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DOJ Review of Uvalde Shooting Response; Gun Safety Plan; Jimmy Kimmel Presses President Biden on Gun Control; Mysterious Solar Sounds. Aired 9:30-10a ET

Aired June 09, 2022 - 09:30   ET

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

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[09:30:00]

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR AND CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Do we know how impactful his words were?

OMAR JIMENEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I mean, look, that testimony, not just from him but everyone, provided a real glimpse at what processing something like this is like, not just in the day that this happened but the feelings that have persisted day in and day out.

And all of them were hoping that their stories could at least contribute toward some form of long-term change. I want you to take a listen to the pediatrician, who testified, specifically when he talked about the wounds he was treating.

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DR. ROY GUERRERO, PEDIATRICIAN: These weapons of war cause wounds that are war wounds, the things you see on movies, things that no pediatrician, much less any doctor, is ever ready to see.

I just think the people need to know that these type of guns, assault weapons, AR-15s, have no place in our society merely because of the type of injuries and wounds that they cause.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JIMENEZ: And that's, of course, part of the main debate, playing out not just on Capitol Hill but here in Texas as well -- Poppy, Jim.

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: Well, when you have to identify a child by their shoes, that should say everything. Omar Jimenez, thank you. Jim.

SCIUTTO: Joining me to discuss where the legal process goes from here, Elliot Williams, former federal prosecutor.

So I'm curious, as the DOJ investigates this, is there a potential for criminal charges at the federal level for any involvement?

ELLIOT WILLIAMS, FORMER FEDERAL PROSECUTOR: You could get there. So number one, if the police conduct was seen as so egregious as to violate the civil rights of some of these people on scene, obviously you could make that case. You can charge them there.

And you've see some of that in Georgia and Minnesota in the last year or two. So number one.

Number two, once these agents show up, the moment an FBI agent asks somebody a question, if you lie to them, that's a federal offense. So because there is now a federal investigation, there is the possibility of, you know, false statements to federal agents, federal officers.

The far more likely thing you'll see, Jim, this is going to be obvious, it's civil suits from the families, for the conduct against the school, against the police department, against the district. That's far more likely.

SCIUTTO: So not against individuals. In other words, those would be civil suits. And obviously lawyers seek the sources who could pay.

WILLIAMS: Right.

SCIUTTO: Sadly.

WILLIAMS: Right. It is inevitable. It is going to happen. These families have wrongful death suits that they can bring now.

SCIUTTO: I note there is little or no precedent for criminal charges. For instance at least at the federal level and not too many even at the state level; I know that Texas has a state law about child endangerment here.

But we have seen the legal system adjust over time. Even if you look at the charges that were faced by the officers in George Floyd, there are some folks who say, I'm not sure they go that far or this far. And they did.

I wonder can you see a jury or a judge opening a new definition here?

WILLIAMS: Absolutely. When you talk about no precedent, that just means nobody has tried it before. But there is a lot of science but a lot of art to the practice of law. And at the end of the day, if you can make an argument that this constitutes say violating the civil rights of the people who have died, then you can get it into court.

It all comes down to what you can sustain, not just before a jury but before the judge, who is going to make a decision before the trial as to whether the charges are proper.

SCIUTTO: The mayor there has promised full cooperation, says he trusts the assessment will be fair and transparent. The fact is, officials involved have been everything but transparent from the beginning, from a false narrative at the very beginning about law enforcement rushing in, which they did not.

And now we have learned they held back and now we have seen some seemingly deliberate stonewalling here.

So what is the pressure point to encourage actual transparency we have not seen so far?

WILLIAMS: You have the federal government coming in. If you notice, a few times Attorney General Garland yesterday said we are here at the direction and the invitation of the mayor, suggesting that they had cooperation.

If they don't, it is federal law enforcement and they have power to start getting in there with subpoenas and turning up the temperature a little bit. But yes, they're saying they're going to cooperate.

But look at what we have seen.

How long has it been?

