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Uvalde School Police Chief Insists He's in Touch with DPS Every Day; Shifting Timelines Raise Sharp Criticisms About Police Response; Uvalde Incident Commander Refuses to Answer Questions; Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen Says She's Wrong on Inflation. Aired 9-9:30a ET

Aired June 01, 2022 - 09:00   ET

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

[09:00:00]

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: Good Wednesday morning to you. I'm Jim Sciutto.

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Poppy Harlow. We're glad you're with us.

Critical new questions this morning about the investigation into the school shooting at Robb Elementary School that killed 19 children and two teachers.

SCIUTTO: Right now Texas officials said Uvalde School District Police Chief Pedro Arredondo is not responding to officials. You'll remember Arredondo was identified as the, quote, "incident commander" who made the call to hold off breaching the classroom, where all those 21 victims were killed. But in an exclusive interview with CNN this morning, Chief Arredondo is contradicting that. He says he is in touch with the Department of Public Security.

Let's go straight to CNN producer Aaron Cooper. He just spoke with Arredondo.

Aaron, what did he tell you?

AARON COOPER, CNN PRODUCER: Yes, it was just that, he told me that he is in touch with the Texas Department of Public Safety every day. I asked him about the comments that they had been hoping to speak with him, to have an interview with him, and he had not been responsive. He repeated that he was in contact with them every day. He said he was focusing on the families. He was not -- did not want to talk about the investigation, did not want to talk about details of what was going on, but wanted to focus on the families.

I asked him about being sworn in as city council member here in his hometown in Texas last night. He told me that was a private affair, it was not something that they wanted public because they were concerned about the families once again. It was a very brief discussion. He then hopped in his vehicle and left. After speaking as you see right now with some of the police officers that have been watching his home, that have been there -- as a protective measure. HARLOW: Aaron, just to be clear here, this is exclusive reporting just

in to CNN that you got because he hasn't been talking to the media at all. But can you just explain for our viewers how different it is, what the chief just told you, than what DPS has been saying, that people have been trying to talk to him?

COOPER: He's making the point that he is in contact with DPS every day and that DPS has told us and said before that they are not getting the responses that they're looking for from the chief. So a distinction there that probably some explanation is probably due.

SCIUTTO: Aaron --

HARLOW: And can you imagine -- go ahead, Jim.

SCIUTTO: Did he specify what in touch -- what he means by that? I mean, is he responding to e-mails but not the questions?

COOPER: He didn't go into details. He didn't say how he was in contact. He said he didn't want to take questions. It was a very brief discussion, but as you will note, he is still wearing his badge, he is still wearing his gun, so he's still obviously on the force.

SCIUTTO: OK.

COOPER: And will be interesting to see.

HARLOW: Aaron Cooper, thank you for that really important reporting on the ground. We appreciate it. And just -- I was going to say, can you imagine being these families who are now hearing two completely different things, Jim, about who is answering questions and who is not.

SCIUTTO: No question.

HARLOW: And this is all part of the shifting timeline that is drawing so much focus to the remarks that Arredondo made when he was running for city council before the shooting as a candidate, at a candidate forum, rather, back in April. The chief was asked about his approach to very complex issues. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PETE ARREDONDO, UVALDE SCHOOL DISTRICT POLICE CHIEF: To me, nothing is complicated. Everything has a solution. And that solution starts with communication. I always say that something can always be improved or corrected or implemented in a positive manner as long as you're within the means of the law, and guidelines and ordinances in the state. So communication is key to me.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: There is also new information this morning about the door that the shooter used to enter the school. Officials now say it was not propped open, as initially reported, but closed by a teacher when she realized that there was a gunman on campus. Investigators are trying to determine why it failed to lock.

SCIUTTO: Yes. I mean, it's key because this is yet another case where it seemed that the -- first of all, the police story did not stand up. Two, that it seemed that there was some diversion of responsibility here.

HARLOW: Right.

SCIUTTO: But the facts do not support that. Nick Valencia is near Robb Elementary School.

Nick, there's also new audio of the active shooter message that was sent to Uvalde parents, and goodness, as a parent, I can't imagine receiving the same, what my reaction would be.

NICK VALENCIA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right.

SCIUTTO: But tell us how that fits into the timeline as we know it.

