways of dealing with this. And clearly in our personal life and our own little personal bubble, we often don't mask, but when we go to work, we're going to have -- depending upon the work situation and depending on the number of people we're interacting with, and if they are strangers, then we are going to be needing to probably mask up.

And then we go to large events. There's a wide range of ways that people are now trying to solve that problem. Here in California, if go to a Rams game, you need to get vaccinated and you need to mask. If you go to a game in Texas, you do not need to get vaccinated and you do not need to be tested. So we're going to have to figure out over time how we can adjust and make adjustments so that we can continue to live a life, a normal life.

BROWN: Right. I mean, so what should the metric be? Like at one point should, for example, kids stopped having to quarantine if someone in their class gets COVID?

KIM: Well, so, I think if people are sick, they definitely need to quarantine. We still need to do basic contact tracing and so clearly if there's a child who was sick or a co-worker who was sick, we need to also combine that with targeted testing as well as quarantining. So it will vary upon the circumstance.

[18:10:02]

BROWN: I want to talk about boosters. This week an FDA advisory panel recommended them for both Moderna and J&J vaccine recipients. Dr. Fauci thinks there was promising evidence for that. Here's what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) FAUCI: So the data we're starting to see from Israel indicates that even in the somewhat younger group, for example, from 40 to 60, there is a real benefit in getting the booster shot. So what we'll be doing here in the United States, both through the FDA and the CDC would be to following these data as the accumulated real time. And any modification of the recommendations will be based on that data as they come in.

(END OF VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: So my understanding is you're not 100 percent sold on the need for boosters. You got the J&J but you're still waiting to see if -- to get a booster based on your antibody levels. Why is that?

KIM: Well, so I think we should -- let's talk about both vaccines separately. For the Moderna vaccine, the efficacy in terms of preventing severe illness or hospitalization or death has actually held up quite well over time. And so it's interesting, when Moderna actually asked for approval for boosters, they didn't ask it based on preventing further illness but preventing infection. That's a completely different goal than trying to prevent severe illness.

Now the J&J vaccine as we know was a one-dose vaccine and it turns out its efficacy, clinical efficacy in terms of preventing severe disease or hospitalization was a little bit less, 60 percent to 70 percent prevention compared to 94 percent range with the Pfizer and Moderna. So given that, those less clinical efficacy, I think there is more reason for those who received the Johnson vaccine to strongly consider a booster or a second dose.

The data so far is showing that those who got a second dose after two months really had really remarkable increase in antibody levels and decreased hospitalizations so the protection rate actually went up from 70 percent to 94 percent for those who got the second J&J vaccine.

BROWN: OK.

KIM: Now for me personally the reason why I'm waiting is it all boils down to basically risk benefit assessment for each person. And I feel comfortable that the current vaccine which I received in December as part of the clinic trial I feel that at this time I probably still have adequate immunity and that's because recently I tested my antibodies and they're still evident in the testing.

BROWN: What you can do --

(CROSSTALK)

BROWN: I just want it for our viewers who might be wondering, you can get antibody testing at, you know, at a grocery store. It's just a blood prick. It's pretty easy to get which I know can be, you know, a question on people's minds as they're listening to you talk about this.

Dr. Ken Kim, thank you so much for coming on and sharing your analysis on the current state of play with COVID. We appreciate it.

KIM: Thank you.

BROWN: And still to come this hour, why Kobe Bryant's widow could be forced to take a psychiatric exam in a lawsuit over leaked photos.

Then as the Supreme Court faces new scrutiny, our Joan Biskupic gets a rare interview with Justice Stephen Breyer.

And my next guest says Americans are wrong to take their democracy for granted. She has watched her own country's freedom slip away.

You're in the CNN NEWSROOM.

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[18:17:50]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JON STEWART, COMEDIAN: It's bracing sometimes to hear the reality of people's lives in other countries as it's not to say that warning signs don't exist or bells aren't going off or that democracy is a birthright and it's something that will always be with us as a kind of a sash that we were having been crowned the greatest democracy. But it did remind us that we have a long way to go before we end up in those situations.

