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Shooting Probe Widens Beyond Accused Gunman, Parent; Jussie Smollett Takes the Stand, Testifying in His Own Defense; Justice Department Closes Probe into 1955 Emmett Till Killing; Better.com CEO Lets Go of 900+ Employees Over Zoom. Aired 3:30-4p ET

Aired December 06, 2021 - 15:30   ET

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

[15:30:00]

VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN HOST: Just in to CNN, an attorney for the Michigan shooting school suspect says he is now aware that his parents are in jail. The 15-year-old and his parents are sitting in the same jail, different cells, all three under suicide watch.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN HOST: And new questions surfacing about what happened in the hours leading up to the deadly shooting. The Oxford school system now requesting an independent investigation to see if school officials could have done more to stop it.

Joining us now is David Brill. He's a Florida attorney who represented families of students killed in the Parkland school shooting. David, thank you so much for being here. I just want to get specific in terms of what the school could have done. And so, number one, when they saw those disturbing images that this suspect had drawn of a victim bleeding, of a bullet, you know, going towards victim, of him saying my thoughts, you know, I can't control my thoughts, help me. Things like that. Could they have -- at that point, what should they have done exactly?

DAVID BRILL, REPRESENTED PARKLAND FAMILIES AFTER SCHOOL SHOOTING: Well, firstly, thank you very much for inviting me. And secondly, to answer your question, they could have and I submit should have done heck of a lot more than they did. Firstly, while police officers on the street have a requirement to meet probable cause to search someone without a warrant, school officials have a much lower standard. They only require a reasonable suspicion.

But plainly that existed here, so the first thing I would submit that they should have done is search the child's person and the child's background. Next, I think a full and proper threat assessment was incumbent on them to perform. And that type of threat assessment requires more than just your typical guidance counselor personnel that you have embedded in the schools. We're talking people that have expertise in psychological and psychiatric assessments, whether that's within the school system or contracted for entity, third party. But those are the basics.

Checking social media, you know, we're talking -- 2021, this is more than two decades since the tragedy at Columbine. The presumption shouldn't be that, oh, gee, this can't happen in our school. It should be quite the contrary. The presumption should be we need to make sure with as much certainty as humanly possible that it isn't going to happen in our school.

CAMEROTA: Yes.

BRILL: And that means keeping the other children in the student body safe, the administrators and the teachers in that school safe.

[15:35:00]

And there's no way to do that without doing those specific requirements to which I just alluded.

BLACKWELL: David, you, as we said, represented the families of the Parkland victims. Broward County reached a $25 million settlement with 52 victims of that shooting. The parents of those students who were not killed, were not injured, who were in the building that day -- and we've seen the videos of them, kind of bury themselves in rooms and climbing out of windows -- the breadth of a civil case that they have against the county, against the school district, against this district?

BRILL: Are we talking Michigan, Victor?

BLACKWELL: Yes, Michigan.

BRILL: Well, Michigan, from my research into the matter is a far different animal than Florida, and not for the good, frankly, for these victims. Specifically, Michigan has a more comprehensive sovereign and governmental immunity law. And that law prohibits the bringing of a claim or lawsuit against the entity, like in this instance, the school or school district. There's -- from my read -- complete immunity there.

The only option that is available for the victims of this horrific tragedy that I'll digress to note is becoming all together all too common place in America. You know, where injured and killed students outpace the injured and killed soldiers abroad -- but I know that's a topic for another day. But the victims here have -- from my read -- only the option to bring a claim against the individual school actors like the guidance counselors, and only if they can prove that those actors acted with gross negligence and not simply simple negligence.

CAMEROTA: David, I think your point actually, does bear repeating. You're saying that more school children are killed in America every year than our military personnel overseas?

BRILL: That's my understanding from reading the data, yes.