[09:05:03]

VALENCIA: That's right. It seems like every day, Jim and Poppy, there is a new damaging detail that just doesn't add up. It seems that the public here is at best being misled and at worst just being flat out lied to. There is a lack of transparency. That much is clear. And it's adding to the grief and frustration as this broken community tries to make sense of what happened last week.

And our affiliate KSAT obtained new audio of a message that was sent to parents while officers were already at the school, and two children, at least two children were on the phone with 911 begging for help.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Uvalde CISD. Uvalde CISD parents, there is an active shooter at Robb Elementary. Law enforcement is on site. Your cooperation is needed at this time by not visiting the campus.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VALENCIA: We know that parents rushed to the scene anyway and it created a chaotic scene as they were held back by officers. We know that that shooter was inside for more than an hour. And there was at least 19 officers inside the school hallway but was, again, were given orders reportedly by the controversial figure that we just talked about, Pete Arredondo, to not breach that door, that classroom door, where the gunman was barricaded inside -- Jim, Poppy.

HARLOW: Nick Valencia, on the ground there, thank you for that reporting.

And joining us now to discuss is former deputy director of the FBI, Andrew McCabe.

I mean, Andy, where do we start? Just back to the parents. Can you imagine being a parent and having all of these narratives, conflicting narratives consistently?

ANDREW MCCABE, CNN SENIOR LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Well, Poppy, like you and Jim, I am a parent and the idea that you could not trust the law enforcement officials who you rely upon to protect your children because you've quite simply be given such a morass of conflicting information that you can't really take them at their word, so even now when they come out to try to correct a piece of misinformation, like the propping open of the door, for example, you just have to step back and shake your head and wonder, like, when are they going to change their minds about that next?

And this will completely undermine the community's faith and the conclusions of this investigation about who did what when and what the lessons learned here were. Just a terrible situation for the community to be in. And it's really a self-inflicted wound by law enforcement involved.

SCIUTTO: OK, clearly accountability is key here. So, and that could come in the form of civil cases, lawsuits, et cetera, which are likely. But let's talk about criminal first. The Parkland school resource officer was charged with child neglect under Florida law as well as lying to investigators. That case is still pending.

What is the legal standard that would be applied to hold, for instance, a chief to a similar legal liability, perhaps criminal liability for not going in sooner?

MCCABE: It was really hard to imagine a scenario in which any of the law enforcement officers who were in charge at the scene, so, of course, Chief Arredondo and any others who we maybe haven't heard about yet who were in positions of decision-making. It's hard to imagine a scenario in which they'd be held criminally responsible. Criminal responsibility always involves some level of intent.

So they would have to be proven to have been, like, deliberately reckless in their decision-making or, you know, it's a pretty high bar to meet. So that's hard to imagine. Civil liability is -- I mean, I'm not a civil lawyer, but I would assume it is in the future for each one of these institutions and the leadership that folks that functioned in them because you know the job did not get done here.

So there's all kinds of laws that you could point to in a claim for civil liability, failure to train, failure to execute responsibly, failure to make, you know, decisions here, all kinds of various work simple negligence.

HARLOW: Andy, when it comes to the chain of command and how it is that Arredondo was the incident commander here and in charge for all of those, you know, perilous minutes of inaction, it turns out there were other top officials on the scene, heads of other, you know, divisions, other law enforcement agencies. Could it have been also that those other commanders agreed with his decision not to go in, not to breach the door? And how does sort of the hierarchy work here when making a decision in the middle of a crisis about who leads?

MCCABE: Sure. So that system that we're talking about is the incident command system. It's well established, every department trains on the scene, basic premises put out by the Department of Homeland Security. So the incident command system would, as a default rule, whoever is in charge of that jurisdiction, in this case it's the school property and that's how the school police officer, the Chief Arredondo, is in charge of incident command from the beginning.

[09:10:12]

But that command can very easily be shifted to a larger, more capable, more sophisticated, more experienced law enforcement unit, like in this situation, the first question I have is, why Uvalde police didn't take command of that scene? They were the law enforcement entity on scene, with a SWAT team that had trained on active shooter response.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

MCCABE: So we have a lot to learn about this. All the other commanders who were there working around and with Chief Arredondo should be questioned vigorously. And the -- and we don't know if they tried to shift the incident command to Uvalde and Arredondo resisted it or if they all agreed miraculously that Arredondo should retain it, he as the commander of I think five other police officers.

That's a really questionable decision, but these are all facts that the independent investigation conducted by the Justice Department will hopefully get to the bottom of with some really penetrating interviews.