And it just looks like they're not telling the story.

SCIUTTO: And are they worried about their own exposure, both civil and civil cases and criminal?

Elliot Williams, thanks so much. Lots to watch there.

Next hour, we will be speaking with a cousin of Robb Elementary School victim Maite Rodriguez. Maite's green Converse shoes have become a heartbreaking symbol of what so many families of Uvalde have lost.

Why?

Because as Poppy said, it is the only way she was able to be identified.

HARLOW: So that's ahead next hour. But right after this, why Democratic senator Chris Murphy thinks constituents may be swaying some of his Republican colleagues on gun legislation. We'll speak with former Democratic Senate majority leader Tom Daschle on the challenges of meeting in the middle -- next.

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[09:35:00]

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HARLOW: Welcome back.

A bipartisan group of senators say they are making progress as they try to find common ground on gun laws. While they negotiate, the House just passed a wide ranging package of gun legislation measures known as the Protecting Our Kids Act. But that measure is expected to fail in the Senate.

SCIUTTO: Yes, it doesn't have the votes in the Senate.

Overnight President Biden making his first in-person late-night appearance on "Jimmy Kimmel Live." And when asked why not just solve this with executive orders, here was Biden's response.

[09:40:00]

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JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Look, what I don't want to do -- and I'm not being facetious -- I don't want to emulate Trump's abuse of the Constitution and the constitutional authority.

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BIDEN: And so -- and I mean that sincerely. I often get asked, look, the Republicans don't play it square.

Why do you play it square?

Well, guess what?

If we do the same thing they do, our democracy would literally be in jeopardy.

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BIDEN: That's not a joke.

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SCIUTTO: CNN's Melanie Zanona is on Capitol Hill.

Melanie, a reality check here. We've heard a lot of proposals and we know from public comments that a lot of those proposals for gun safety do not have Republican support or sufficient Republican support.

What do senators tell you has a realistic chance of passing?

MELANIE ZANONA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, talks are moving along. But they're not quite there yet. The talks have really narrowed down to four main buckets: number one, incentivizing states to enact red flag laws, which allow judges to take a firearm away from someone who is deemed dangerous to themselves or others.

Number two: expanding mental health access, in all 50 states; number three, narrowly expanding background checks, potentially to include the inclusion of juvenile records in the search process and, number four, bolstering school safety.

Now the goal here in the framework is to get something that can get the support of 10 Republicans in the Senate. That is the magic number for anything to pass. But senator Chris Murphy, who is one of the lead Democrats in these talks, is aiming for even higher than that. Take a listen.

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SEN. CHRIS MURPHY (D-CT), MEMBER, FOREIGN RELATIONS COMMITTEE: I think that we can put together a package that will get more than 10 Republican votes. And, again, the reason for that is the demand from their constituents.

You have seen news reports in CNN about senators from very conservative states, who are considering voting for this, because they have been deluged by phone calls from parents, telling them that they need to step up and do something about this. I certainly think that we can get well above 10 Republican votes for this package.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ZANONA: But despite the feeling on Capitol Hill that the political winds have really shifted in favor of getting something done, not everyone in the GOP is on board. Yesterday, during a Senate GOP lunch, they were briefed on the status of the talks.

And several Republicans expressed broad opposition to the emerging plan. Some of them are specifically concerned about due process in those red flag laws.

And meanwhile, across the Capitol, here in the House, nearly every Republican voted against a sweeping package of gun reforms, this despite gut-wrenching testimony that we heard yesterday from some of the victims and family members of victims in school shootings.

So it just really emphasizes how difficult of a task they have ahead. But all eyes really are on those bipartisan Senate talks, Jim and Poppy.

SCIUTTO: Some of those parents, children, pleading for these steps directly in their testimony. Melanie Zanona, thanks so much.

HARLOW: Semi-automatic weapons have been used, as you know, over and over and over again by mass shooters. And in most states, they're perfectly legal to buy for people over 18 years old. Our Josh Campbell reports on all of this and gives us a sense of their power. Watch.