(END OF VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: Comedian Jon Stewart there talking Donald Trump's big lie and how it's shaking the foundations of our democracy. Experts I have spoken with on this show are not as optimistic about the system's ability to withstand the relentless attacks.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

FIONA HILL, FORMER TOP RUSSIA ADVISER DURING TRUMP ADMINISTRATION: So I think the most disturbing thing for anybody watching American politics for the last several years has been the fact that it's our own president, our own former president, Donald Trump, who has been talking down U.S. democracy.

I think this is the very first time certainly in living memory that this fabric of our democracy has been so stress tested by someone that millions of people had elected.

GEN. STANLEY MCCHRYSTAL (RET), U.S. ARMY: We assume that democracy in America which was founded by the founding fathers is just a permanent thing, but it's breakable. If we don't have rules and if we don't have consequences for people who go outside those rules, if we don't have a system that the vast majority of Americans believe is honest and committed to their well-being, then a new political system will arise. And I don't think we'll like it. And so the key about this is it's our fault. PROF. RICHARD HASEN, UC IRVINE SCHOOL OF LAW: If elected officials and

election officials believe the big lie and they're willing to do something to counter what they see as the big lie such as by changing the rules or by ignoring the rules, then we're in really serious trouble in this country.

IAN BASSIN, FOUNDER AND EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, PROTECT DEMOCRACY: If you look around the world, democracy is actually in the midst of a grave recession. And you see in countries like Hungary and Poland and Venezuela, they're no longer really democratic, although they still purportedly hold elections.

[18:20:01]

And now three of the four largest democracies in the world, India, Brazil, and the United States, have been governed by autocrats in recent years. And what is the thing that is going to stop us from following down that path is if we recognize that we are not immune to this global trend. It's only by thinking that it can't happen here that it could.

(END OF VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: That is a scary stuff to think about. Democracy is fragile. Case in point, Brazil where the president is already casting doubt on next year's election. Or places like Hungary with more than a decade of Democratic decline under Viktor Orban's hardlined leadership. In Poland, we see the erosion of rights and the transformation of its courts. And we've seen journalists jailed in Turkey.

Joining us now is Ece Temelkuran, she has unique insight into Turkey as a journalist and the author of "How to Lose a Country: The Seven Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship." Also joining is Richard Hasen, the author of "Election Meltdown: Dirty Tricks, Distrust and the Threat of American Democracy." He's also a law professor at the University of California Irvine.

Great to see you both. Ece, I want to start with you for perspective. You say there is arrogance in Americans thinking authoritarianism could not happen here. What is your message to them?

ECE TEMELKURAN, TURKISH JOURNALIST AND AUTHOR: Well, we are going through a global crisis of democracy. So no democracy is mature enough to be immune to fascism, rising right-wing populism or authoritarianism. And no institution is sturdy enough to repel this danger by just dismissing it. This is not only the United States, in other countries as well, including Great Britain. We are seeing the same thing.

And there are global patterns to this slide to fascism or slide to authoritarianism. So my point was when writing the book, that it didn't happen in Turkey because Turkey was a crazy country. It will happen to all of us unless we start acting together.

BROWN: So what does democracy collapsing look like? And I know you use the word "slide" because it's not like you wake up one day and you're no longer living in a democracy, right? What would it look like? What does that process look like and what is the end result?

TEMELKURAN: There are many people who think that fascism is a historical concept and it is buried in the battlefield of Second World War. But it is an ideological concept and it's a political tool as well. And it doesn't step into fully formed into the government. It just creeps into the system. They just -- they first mobilize and organize ignorance, and they call it a movement. They ask for respect, and when you respect them, you give the stage in the conventional politics and the first thing they do is elbow all the other political opponents out of the system, and they make ruthlessness.

