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Tim Roemer is Interviewed about the January 6th Hearing; Uvalde Police Chief Defends Response; Joe Moody is Interviewed about the Uvalde Shooting. Aired 9:30-10a

Aired June 10, 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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[09:30:18]

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: We are hearing chilling new details of how the violence unfolded on January 6th. U.S. Capitol Police Officer Caroline Edwards testified that she was knocked unconscious that day, but said she had an adrenaline rush when she regained consciousness that allowed her to then fight off - fight off rioters. She compares her most vivid memories to, quote, a war scene.

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OFFICER CAROLINE EDWARDS, U.S. CAPITOL POLICE OFFICER WOUNDED ON JANUARY 6, 2021: I was called a traitor to my country, my oath, and my Constitution. In actuality, I was none of those things. I was an American, standing face to face with other Americans, asking myself how many times -- many, many times how we had gotten here.

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SCIUTTO: Joining me now is former Democratic Indiana congressman, and former U.S. ambassador to India, Tim Roemer. He's also a member of the National Council on Election Integrity.

Ambassador, it's good to have you on this morning.

One issue here that struck me, again, watching last night and throughout, and I was in touch with Capitol police officers last night about their reactions to this, was the direct assault on members of law enforcement here. You have President Trump, other Republicans, claim to be on the side of law enforcement. Last night we saw law enforcement in the line of fire here, right, attacked.

Tell us your reaction to that and seeing that video, some of which was new, once again.

TIM ROEMER (D), FORMER U.S. REPRESENTATIVE: Well, Jim, good to see you again. Thanks for having me on.

Listen, as your previous segment said, Americans are concerned about a lot of things these days, raising inflation, gas prices, they're worried about crime, they're concerned about a rising China, and they're worried about the American dream, being there for their kids, American respect, American values, telling the truth. And so last night's hearing for those Americans that watched it and are reading about it today saw vividly the difference between something like Watergate, which shamed and disgraced an American president, it was a third rate (INAUDIBLE), nobody was hurt, no officers were killed, to your point, and reminding people what happened on January 6th. A vicious attack to overturn our government, killing police officers, violently assaulting one of our sacred places of government, the U.S. Capitol, and people, the president of the United States lying about it, the president's vice president calling in the National Guard, the president's attorney general calling his lies about the 2020 election being stolen, I'll leave it out for children watching, it's a colorful phrase, starts with bull, and it's spread around Indiana corn fields.

You know, the Republicans, I think, are making the case, as Congresswoman Cheney did last night, that something went terribly wrong to overturn our government and rule of law, and we need to get to the facts.

SCIUTTO: Let me ask you this, have any changes been made since January 6th to prevent the next attempt to overturn an election? Fact is, many election deniers are either in positions of power now at the state level or on their way to be.

ROEMER: Jim, I think you got some, you know, good news and bad news. I'm an American. I'm an optimist. I think the good news is that Republicans in states like Georgia, who countered Trump's efforts to lie about the election and steal the election, beat Trump's endorsed candidates at the governor level and the secretary of state level. Not just beat them, trounced them. So that's the good news.

The bad news is, the Capitol is still shuttered off from the American people to go up there and visit. This committee needs to make some recommendations, not only to bring justice to January 6th, and those that put forward this multistep, multistage conspiracy against our government, but they need to make recommendations to figure out how do we make our Capitol safer from another attack, but not a fortress of guards, guns and gates that prevent us Americans from visiting our lawmakers and tuning in to our government. How do we pass laws like updating the Electoral Account Act so that the laws are defined about what the vice president and Congress can and cannot do. They can't, Jim, put their hands on the scale and try to turn over our votes as Americans.

[09:35:06]

SCIUTTO: Yes.

ROEMER: They count the votes that we cast, and they make sure that they're legal and fair. They don't try to change that process.

And so we need to do more as a result of this attack on our Capitol to protect the Capitol, and to protect our representative democracy., a great democracy.

SCIUTTO: So let me ask you then, you are a member of the National Council on Election Integrity, was it a mistake to use what remains of their political capital with the possibility of losing the majority in the House and perhaps in the Senate in November, to use that for the investigation, which is important, no question, I'm just saying, with limited capital, rather than focus on enacting some of the changes you're talking about. There is, for instance, some Republican support for reforming the Electoral Count Act.

ROEMER: I thought they did a great job last night, Jim, truth be told. They stated the case that this was a conspiracy to overturn the government. Now they got to make the case. They've stated it, now they've got to make it.