CAMEROTA: I mean, that is just such an indictment, obviously, of something that is going horribly, horribly wrong. And so, what I hear you saying is the school is immune. Basically, the school and their choices, and the fact that they didn't search, they could have legally, you're saying, search his backpack, even though it's his possession, the school could have searched his backpack. Right? BRILL: Could have and should have with a mere reasonable suspicion, which was manifested in the case here, yes. And while I would, of course, defer to a Michigan counsel on these issues of civil practice, and the like, I'm pretty confident that I am correct that that is the case in civil law regarding the immunity that the school and the district have and the minimal opening that would be existing for civil practitioners to sue only those guidance counselors.

And of course, I hasten to add that the parents themselves are subject to liability. There is a clear standard in the law that you have to secure loaded firearms in a location that they're not accessible to children, especially minors, so that they don't use them inappropriately and like was obviously done here.

CAMEROTA: Yes, that's a low bar just asking the parents to do just that, which according to prosecutors these parents didn't. David Brill, thank you.

BRILL: My pleasure, and again, thank you and my sincerest condolences to everyone affected by that tragedy. I get tired of saying it, but it doesn't make it any less true.

CAMEROTA: Us too. Thank you, David.

BLACKWELL: Thank you, David.

CAMEROTA: OK, meanwhile, former "Empire" actor Jussie Smollett takes the stand to defense himself in his criminal trial for allegedly lying to police that he was the victim of a hate crime. So, we'll tell you what he said next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLACKWELL: Former "Empire" actor, Jussie Smollett is on the stand right now, testifying in his own defense. Smollett is charged with six counts of disorderly conduct for allegedly falsely reporting to police that he was the victim of a racist and anti-gay hate crime in Chicago in January of 2019. Last week two brothers told the jury that Smollett paid them to carry out the attack. This was his attempt to get media attention.

CAMEROTA: CNN's Omar Jimenez is in Chicago for us. He So, Omar, how is Jussie Smollett explaining all of this?

OMAR JIMENEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Victor and Alisyn, a lot of the testimony today has centered on Jussie Smollett's relationship with these brothers. Bola Osundairo, or Bon as Jussie Smollett testified that he called him, was someone he said was a friend, but Ola Osundairo was someone he said he couldn't trust, someone that creeped him out, someone that they didn't speak to each other when they went out at times. And so, that was how he framed the relationship with Ola, basically someone he knew through proxy by Bola.

The testimony though also got into details about drugs that Jussie Smollett said Bola Osundairo was able to get for them, along a sexual relationship, he testified, began to forge. Now, specifically, the reason that's important is because one of the defense theories is that homophobia from the brother Ola Osundairo, they say was part of a motivating factor in what they say was a real attack in this.

[15:45:00]

So, they forged further into that part of testimony to the point where Smollett testified when all three of them were out at one point, Bola and Smollett felt they had to sneak away from the actual encounter. So, this testimony is ongoing right now. But this is expected to be the last full day of proceedings with the judge saying he's 100 percent certain it will be in the jury's hands by tomorrow -- Victor, Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: OK, Omar Jimenez, thank you.

Well, the Justice Department is officially closing its investigation into the murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till for a second time.

BLACKWELL: We'll explain why, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:50:00]

BLACKWELL: New developments today in the 65-year-old murder case of African American teenager Emmett Till.

CAMEROTA: The Justice Department officially closed the case today for the second time. CNN's Laura Jarrett is here with us. Laura, what happened?

LAURA JARRETT, CNN ANCHOR, EARLY START: Guys, so this was one of the most grisly, notorious, infamous cases of the generation. The story we were all told in school was that Emmett Till when he was 14 travels from Chicago to see his family in Mississippi, whistles at a white woman, ends up lynched, tortured, beaten and murdered by two white men who eventually confess to that killing.

The Justice Department looks at this case for years. The case has essentially gone cold. Then in 2017, there's this explosive new claim in a book by a Duke University professor, his name is Timothy Tyson. He claims that he found the woman at the center of the original accusation, interviews her and the woman takes her trial testimony and says that part where I talked about Till actually making those overtures to me is not true. It's an explosive claim, if true, essentially lying, right. Turns out it's harder to get to the bottom of that than investigators originally thought.