They turn shamelessness into a political and cultural identity that they defend. So fascism or authoritarianism does not only happen on the political level, but it also goes as a moral corruption in the country. So it really intrudes into a system. So what we have to do, we want to do something, is to recognize the signs soon enough so it doesn't turn into a fully formed authoritarian regime.

BROWN: Richard, do you see that creep happening in the U.S.?

HASEN: Well, I certainly think we face this kind of danger. If you go back and look at the years when President Trump was in office, there were attacks on the press, the Democratic Party, the judiciary, the FBI, all of the institutions in the United States that served as checks on power and that served as a means of investigating and of providing kind of a counterweight to the power of the presidency.

And so I think it's no accident that Donald Trump was able to succeed as he did in this moment because social media and otherwise gave him direct access to be able to denigrate these other institutions. And that denigration has continued since he's left office where you have, according to polls and majority of Republicans who believe the false statement that the last election was stolen.

And if you believe the last election was stolen, you might be willing to do something to try to steal it back the next time around. So I think we're in a very precarious position in the United States right now.

BROWN: Let's talk about what the latest polls show. A CNN poll last month found that 52 percent of Americans were not confident that U.S. elections reflect the will of the people. I mean, that is a stunning number.

[18:25:00]

Ece, would you expect citizens of a country like the United States to have a confidence hovering that low, and what does it say to you?

TEMELKURAN: Well, I think we have to remember that to get, you know, from that guy after four years in power the entire institutions in the United States, entire democracy, for all the democracy forces had to come together. So this tells us a lot about what state is -- you know, American democracy. So we shouldn't be arrogant -- too confident about our democracies because these institutions are made of people and people can be deceived, or people can be too weak to protect the institutions.

BROWN: And we have seen --

TEMELKURAN: Which Richard has already talked about.

BROWN: Right, and we have seen politicians more than willing to push out lies for their own benefit, right? To persuade the public through lies to be on their side. In Arizona right now, a frontrunner for the Republican nomination for governor is former television anchor Carey Lake who is now known for delusional conspiracies. I mean, really, look at her Twitter account.

If people like her win public office and refuse to certify a rightful winner, then what, Richard?

HASEN: So we're really in trouble. What kept our democracy an what prevented a constitutional crisis and a political crisis last time around. Was the fact that there were heroic Republicans and Democrats but most importantly because the pressure was on the Republicans who stood up to Trump who were not willing to manipulate the rules to try to put him in power even though he was the election loser.

Well, a lot of those people are either being replaced, are in danger of being replaced, or are right now under pressure to try to buckle under pressure the next time. And so I think we really have to think about what we can do now to both strengthen our laws and our institutions so that if people without integrity are the ones involved in the counting of the ballots next time, there's going to be a potent response that is in line with the rule of law and not in line with what any political leader might want.

BROWN: This was such a fascinating discussion, really eye-opening as well.

Ece Temelkuran, thank you so much for coming on, sharing your perspective as a Turkish journalist, and Richard Hasen, thank you as well. Always great to see you.

TEMELKURAN: Thank you.

BROWN: Well, President Biden's commission reviewing the Supreme Court as calling for more transparency but not everyone agrees with that, including Justic Stephen Breyer. We're going to explain why he thinks less transparency is a good thing.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[18:32:08]

BROWN: The Biden administration's Blue Ribbon Commission evaluating the Supreme Court isn't due to submit its final report until next month. But the group has offered an early peek, and it seems no one of any political persuasion is happy. Among the early findings that there are good reasons for imposing term limits on justices and that the court should offer more transparency on how it chooses and rules on cases. Just days before the draft report was released, CNN Supreme Court

analyst Joan Biskupic sat down for a rare interview with Justice Stephen Breyer.

Joan, great to see you. Such a fascinating interview you did with Justice Breyer. These issues of course are raised long before the commission came out with this preliminary report. What does Justice Breyer say about them?