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JOSH CAMPBELL, CNN SECURITY CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): They are known as assault-style weapons and have been used in some of the country's deadliest shootings. From Uvalde, Tulsa, in El Paso, to Parkland, San Bernardino and Sandy Hook, the high-powered assault rifle has been the weapon of choice for many of the killers.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Line is hot.

CAMPBELL (voice-over): The Los Angeles Police Department demonstrates an AR-style semi-automatic rifle for us on the department's gun range.

SGT. JAMES ZBORAVAN, LOS ANGELES POLICE: You have a 16-inch to 20- inch barrel, you have a stock that is shouldered, you're going to be accurate at farther distances as opposed to a pistol.

CAMPBELL (voice-over): Not to mention like some other weapons, it can fire a bullet with enough power to pierce soft body armor. Something this Sergeant James Zboravan knows firsthand. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, Jesus. It's definitely an automatic weapon. CAMPBELL (voice-over): He took assault weapons fire during the now infamous 1997 north Hollywood shoot-out, where two bank robbers wearing body armor fired on police for nearly an hour, injuring eight people and 12 officers, including Sergeant Sevoravan (ph).

SGT. ZBORAVAN: You are being hit with pieces of the vehicles we were hiding behind, asphalt, radiator fluid. Felt like we're being stunned by bees.

CAMPBELL: The shooting change policy, prompting the LAPD and other departments to upgrade their own weaponry to counter the increasingly powerful guns used by assailants. That firepower from weapons is studied inside a ballistics lab at Wayne State University where researchers simulate a bullet's impact on the human body.

CYNTHIA BIR, PROFESSOR, WAYNE STATE UNIVERSITY: It's a block of 20 percent gelatin and it is meant to represent the human tissues. So soft tissues.

[09:45:00]

CAMPBELL (voice-over): Watch as Cynthia Bir's team fires a handgun round at 1,000 feet per second into the gelatin block.

BIR: For this particular round, you will see the bullet come in on this side, you see this temporary cavity here happening. So that expansion is what happens in the body and then, it collapses down. So that's where you damage comes in.

CAMPBELL (voice-over): Now watch as the team fires a round from an assault rifle.

BIR: We see a lot of more disruption. This round actually breaks apart, it doesn't exit. So it is about 3,000 feet per second and all of that energy goes into the soft tissue. We have a piece of plastic here to reflect do the videos. And it actually lifted the plastic up off the table with the energy.

CAMPBELL (voice-over): An after-math photo of the handgun round shows a relatively straight line through the tissue, exiting the other side. But not so with the round from an AR-15.

BIT: It basically goes into the body and creates an explosion inside the body.

CAMPBELL (voice-over): Trauma surgeons say the wound from an assault rifle can be catastrophic.

DR. CHETHAN SATHYA, PEDIATRIC TRAUMA SURGEON: And the worst part is in a child, all the vital organs are that much closer together. So each of those bullets causes, you know, irreversible damage.

CAMPBELL (voice-over): In Uvalde, Texas, families were asked for DNA swabs to help the authorities identify their children.

BIR: As a mom it really affects me, right?

Because I cannot imagine having a child endure this.

CAMPBELL (voice-over): And with high-capacity magazines, suspects can shoot for much longer.

CAMPBELL: Now the discussion about high-capacity magazines largely centers on reducing the amount of time that a suspect can fire without having to reload. As a former FBI agent, we were trained to quickly get your weapon reloaded and back up on target.

But for a suspect, for example, who isn't trained, you can see using this training weapon, that is a process, it involves removing the empty magazine, obtaining a fresh round of ammunition, loading it into the weapon, charging the weapon, getting it back up on target.

Those are all precious seconds where victims can be fleeing. The gun can jam or the suspect could be engaged by lawmaker or bystanders.

CAMPBELL (voice-over): Knowing the damage that sustain firepower can do, researchers hope their critical findings lead to awareness.