They go and they interview Tyson. They interview the woman at the center of this. They look for any notes. They do an exhaustive search and it all turns up cold. Not only does it turn up cold but the woman at the center of this says I did not recant my testimony in fact I stand by all of it.

And so, it leaves investigators essentially with no recourse and no answers for this family that as you said for 65 years has been trying to get to the bottom of any other co-conspirators or other people involved in this case.

I reached out to the professor involved here. Obviously, since DOJ is sort of taking on his credibility here, he's not gotten back to me.

And I also want to point out DOJ is not saying that the original claims from this accuser were true. But they are saying they were not able to back up the idea that she actually lied.

CAMEROTA: So that means it's over now?

JARRETT: For now. Until something new comes forth and they reopen it again, right.

BLACKWELL: All right. Laura Jarrett, thank you.

JARRETT: Hard news for the family.

BLACKWELL: Yes.

CAMEROTA: Thank you.

BLACKWELL: Well, hundreds of workers joined their company's CEO on a Zoom call. Where he told them they'd all just been laid off. That story next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:55:00]

BLACKWELL: A gut punch for hundreds of employees of the mortgage company better.com. Listen to this. During a staff meeting -- this was a Zoom call -- better.com CEO announced everyone on the call, more than 900 employees were being laid off effectively immediately.

CAMEROTA: Merry Christmas, everyone. CNN business reporter Matt Egan joins us now. What did he say? I mean how dare he do this right now. 900 all at once in a Zoom call?

MATT EGAN, CNN BUSINESS REPORTER: Yes, I mean this is a textbook example of how CEOs are not supposed to treat their employees.

I mean can you imagine that though, dialing into a Zoom call like 900 of your colleagues and you find out that you've all been let go right before the holidays? It's unthinkable but that's exactly what happened at better.com which is this fast-growing digital mortgage company.

Now we have a clip where you can actually hear the CEO, Vishal Garg, kind of emotionlessly breaking the news to employees.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

VISHAL GARG, CEO BETTER.COM: If you're on this call, you are part of the unlucky group being laid off. Your employment here is terminated effective immediately.

(END VIDEO CLIP) CAMEROTA: That's crazy.

EGAN: Somewhere even Michael Scott has got to be cringing and shaking his head at those comments.

Now as far as why the company had these layoffs, they said market efficiency, performance and productivity. Let me read you a statement from the CFO of the company.

He said: Having to conduct layoffs is gut wrenching, especially this time of the year. However, a fortress balanced sheet and a reduced and focused workforce together set us up to play offense going into a radically evolving homeownership market.

The company refused to comment further about how all of this went down. And this is not the first controversial issue for the CEO either. In an e-mail obtained by Forbes, the CEO told employees they are quote, too damn slow and called them quote, a bunch of dumb dolphins.

One other point though about these layoffs. Just before they were announced internally, better.com received a $750 million cash infusion as part of a plan to go public. So, it's not like they were running out of cash.

CAMEROTA: Oh my gosh, that's horrible.

BLACKWELL: You're a mean one, Mr. Grinch.

CAMEROTA: Yes, thanks, Matt.

EGAN: Thank you.

CAMEROTA: All right, now we have to get to this story. A dentist in Italy tried to use a fake silicone arm when he went in for his vaccine and the nurse almost fell for it.

BLACKWELL: So, this nurse was about to administer the shot when she noticed something wasn't right. There are no veins in this arm. The skin color didn't match his face.

CAMEROTA: I'm sure the temperature was off.

BLACKWELL: Yes, the man admitted to his deception. He could now face charges.

CAMEROTA: OK. A couple of things.

BLACKWELL: Couple things.

CAMEROTA: Italians are known for, you know, food and for art, not common sense, OK?

BLACKWELL: No, OK, I'll take it.

CAMEROTA: But I give him an "A" for effort. BLACKWELL: OK.

CAMEROTA: But I don't think he thought it all the way through that plan.