JOAN BISKUPIC, CNN SUPREME COURT ANALYST: Well, he generally is against any kind of major change in the court. We talked on Wednesday right before the preliminary report was released, so he was speaking more generally. He hadn't read everything yet. But he says he doesn't like the idea of immediate term limits, he doesn't like the idea of expanding the court to -- you know, beyond its nine, and, you know, what he says is that the Supreme Court has long been controversial.

He voted against the recent decision that allowed Texas to put in place its abortion ban after a pregnancy has hit six weeks, or really controversial issue, but he wasn't going to complain about that for our interview. He was mostly going to say that look, since the 1800s, the court has been controversial, it will always be controversial, and everyone should think long and hard about any kind of major changes.

Now when I spoke to him, I brought up transparency, because as you know, Pam, critics of the court have said that, you know, a lot of what it does behind the scenes, not on actual cases that are argued and fully briefed, but on these emergency orders like in the Texas case, there's just a lot of opaque rules that favor -- you know, they favor the Trump administration during that era, they can favor elite lawyers in the Supreme Court bar who have wealthy clients, and that's been an issue that the commission had looked at.

So when I talked to him, I asked generally about transparency. And we're going to listen to what he said now, and I just want to mention, because I know you're such a court groupie.

BROWN: I am.

BISKUPIC: That we're sitting at the Supreme Court Institute at Georgetown Law School where they have a replica of the real thing.

BROWN: Oh, my god. That's amazing.

BISKUPIC: So, Pam, it's going to look like the real thing. But here's what he said about transparency.

BROWN: OK. All right. Let's take a listen.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

JUDGE STEPHEN BREYER, U.S. SUPREME COURT: Transparency is usually a word that means something good. But I would say it's important not to have the transparency. And the reason not to have the transparency is it is very important for people to say what they think at that conference, not to make some argument that they think is better than the other person's argument or that they think will, whatever, it might be popular or whatever.

[18:35:06]

It is very important for people to say what they really think about these cases, and that's what happened.

BISKUPIC: Today you have liberal Democrats saying to you that you should step down so President Biden can appoint a successor. What strikes you about the continued expectations that liberals have had over the years about how you should act or not act?

BREYER: Everybody, you know, likes an argument. Why did I watch the baseball game last night? I mean, people like to think of things as these versus these. But one of the most difficult things is that's not your job to take sides. As I said, your job is to be there for everybody and to resolve things under the law, which takes time, it takes thought, these things aren't usually resolved, and so, of course, people will always want someone who will really decide the way I, says the average individual, want it decided.

Whether that's a conservative thing or a liberal thing, it's hardly surprising. The amazing thing about, to me, I mean, I've been a judge for almost 40 years and really when you put on that black robe, you understand whatever the appointment's process, however politically involved it was, once you put on the robe of a judge, you're a judge. And that means you're a judge for every person.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BISKUPIC: When I asked him about all the Democrats who are pressuring him to leave, he invoked Harry Truman and said, if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. And I think the bottom line is right now Stephen Breyer can stand the heat and he's not leaving the bench.

(LAUGHTER)

BROWN: Yes. He likes to keep us all hanging on that front.

BISKUPIC: That's right.

BROWN: All right, thanks so much. Joan Biskupic, we appreciate it again. Great interview.

And when we come back tonight, how a once powerful attorney allegedly worked with his housekeeper's family to sue himself for insurance money, and then pocket the payout.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[18:41:50]

BROWN: The late Kobe Bryant's widow could be forced to take a psychiatric exam in a lawsuit over leaked photos. Vanessa Bryant is reportedly asking for tens of millions of dollars in damages for emotional distress after pictures of the helicopter crash that killed her husband, daughter and seven others were allegedly shared improperly.

CNN legal analyst Joey Jackson joins me now.

Hey, Joey, nice to see you. Is this surprising to you that they're pushing for a psych evaluation given the stakes?

JOEY JACKSON, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: You know, it really is, Pamela. Good evening to you, good to be with you. You know, this is what lawyers do, though, and just to reset by virtue of what's happening here is that of course we know there was also a wrongful death action that Miss Bryant filed in addition to the others who on the helicopter with her husband on that day. That's wrongful death case settled as it related to the helicopter company. That's relevant to what I'm about to say.