SCIUTTO: Yes. Well, there are some indications that there wasn't total agreement. A Texas legislature said on CNN this Sunday that the Customs Border Patrol team wanted to go in earlier. We'll see how that comes out in the investigation.

But on legal liability, Andrew, there is another precedent here, and that is the George Floyd officers, because they were actually convicted for failure to render aid in the case of George Floyd. Could the Uvalde officers, could that be a path, in terms of criminal liability, failure to render aid? That's a federal charge as I understand it.

MCCABE: It is possible. But it seems a little bit more remote under these circumstances. And I know that people are probably scratching their heads at that. But here's why. The officers at -- in the George -- in response to the George Floyd arrest stood there and watched Derek Chauvin essentially embark on an intentional act that resulted in the death of George Floyd. They were witnesses to Mr. Floyd's suffering and stood there and did nothing.

In this case, it seems likely that the officers in the hallway will be able to point to a leadership decision instructing them not to go forward, not to enter the room, and so they may be shielded in the sense from that sort of criminal liability because they were simply following orders, albeit horrendously poor orders, but it does make the situation a little bit different.

SCIUTTO: Goodness. Tough to explain to parents, for sure. Andrew McCabe, thanks so much.

MCCABE: Yes, thanks.

HARLOW: All right, next, the Treasury secretary says she was wrong for predicting how painful inflation would be, how high it would go, how long it would last, and new polling shows the rise in prices that are having a real impact on family budgets.

SCIUTTO: Plus, President Biden says the U.S. will provide the most advanced weapons so far to Ukraine as Russia is making some advances, closing in on a key Ukrainian city in the east.

Later the Supreme Court weighs in on whether social media companies can block hateful content from their platform. It's one of the rare times that some conservative and liberal justices are on the same side.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:17:53]

HARLOW: Right now Texas officials say Uvalde School District Police Chief Peter Arredondo is not responding to requests for another interview in their investigation into the school shooting. He was of course the incident commander who made the call to hold off breaching the classroom where all 21 victims were killed.

SCIUTTO: Yes. A few minutes ago, CNN's Aaron Cooper said that he reached Arredondo who said he had been in touch with the Texas Department of Public Safety.

Shimon Prokupecz, also in Uvalde. Shimon, I understand you got in contact with him as well. What did he say? Any news?

SHIMON PROKUPECZ, CNN CRIME AND JUSTICE REPORTER: Well, Jim, just to give everyone the play-by-play here, just happened moments ago, you had Aaron Cooper, our producer, out here, who was at his home, seeing him, saw him leaving his home. So we went to the office where we assumed he was going and sure enough we were sitting in our car when he drove in. So we quickly ran out and confronted him essentially as he was going in through the back door of the school district office.

And we asked him about the accusations from the director, the director of the DPS, who says that he was the sole person who made the decision to not have officers breach that door. We also asked him questions about whether or not he's cooperating with the investigation. Take a listen to what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PROKUPECZ: We want to talk to you about your decision on what the DPS --

ARREDONDO: How is it going? Nice to meet you.

PROKUPECZ: Want to talk to your decision and what -- ARREDONDO: Sure. But just to let you all know, I just spoke with --

PROKUPECZ: I know you did.

ARREDONDO: You're not blocking me, are you?

PROKUPECZ: No, no, no.

ARREDONDO: Just so you all know, just so you all know, we're not going to release anything. We have people in our community being buried. We're going to be respectful.

PROKUPECZ: I just want your reaction to --

ARREDONDO: We're going to be --

PROKUPECZ: -- that Direct McCraw saying that you were responsible for the decision.

ARREDONDO: Right, we're going to be --

PROKUPECZ: To go into that room. How do you explain yourself to the parents?

ARREDONDO: We're going to be respectful to the families.

PROKUPECZ: I understand that. But you have an opportunity to explain yourself to the parents.

ARREDONDO: And just so you know, we're going to do that eventually obviously.

PROKUPECZ: When?

ARREDONDO: And whenever this is done, the families stopped grieving, then we'll do that obviously. And just so everybody --

PROKUPECZ: Do you understand how the families -- how the families --

[09:20:04]

ARREDONDO: Just so everybody knows, we've been in contact with DPS every day. Just so you all know. Every day.

PROKUPECZ: They say you're not cooperating.

ARREDONDO: I've been on the phone with them every day.

