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Now, U.S. Supreme Court to Hear Challenge to Mississippi Abortion Ban; Writings From Suspected Michigan Shooter Obtained in Overnight Search; Report Shows Trump Tested Positive Three Days Before Debate With Biden. Aired 10-10:30a ET

Aired December 01, 2021 - 10:00   ET

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

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JIM SCIUTTO, CNN NEWSROOM: A very good Wednesday morning to you. I'm jim sciutto.

ERICA HILL, CNN NEWSROOM: And I'm Erica Hill.

Right now, the stage is set for the most important case involving abortion rights in this country in 30 years. You see the live pictures there outside the Supreme Court, a number of people gathered. That's because this morning the Supreme Court will consider a Mississippi case that could ultimately overturn Roe v. Wade.

The state wants the conservative-leaning high court to uphold a law that bans abortions after 15 weeks with very few exceptions. And if that landmark opinion is overruled, it would almost immediately eviscerate abortion rights in large parts of the country specifically in the south and the Midwest.

SCIUTTO: this case has consequence, big ones. The fact that the conservative-led court agreed to even consider the case suggests that it's poised to, perhaps at a minimum, at least scale backcourt precedent. There's also the possibility they reverse it outright.

In a separate dispute, the court is considering a Texas law that bars the procedure after six weeks. The justices have allowed that law to remain in place for three months now, which essentially rendered Roe v. Wade moot in the country's second largest state.

Let's beginning with CNN Justice Correspondent Jessica Schneider. Jessica, walk us through what we'll see today and I imagine what we might be able to glean from the questions that you hear from the justices.

JESSICA SCHNEIDER, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: That's exactly what the questions will be, is what these conservative justices might think about the possibility of overturning Roe v. Wade and which might actually vote for overturning Roe v. Wade. So, all eyes and ears because, of course, this will be live streamed audio only.

All eyes and ears will be on these six conservative justices. The difference between this case and when we've heard cases back in 1973, 1992 is that now, of course, there is this solid conservative majority. And the key question is should Roe v. Wade be overturned? That's because the Mississippi ban that has not taken effect because it's been blocked by lower courts, it bans most abortions after 15 weeks with limited exceptions.

And that law flies in the face of Supreme Court precedent. That's what the lower courts said because Supreme Court precedent, of course, established the constitutional right for women to obtain abortions and it also established that states cannot outright ban abortions prior to viability, 22 to 24 weeks.

The Mississippi solicitor general will be arguing to the court here that the court should erase this viability line and say that Mississippi's law is okay because it doesn't unduly burden women in this state since their argument is the only abortion clinic the state doesn't do abortions past 16 weeks anyway. So, banning abortions at 15 wouldn't make much of a difference, according to Mississippi.

Of course, the abortion providers lawyer will get up before the justices and says that this is precedent that should not be overruled, that millions of people, millions of women have depended on Roe v. Wade and Casey. But this will send ripple effects across the country. This will change the landscape, Erica and Jim, because there are at least a dozen states with post Roe trigger laws, that means if Roe v. Wade is overturned, abortions will be banned in those dozen states immediately.

The court will hear arguments starting now. But, of course, they won't issue a decision for several months. This likely wouldn't be until June when their most consequential decisions are issued. Guys?

SCIUTTO: Jessica Schneider, thanks very much.

Let's discuss now the implications with former Assistant U.S. Attorney Kim Wehle and former New York City Prosecutor Paul Callan.

Kim, if I could begin with you, based on the current makeup of the court -- by the way, this is not by accident, this has been a pipeline of judges through the years in part with the intention of putting judges on the highest court that might overturn Roe. Based on the makeup of the court now, what is the most likely outcome here, a trimming back of Roe v. Wade or perhaps an overturn?

KIM WEHLE, AUTHOR, HOW TO READ THE CONSTITUTION -- AND WHY: Well, Jim, I honestly don't see much of a trimming back as an alternative here. I think it's either going to be affirming Roe versus Wade or it will be overruling of Roe versus Wade. And that's because this is not a case in which where there was pushing the line of viability or what was established kind of tinkering at the edges. This is a straight shot at the heart of Roe versus Wade itself. They're asking to overturn it.