I hope that their recommendations at the end of these six hearings will include some bipartisan, unanimous recommendations from this nine-person committee, just like our ten-person 9/11 Commission, five Democrats and five Republicans came together unanimously. We not only made recommendations, Jim, as you remember, you covered this, we passed them into law.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

ROEMER: We changed the face of the United States government from looking at nation states and the Cold War, to now the hot war against, you know, transnational threats and terrorism.

This committee needs to use its capital to do two things, in my opinion, to help convince Americans and Republicans that Donald Trump is ineligible to run as a candidate and win as a candidate again based upon the lies he's told and the efforts that he put forward to overturn a constitutionally peaceful process.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

ROEMER: Two, the committee needs to make some modest recommendations to protect our Capitol and strengthen our great republic.

SCIUTTO: We'll see. Time is running short.

Ambassador Tim Roemer, thanks so much for joining us.

ROEMER: Thanks, Jim.

SCIUTTO: Coming up, surprising new details of what happened inside the elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, as the shooting was unfolding. The school police chief speaking out said he did not wait to go in. What's the truth? We're going to speak to a member of the Texas state house special committee investigating the attack. That's next.

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[09:42:15]

SCIUTTO: Just in to CNN, the Biden administration is expected to announce today that the U.S. will no longer require travelers to show a negative Covid-19 test to enter the country after traveling abroad. The policy will go into effect at midnight on June 12th. That's soon. And the CDC says it will reassess in 90 days. The testing requirement had been in effect since January 2021, but the travel industry has been arguing it was no longer necessary and was having a negative impact on the economy. That's a big change.

Other story we're following, Uvalde School Police Chief Pedro "Pete" Arredondo is speaking about the Uvalde shooting for the first time since it happened. State officials say Arredondo made a, quote, wrong decision not to engage the shooter right away. But Arredondo is now telling "The Texas Tribune" that he never considered himself the scene's incident commander and did not order police to hold back on breaching the building.

The embattled chief said, quote, I didn't issue any orders, I called for assistance and asked for an extraction tool to open the door.

CNN has also reached out to Arredondo's attorney, the Texas Department of Public Safety, and the school district for comment.

CNN's Omar Jimenez joins me now from Uvalde, Texas.

Omar, you know, it's yet one more twist here in what we were told was what happened there. Turns out at least, based on what Arredondo is saying, is not true. What do we know?

OMAR JIMENEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Jim, this is another narrative that has come through. And this is -- this comes from an interview with "The Texas Tribune" that they did in a combination of phone calls, written statements, and even responses provided by Arredondo's attorney. And they provide a whole lot of new details regarding the central question at the heart of what is now multiple overlapping investigations, what took so long?

Well, Arredondo told "The Tribune" that some of the shooter's bullets were piercing walls, the classroom door, injured officers, that they started breaking windows and evacuating other children and teachers. That -- but also that the lockdown measures at the school worked against them, he told "The Tribune," mainly because it was hard for them to pinpoint the gunman's location because the classroom lights were off, as is typical in lockdown measures, but also because a -- the door was reinforced with a steel jam that is designed to prevent outside attackers from getting in, but, in this case, prevented officers from immediately being able to get in there and confront this shooter, Arredondo said.

He also told "The Tribune," he never considered himself the scene's incident commander, which, of course, goes contrary to what the Texas Department of Public Safety has said regarding this particular investigation.

And in all of this, Arredondo is in there without radios, he and his attorney told "The Tribune." Specifically, he left two radios outside upon arrival because he believes they would slow him down and tie up his hands.

[09:45:06] He also said his experience told him radios didn't work in some school buildings. His attorney said even if he had them, he would have turned them off because they would have made noise in the hallway. But because of that, he wasn't aware of any 911 calls. And Arredondo told "The Tribune" that no one was relaying that information to him and that they were speaking in whispers in this hallway. So he used his cell phone to call for snipers, backup and tools to open this door.

As you mentioned before coming to me, we've reached out to Arredondo, his attorney and the school district and DPS officials but haven't heard back on many of these new details.

SCIUTTO: Omar Jimenez, thanks so much.

OK, so to try to clear some of this up, joining me now, Democratic Texas State Representative Joe Moody. He's the vice chair of the state house's bipartisan investigative committee, formerly served as a prosecutor in El Paso.

Good to have you on. Thanks for taking the time this morning.

JOE MOODY (D), TEXAS STATE HOUSE: Good morning. Thanks for having me.

SCIUTTO: First, if I can go through a couple of the outstanding questions based on the latest information we're getting in. So, state police say that Arredondo made a bad decision not to go into the classroom and that it was the wrong decision. The chief is now saying he did not make any such decision not to go in. That they were inside, at least the hallway, and that they were coming up against a reinforced door.

Now, I know there are details you cannot reveal based on internal deliberations, but which version is closer to the truth?