There's a separate lawsuit, the one of which we speak, which deals with these photographs that apparently the deputies who are investigating that day at the site in addition to the fire department took, and apparently distributed them in a way that was against protocol, regulations and policies, and quite frankly, Pamela, against humanity.

Nobody should be distributing that and treating it as if it's, you know, material that you could laugh about or talk about even.

And so she was quite concerned that Miss Bryant and others, and as a result filed a lawsuit saying, I am emotionally distressed by this, and by the way, you violated my privacy and some other causes of action. And so what the attorneys in L.A. County did is they said to the extent that you're raising your mental health as an issue on the case, we believe we have the right, say the lawyers representing the county, right, to send you to a mental evaluation, and with that mental evaluation before an independent medical examiner.

Since you, Miss Bryant, put your mental health at issue, we should be able to really evaluate that. I, though, to the core of the question, don't think it's really an appropriate ask to make. And the basis for that is that there's some things, Pamela, that, you know, they're really jury questions and they're really commonsense questions, and the law can answer. The lawyers are saying for the county that, wait, how do we know that your mental stress is associated with your husband's death in a helicopter but not necessarily associated with the leaked photos?

I think that's splitting too many hairs, quite frankly, and I think a jury can make the determination that if someone dies and in that way and there are people violating protocol allegedly by distributing these things, then that's going to stress you. I don't think anyone needs an examination to make that determination. A jury can evaluate that.

And the last point I'll make, Pamela, is that, you know, how would a psychiatrist or another mental health professional say, you're 80 percent stressed as a result of the helicopter crash and you're 20 percent stressed as a result of the leaked photos.

BROWN: Right.

JACKSON: You can't split hairs like that. Again, I get that that's what lawyers do, but I don't think it's appropriate in this particular case.

BROWN: Yes. That's what I was going to ask you, how do you determine, OK, it was the crash or it's the pictures, and so forth. I want to ask you about another case that is capturing a lot of attention. There will be a bond hearing in Columbia, South Carolina, this week for disgraced attorney Alex Murdaugh who was arrested a few days ago in Florida. He is accused of working with the family of his late housekeeper to sue himself for insurance money that he then pocketed.

[18:45:07]

The housekeeper's family says the insurance claim was legitimate. Murdaugh is facing crisis really at all corners. I mean, really this case is just stunning including the unsolved murder of his wife and son back in June. And in September Murdaugh was shot in the head and later admitted he tried to get a former client to kill him so his surviving son could collect an insurance payout.

What is your take on these newly released affidavits?

JACKSON: Yes, you know, so many moving parts in this case. We know with respect to Mr. Murdaugh initially he claimed, right, that he had -- you know, he was on the side of the road and some stranger came and tried to kill him. That unraveled really. And then he said, OK, I was involved with getting somebody else to help kill me. Now we have an instance where of course we know that Miss Satterfield, who was his housekeeper, apparently she tripped, and as a result of that trip and fall -- that was in 2018 -- she dies.

He represents the family and the estate, tells the children, Pamela, that he will get all of this money for them as a result of her wrongful death. Gets the money, about $4 million. By the way, he tells the kids it was half a million, and doesn't give them that either. And so I think that, you know, when you go before the court and you don't have clean hands, what I mean is that you've already been determined to be sitting in connection with another case.

Now you're really robbing and defrauding clients, and that's assault. Look, when you're an attorney, you have a lot of those issues, where you keep money in escrow. And the client's trust is all you got. And if you violate that, certainly the court doesn't look at you well. And so what I make of it is, with all these moving parts, we know that there are other deaths that are out there that he may or he may not have been involved in, but it will open all those can of worms to determine what he knew, when he knew it, what he did, how he did it, what his criminality was if anything, and I think he has a lot to answer to to the court moving forward.