And in a sur petition, the request to actually have this case heard, Mississippi stated we're not looking to overturn Roe, but once Amy Coney Barrett was put on the court, that's when the tone shifted. And they're essentially trying to obliterate a constitutional right. Normally, we're talking about balancing, what should the state's interest be as opposed to the women's interests here.

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The reason I think it could be reversed or overruled is because the existence, the very existence of that constitutional right is what's on the chopping block right now. And that's pretty unusual to say, okay, we have a constitutional right that's respected. We're going to now erase it. Normally, it's we're just going to say the state has more interest in protecting here, the argument is unborn fetal life, number two, women's health, and number three, doctors' integrity. But, of course, women are 14 times more likely to die through childbirth than they are through safe abortion procedures.

HILL: Paul, given everything too that Kim just laid out, if you are arguing against this Mississippi law, where are you coming at this from this morning?

PAUL CALLAN, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Well, you make a clear argument that the Supreme Court in Roee versus Wade essentially set down a standard, and that was viability of a fetus. And at viability, you can't prohibit abortion after that point in time.

Now, at that time, it was 28 weeks. Since that time they have lowered that because the science has changed to 23 weeks in Planned Parenthood versus Casey. So, I think in the end, this whole debate is going to be not so much about the elimination of Roe versus Wade and the right to abortion, but when is the appropriate time that you can start to put restrictions on abortion.

You know, the science is getting a lot better in this area and we know fetuses survive at a much earlier time than maybe they did in 1973 when Roe came down. So, I'm not so sure there will be a ban on Roe.

SCIUTTO: Kim, let me ask you this, though, because if you look at the Texas law, for instance, there are no exceptions for rape or incest. Is there -- where does the law stand on this beyond the science of liability, the question of a woman's right to chooses under those circumstances?

WEHLE: Right. And there is no exceptions for rape or incest with this Mississippi law. Again, I mean, Roe versus Wade, the right to abortion comes from the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which is a post-civil war amendment that was designed to address the abuses of enslaving people, right, families torn apart, forced pregnancies, rape, all of those things, physical abuse that was tolerated in America. The 14th Amendment was designed to address that.

And so the idea is the 14th Amendment encompasses lots of rights, the right to marry, the right to contraception, the right to decide where our children are educated, the right to our own medical care and the right to tell the state, listen, you can't interfere with my decision to end a pregnancy at a certain time.

So, the ripple effects, Jim, of this, are, in my mind, from a constitutional standpoint, well beyond Roe itself. And I think this conservative court has to have that firmly in mind.

HILL: And it will be interesting to see how much that comes into play, because even in Roe -- and correct me if I'm wrong here, but when they pointed out the 14th Amendment, privacy is not specifically listed in there, but noted the right was an absolute. So, in terms of the state, right, making that statement on potential life, which was really in the third trimester, looking at all of that, looking at what the implications could be far beyond a woman's right to choose and her access to a safe, legal abortion, Paul, what could the dominos be that would fall there?

CALLAN: Well, I think that if the court does decide to keep Roe in place but to place more restrictions on the right to abortion, i.e., the saying, well, we have to go back to an earlier point in time. Now, Mississippi says the cut-off point is 15 weeks, which I think the court is going to find that's way too early. So, I think what you're going to see is a court looking for keeping and upholding the Roe decision but pushing it back to an earlier point in the pregnancy where a woman has to seek abortion. And after that time, it will be harder to get abortions in the United States.

I would be shocked if they overrule it completely because I think there will be an enormous controversy. But you were talking about that right of privacy. That actually goes back to a Connecticut case, Griswald versus Connecticut, which had to do with -- Connecticut was trying to ban contraceptives at that time. And when the court looked at that law, clearly, they thought it was absolutely absurd, but there was nothing explicitly in the Constitution about privacy.

And they essentially said, well, there's a penumbra that comes off of other rights, that's the term that's been used to describe it, of the right to privacy, even though it's not mentioned in the Constitution. And that later would become the basis of Roe.

So, Roe stands on very sandy ground in terms of constitutional doctrine. I think that's why people worry about it being overturned.

WEHLE: I would disagree with that, actually. Griswald was preceded by Myer versus Nebraska in 1922, 1923 where the court held that the state can't ban German language instruction in private schools.

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So, the idea that the due process cause enumerates our rights vis-a- vis the government just isn't accurate across many rights that I think we just all assume are going to be or own -- there for us in the morning when we wake up as Americans.