CAMPBELL: Regardless of where one comes down on the gun control debate, it is indisputable that the assault weapon causes significant damage inside the body.

BIR: Definitely. But this is the reality. This is what is happening.

CAMPBELL: Now the Justice Department says hand guns have been used in most mass shootings but it's important to note that the deadliest mass shooters have opted for this AR-15 style rifle.

And you can see why. That ballistic demonstration in our story showed the disastrous effect that this weapon system can have on the human body. This weapon that was originally designed for the use by soldiers on the battlefield is now causing unspeakable carnage here at home -- Josh Campbell, CNN, Los Angeles.

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SCIUTTO: What a powerful illustration of the power of that ammunition in that weapon. Thanks so much to Josh Campbell for that report.

Still ahead, NASA's $10 billion Webb telescope has experienced an in- orbit collision with something the size of a grain of sand. But boy, it is traveling fast, so that in space can be a big problem.

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SCIUTTO: NASA's $10 billion James Webb telescope has been hit by what's known as a micrometeoroid, basically a really tiny but fast moving rock in space. Officials say the telescope is still on track to perform its mission.

The telescope was tested to survive collisions exactly like this.

HARLOW: Rachel Crane joins us with more.

It can be built for this. But when it happens is when you really see if it lives up to that.

RACHEL CRANE, CNN BUSINESS INNOVATION AND SPACE CORRESPONDENT: Exactly. And it's important to remember this is a $10 billion asset in our skies here. It took two decades to develop, construct and launch this asset. It's very, very precious to us.

And we were due to get the first images in a month from now. But since it launched in December 2021, there have been four collisions with micrometeorites. And most of those are about the size of a grain of sand.

But NASA one had an impact between May 23rd and May 25th and it was larger. It did have a marginally detectable effect in the data. It's impacted one of the 18 primary mirrors. NASA says it's still performing above mission objectives. So we know that this is still in working condition.

Unlike Hubble, which is only a few hundred miles away from Earth, this is 1 million miles away. So we can't service it. So NASA built into the construction an ability to adjust, NASA saying, we have designed and built Webb with performance margin -- optical, thermal, electrical, mechanical -- to ensure it can perform its ambitious science mission, even after many years in space.

HARLOW: OK.

CRANE: So they knew this was possible. Space is a harsh environment. You have intense UV rays and charged particles from the sun. And when there's a shower of these micrometeorites, they have the ability to adjust. But when there's the one-offs, there's no way for them to track it and to know.

HARLOW: Yes.

SCIUTTO: All right, in other space news, and this is always intriguing, astronomers have detected what describe as a mysterious, repeating, fast radio burst coming from a dwarf galaxy located just 3 billion light years away.

What do we know about what that means?

[09:55:00]

SCIUTTO: And how common is this sort of thing?

And what are the theories?

CRANE: I'm sorry to burst anyone's bubble but this is probably not aliens trying to send us a message.

HARLOW: Darn.

CRANE: I know.

(CROSSTALK)

CRANE: I'm sorry, Poppy. But you know, these fast burst radio waves were first discovered back in 2007. And since then, hundreds of FRBs have been discovered. All those hundreds, only 5 percent of them repeat these bursts.

And now, for only the second time, scientists have discovered something even more unique, that in between those repeating bursts, there's these longer -- weaker, rather, radio waves that have persisted in between those bursts.

So this leads scientists to believe that perhaps there's a whole new class of these FRBs. And it's important to point out that they don't know the source of the FRBs. Maybe they're from a neutron star left over from a supernova.

But that's why we need assets like the James Webb Telescope working up there to give us the answers to these important questions.

HARLOW: Still waiting for the aliens. But call back with that next week.

(CROSSTALK)

HARLOW: Rachel Crane, thank you.

Tonight, the Capitol returns to one of the darkest days in the history of our democracy. Up next, the new, never-before-seen evidence we expect to see at the January 6th committee's primetime hearing tonight.