PROKUPECZ: They say you're not cooperating. Just two seconds.

ARREDONDO: Just so you know we have been talking to them every day.

PROKUPECZ: What is your reaction to him?

ARREDONDO: No, have a good day.

PROKUPECZ: What is your reaction, sir?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PROKUPECZ: And Jim and Poppy, obviously we gave him ample opportunity, several times asking him to address the accusations from the DPS, about his involvement, about his decision-making. He chose to dodge those questions and as you can see going inside his office, people came out to get him inside.

We were the only ones there. We've been looking for him for days, for days we have been looking for him. We've been reaching out to him, wanting him to respond to this community, people here are very upset obviously over some of the decision-making and finally my producer Matt Friedman and I, look, we went there, we wanted to ask him questions, he clearly is dodging some of the key questions in this claiming that he's cooperating in this investigation.

He claims he's going to address some of these questions at some point. We'll see. Look, there are still a lot of questions that he needs to answer as well as law enforcement in general here.

HARLOW: Absolutely. And he said when the families stop grieving, they're never going to stop grieving. And they deserve answers.

Shimon, thank you to you, Matt, whole team on the ground for that.

Next, a former Treasury secretary predicting a recession could come in the next two years as inflation continues to rise. What Larry Summers says. New details on how Americans view the president's handling of this economy.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:26:23]

SCIUTTO: Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen admitted Tuesday that she underestimated how serious a problem inflation would become.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JANET YELLEN, TREASURY SECRETARY: I think I was wrong then about the path that inflation would take. As I mentioned, there have been unanticipated and large shocks to the economy that have boosted energy and food prices and supply bottlenecks that have affected our economy badly that I at the time didn't fully understand.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCIUTTO: Quite an admission there. Yellen and other White House officials, you may remember, previously painted inflation as a temporary side effect of the economy returning to normal after the pandemic. Yet months later, and I know you're all feeling it like we are, inflation is running at a near four-decade high in this country.

HARLOW: All right. Let's go to our chief business correspondent Christine Romans to discuss. So, I mean, it's really interesting and important that she said that.

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Yes.

HARLOW: It's also really interesting what we heard from Larry Summers this morning about the potential for a recession. Give you 4 percent rate hikes.

ROMANS: Well, let's talk first about the Secretary Yellen, right. She -- it wasn't just the White House that underestimated the impact of inflation last year, you know.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

HARLOW: Yes.

ROMANS: It was Wall Street economists, it was the Fed as well, the Federal Reserve, folks at the Federal Reserve, some of -- most of the forecasters in economics and almost all of the, you know, the business media, too. No one really had a good sense of how bad this would run. I mean, listen to Secretary Yellen in May 2021 when she said she thought maybe you would see inflation average out around 3 percent. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

YELLEN: I don't anticipate that inflation is going to be a problem. But it is something that we're watching very carefully.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMANS: And they have been watching it carefully. But that was when she was having 3 percent target, you know, or over 8 percent right now. So you've seen the White House really pushing out there in the last 24 hours or so trying to show this urgency. Right? We know this is a problem. We know that so many of the experts are behind the curve on this. The Fed is the real inflation fighter here. We're not going to get in the way of the Fed as it does its job and that job is raising interest rates, maybe quickly and aggressively to try to cool off inflation, you guys.

SCIUTTO: So one of the correct as it turns out canaries in the coal mine, former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, he said it's likely we will see a recession in the next two years. And by the way, he's not alone entirely in that, some of the investment banks are doing the same. But explain for our viewers how he comes to this conclusion.

ROMANS: So more people are raising their -- the risk of a recession. And not everybody is 100 percent there yet. But Larry Summers is specifically zeroing in on the inflation rate, rising interest rates, and the unemployment rate. Listen to what he said this morning.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LARRY SUMMERS, FORMER TREASURY SECRETARY: Here's the unfortunate painful fact and it is true of the U.S. experience, and it's true of the experience of other rich countries like us. When inflation is above 4 percent and unemployment is below 4 percent, you are almost certain to have a recession within the next two years.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMANS: So right now inflation is above 4 percent again, the unemployment rate of course is about 3.5 percent, nearly a 50-year low, and 17 states have a record low unemployment rate I should say. The unemployment rate is very, very low here. But like any good economist, you guys, he had some caveats. He said however this could be the outlier event, or they could manage to orchestrate what we call a soft landing.

[09:30:00]