SCIUTTO: Well, that might be the argument, Erica, we hear in that courtroom beginning today.

HILL: Could be. It would be interesting to see what the questions are that are asked, as has been pointed out as we, again, won't have a ruling until likely June.

Kim Wehle, Paul Callan, appreciate you both joining us this morning. Thank you.

We are also keeping a very close watch on developments in this story this morning. The sheriff investigating that deadly school shooting in Michigan says they have obtained new evidence, and the sheriff believes that will help in the investigation. That evidence pertains to the 15-year-old suspect who is in custody and currently on suicide watch.

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SHERIFF MICHAEL BOUCHARD, OAKLAND COUNTY, MICHIGAN: Our investigators, they executed a search warrant there, and the detectives that were at the school -- we believe we have some writings that contain some of his thoughts and they're beginning to go through that.

They're beginning to go through those. Those were only picked up in the middle of the night last night when I was talking to some of the investigators.

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SCIUTTO: Meanwhile, more children are dead. This video shows the chilling moments students sheltered in place as the suspect attempted to lie his way into a classroom, it seemed, posing as a sheriff, as a first responder. The children didn't buy that, and that's why they ran out the backdoor, as you see there.

Three people were killed, three young people, eight others injured, a 14-year-old girl is on life support this morning following the shooting, just the latest in a series of deadly school shootings in the country.

Former Assistant Secretary for the Department of Homeland Security and CNN National Security Analyst Juliette Kayyem joins us now.

You and I, the three of us, we've discussed events like this many times. One of the questions, of course, is, here is a kid who clearly was troubled. He has some writings police are looking at right now. He got a gun from his father, an automatic handgun here, semiautomatic. How does that happen? Is it legal?

In so many cases like this, it ends up the gun was obtained illegally, brought into the school and people get shot.

JULIETTE KAYYEM, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Yes, that's exactly right. So, two main questions right now, motivation and access. The sheriff seemed to suggest that they have some more information about motivation and what he was writing and what was motivating him. He had enough ammunition going in that I think we can put to rest the notion that this was sort of a targeted attack or was he going after particular students. He had plenty to do more harm.

The second is, of course, the access issue. We've now learned that the father -- I think it's the father, purchased the gun just five days ago so that the student, the killer, had access to it from the home. That seems a very tight timeframe from an investigation purpose. Why did the father buy the gun at that moment? How did the kid have that much access to the ammunition? So, those are where the investigation will go as they assess the charges against him.

HILL: And the interesting fact, too, right, the suspect -- there is an actual suspect who's in custody. The fact that he's alive, maybe not giving them a motive, maybe not being as cooperative, as they'd like, how much do you think in terms of information will actually be gleaned for him to better understand and ideally stop this from happening in the future?

KAYYEM: So, this is a case -- this is interesting because he is alive. And so I suspect the information flow that we generally see out of these mass shootings, where the killer is often killed in those incidents, in this case, I think we'll hear a lot less because they have to protect that information because they are going to bring it in court. He may have an insanity defense or some other defense. They're going to determine likely that he'll be tried as an adult. And so this will feel different. It might go dark for a while, so to speak.

On the stopping it the next time, I mean, I was saying all day yesterday, we really can't do anything more to protect ourselves at this stage except for focusing on access to guns and motivation. I mean, this was a -- I can't even say the word. Like this was perfect, right, in the sense of the kids knew what to do, they weren't fooled by his diabolical allegation that he was law enforcement. They had a police officer in the high school. They had done drills and training with law enforcement. You don't get better, in quotes, in terms of response. And I think that shows just the defensive and unproductive nature of how we're addressing school shootings at this stage.

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SCIUTTO: Or what the kids were forced to do. We were just showing pictures. They had to stack their chairs and desks to barricade the door to save some lives. Three students are dead, to save some lives. That's the good news. But the kids had to do that.

KAYYEM: Right.

SCIUTTO: Juliette, thanks so much. There they are, teenagers.

Still to come this hour, a new timeline emerging this morning over former President Trump's coronavirus diagnosis, the disturbing timeline ahead, what it reveals about who he held that diagnosis from.

And as omicron spreads to more countries, the new requirements the CDC is working on for travelers entering the U.S.

HILL: Plus, defying the January 6th committee, another contempt charge looming? We're going to speak with a member of that committee, ahead.