BROWN: Joey Jackson, as always, thanks for breaking it all down for us. We appreciate it.

And we do want to note that CNN has reached out to Murdaugh's attorneys for comment on the affidavits. After Murdaugh's arrest Thursday his attorneys released a statement saying he intends, quote, "to fully cooperate with this investigation as he has with the investigation into the murder of his wife and son."

Well, the QAnon rabbit hole may have been dug out recently, but conspiracy theories have run deep in the U.S. for decades. That is the focus of tonight's "THIS IS LIFE WITH LISA LING." Lisa joins me in a moment with a preview. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[18:52:03]

BROWN: Conspiracy theories have deep roots in American history, but the internet and social media have pushed conspiracy thinking into the mainstream. Tonight's all-new episode of "THIS IS LIFE WITH LISA LING" takes a closer look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LISA LING, CNN HOST, "THIS IS LIFE": Whether we're old or young, we can probably remember a time in our lives when something we thought was true was exposed as a lie.

LYNDON B. JOHNSON, 36TH PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Peace will be necessary for our final success. We will do this because our own security is at stake.

RICHARD NIXON, 37TH PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Let me just say this. I have never obstructed justice.

RONALD REAGAN, 40TH PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We did not, repeat, did not trade weapons or anything else for hostages.

LING: The erosion of trust took its toll. By the end of the 20th century, studies showed that over 50 percent of Americans believed in at least one conspiracy theory.

(END OF VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: "THIS IS LIFE" host Lisa Ling joins me now.

Lisa, I am so fascinated by this topic and I'm so glad that you're going to be taking a deeper dive into this later on. So tell us about it. You spoke to one QAnon conspiracy theory believer. Take us inside his thinking. How does he view what's happening in our country right now?

LING: Well, Pamela, look. This actually is so complex. And as you just showed in the clip, there has been an erosion of trust that has been historical, right? And so, when the pandemic began in this country, this was a scary time for all of us. And I think most of us, you know, we were in lockdown, and we started going down these rabbit holes. And simultaneously, you have the former president who was disavowing mainstream media. And so people needed to seek out information, right? They needed some

kind of source to seek out, and so often, they would go to social media or places like YouTube. And once you input into places like YouTube, right, or other social media, and let's say you enter something that is conspiratorial in nature, your feed automatically populates with more of that information. And then it just continues and continues.

And so it's not hard to understand how people have become victim to conspiracy theories, because once you've disavowed mainstream media and mainstream thinking, then you become open to whatever else is out there.

BROWN: So what is the end game with all of this?

LING: Well, it's an interesting question. Who is benefiting from all of this? And I don't know that people who espouse conspiracy theories or believe conspiracy theories quite understand this, but there are people who are benefiting financially, exponentially, and those are social media companies. You know, the longer you stay on these platforms, on these services, they -- that's the way they make money.

[18:55:05]

And so, up until very recently, until people started to become deplatformed, until the company started deplatforming people, conspiracy theories were running amok. And we'll just have to see, right, if the deplatforming will work. I mean, I talked to someone who followed QAnon just today who feature in our show and he says that they're lying low right now. They haven't gone away, but because so many of them have been deplatformed, they are having to go underground to communicate with each other.

BROWN: Lisa, before I let you go, I just have to tell you about our guest producer's daughter, Alexa, who tells us that you are her idol. She has been hooked on your show from the start. I think we have a picture to show. Apparently, she was so emotional when you gave the commencement speech at her all-girls school in 2018, that people thought something was wrong with her. So I am sure she is -- hopefully she's watching right now.

We know she's going to be watching your show later on. And I know I'm going to be watching, as well. Isn't that nice to know, though, the kind of impact you're having on people?

LING: Well, thank you so much.

BROWN: Lisa Ling, thank you.

LING: That means so much to me. Thank you, Pamela. Thank you for sharing that.

BROWN: And an all-new episode of "THIS IS LIFE WITH LISA LING" airs tonight at 10:00 only on CNN. We'll be right back.

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