MOODY: You know, we started our investigation yesterday at the capital, and met with the Department of Public Safety for several hours. And to the point you just raised, you know, our investigation needs to be thorough, needs to be disciplined, needs to look at all these stories because there's been a lot of confusion, to your point, since this happened because you have mismatched stories.

But this committee's task is to lay bare the truth. Look at the timeline. There's objective piece of evidence that we're going to be able to look at, that we're going to have access to. There's confidential information we're going to have access to. So our goal is to - is to survey all of that and my hope is that we get to talk to Chief Arredondo when we visit Uvalde in the coming weeks so that we can hear everything and understand everything and compare those statements to the objective evidence that we have.

SCIUTTO: OK. OK, another question which strikes me as one that should be known fairly clearly early on, "The Texas Tribune" is reporting Arredondo says he never considered himself the scene's incident commander and therefore was not ordering the police to hold back from breaching the building.

To your knowledge to date, was it unclear who was in charge on the scene?

MOODY: You know, the reports that we've heard publicly, and it does seem - it does seem like there's conflicting stories about that. There are several law enforcement agencies on site, according to public reports as well. And so, you know, these are some of the tasks that we're going to have to look at, to understand what the norm is in those situations, how those decisions are made and then make our report public when our investigation is concluded.

SCIUTTO: OK, let me ask you this then. "The New York Times" reviews investigative documents and video from law enforcement. It's reporting that officials on the scene knew that there were injured children inside the classroom. They knew it well before police decided to breach. You know as well as I that that contradicts training post Columbine.

MOODY: Yes.

SCIUTTO: The training post Columbine is go in, fast and quick, confront the shooter.

Under what circumstances, if any, are there any circumstances do police not enter a room with an active shooter, with injured children inside?

MOODY: Look, I -- I am as shocked as anyone else at the facts that we've seen, that there was a - you know, that there are children in a room, and we have, you know, we have folks that had an opportunity to do something different. That's -- that is the -- that's the sadness and the heaviness that sits on me and my - in the role that we have because we have to look at those decisions and understand why they were made and whether those decisions led to loss of life. And I take that obligation very seriously and it is - it is a tragedy that can't be undone, but we need to understand it so that we can go forward and those -- those that are accountable will be held accountable.

SCIUTTO: You represent -- you're from El Paso. You were there in 2019 when another mass shooting took place. I know you know better than me. I was there covering it as well.

[09:50:01]

There were similar calls for changes following. Nothing happened. Do you believe change will come now?

MOODY: I have to have the hope that we can do better. You know, there are people that have forgotten their promises after August 3, 2019. I'm not one of those people. I will continue to keep my promises to the families here in El Paso to work for change for a safer community here, for Uvalde and for the state of Texas. That's an obligation that I have. And I have to remain hopeful. If I don't have that hope, then I shouldn't be in this job.

SCIUTTO: Well, here's to that hope. Texas State Representative Joe Moody, thanks so much for joining us.

MOODY: Thank you.

SCIUTTO: Still ahead, the latest from Michigan where a white police officer is now awaiting arraignment, accused of fatally shooting an unarmed black man during a struggle.

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SCIUTTO: Some other important stories we're following this morning. A Republican gubernatorial candidate in Michigan was arrested Thursday, this over his alleged involvement in the Capitol riot. Ryan Kelley (ph) was arrested on misdemeanors charges stemming from the January 6th Capitol breach according to a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office in D.C. Kelley later released on bond after making his initial appearance in a federal court in Michigan.

CNN has reached out to his campaign for comment.

SCIUTTO: In western Maryland, authorities say a 23-year-old man shot four co-workers, he killed three of them at a manufacturing plant yesterday. The man left the scene before police arrived. A few miles away a state trooper confronted him, the two then got into a shootout. Both the trooper and suspect were wounded and hospitalized.

[09:55:02]

The sheriff says the victims and suspect were employees of Columbia Machine, which makes concrete products, equipment. Investigators have not yet established a motive. They have not released the suspect's name.

Another major shooting.

Later today, a Michigan police officer accused of fatally shooting an unarmed man in the back of his head will be arraigned. Christopher Schurr was charged yesterday with second-degree murder in the death of 26-year-old Patrick Lyoya. Lyoya, a black man, was shot and killed during a struggle after a traffic stop in April. Lyoya's final moments were caught in multiple videos that were later released to the public. The case drew national attention. It sparked protests as well. The Grand Rapids Police Department says Schurr will be suspended without pay pending termination.

Still ahead, lawmakers warn the dangers from January 6th are still very much present. The stark, new evidence presented to the American people and what the committee is preparing, coming up.

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