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[10:20:00] HILL: New revelations this morning about former President Trump's bout with COVID and specifically what he hid from the American people about that infection and his health status. All of this coming from a new book by former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows which was obtained by The Guardian.

SCIUTTO: CNN has not yet confirmed this independently, but the book details how the former president got a positive COVID test result three days before the debate a Joe Biden and kept it secret.

Here is the timeline as we know it. On Saturday, September 26th of 2020, Trump hosted the rose garden event for Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett. Very few masks, you'll notice, no social distancing. At least a dozen people who attended that would later test positive.

HILL: And then later that evening, he made his way to a rally in Pennsylvania. As Marine One is lifting off for that event, the White House doctor calls and says to stop him because his COVID test came back positive. According to Meadows, he was then tested again. That test came back negative. So, they moved on as if nothing had happened.

SCIUTTO: The next day, Trump attended an event with gold star families, those are families who lost children in combat, and holds a news conference in the White House briefing room.

On Monday, September 28th, he staged another event, this with business leaders at the White House and held another event in the rose garden, a news conference, to talk about, amazingly, his efforts to ramp up COVID testing.

HILL: On Tuesday, the day of the debate, Meadows says Trump was moving more slowly than usual, but, quote, nothing was going to stop Trump from going out there. The host of that debate, Fox's Chris Wallace, said Trump wasn't tested because he arrived too late. They allowed him on stage, you may recall, due to the honor system. This is the same event where he made fun of then-Candidate Biden for wearing a mask.

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DONALD TRUMP, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT: When needed I wear masks. I don't wear masks like him. Every time you see him, he's got a mask on.

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SCIUTTO: Of course, two days after that, Trump tested positive again, alerts the world by tweet. Later spends three nights in the hospital getting treatment, advanced treatment. In the last hour, the former president responded in a statement saying, quote, the story of me having COVID prior to or during the first debate is fake news. In fact, a test revealed that I did not have COVID prior to the debate.

This is just in to CNN, the Centers for Disease Control will provide names for passengers on flights entering the U.S. from Southern Africa to state and local health departments, this in response to the emerging omicron coronavirus variant, this according to a health official. This says, the Biden administration is considering new testing requirements for all travelers entering the U.S. from abroad.

HILL: CNN's Athena Jones joining us from Newark's International Airport.

So, Athena, airports being factored in, it sounds like, to the nation's surveillance strategy. How is that going to work?

ATHENA JONES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Erica. That's right. Well, the Biden administration is considering these stricter testing requirements, all of this, of course, in an effort to increase surveillance, looking out for the omicron variant of the coronavirus, but also for even more dominant strain, like the delta here in America. This is the sort of thing that Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the CDC director, telegraphed to reporters on Tuesday. Take a listen to what she said.

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DR. ROCHELLE WALENSKY, CDC DIRECTOR: CDC is evaluating how to make international travel as safe as possible, including pre-departure testing closer to the time of flight and considerations around additional post-arrival testing and self-quarantine.

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JONES: And so under consideration are a number of measures, including requiring everyone traveling to the U.S. to be tested for COVID-19 the day before their flight. Currently, they have to be tested three days before their flight.

Another thing being considered is requiring all travelers, including U.S. citizens and permanent residents, to be tested again once they get home, once they get here to the U.S., regardless of their vaccination status.

Now, this is something that's still being debated. There's no final decision yet. But, of course, this is such a fast-moving situation globally. And so this is the kind of thing that could change quickly.

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An announcement can be made any day now. And we know the president is set to lay out steps his administration will take to fight COVID in the course of the coming weeks.

One more thing I want to note about what's happening here at Newark Airport, you can see behind me, it's quiet right now. This is an express check booth. This is where travelers on certain international flights, right now there are five flights this is being offered to, can have enhanced screening. It's a free COVID test they can get immediately upon arrival. It's a mail-away test and they'll, of course, be testing anything that turns out positive for that omicron variant, so one more way to keep surveillance on this. Erica, Jim?

HILL: Athena Jones with the latest for us, I appreciate it. Athena, thank you. SCIUTTO: A reminder that CNN is hosting a global town hall to answer your questions about the new omicron variant. Join Anderson Cooper, Dr. Sanjay Gupta and Dr. Anthony Fauci tonight at 9:00 Eastern Time.

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