Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Newsroom

Three People Dead in Indiana Mall Shooting; Uvalde Shooting Report; Jury Selection Begins in Bannon Trial. Aired 1-1:30p ET

Aired July 18, 2022 - 13:00   ET

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

[13:00:00]

ABBY PHILLIP, CNN HOST: To vote this week on the Respect for Marriage Act, which would enshrine same-sex marriage as federal law.

Thank you for joining INSIDE POLITICS with us today.

Ana Cabrera picks up our coverage on CNN right now.

ANA CABRERA, CNN HOST: Hello. I'm Ana Cabrera in New York. Thank you for being with us. I hope you had a nice weekend.

Happening right now, Trumpism on trial. Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon is in court and jury selection has begun in his contempt trial for refusing to comply with the subpoena from the January 6 Committee. Now, this case is a major test of what leverage Congress has.

Plus, heroic encounter. A good samaritan stops a mass shooting almost as soon as it begins. We have the details from inside this Indianapolis mall.

First, egregious errors. Today, the nation is shaken by new disturbing details from the report on the killing of 19 children and two teachers in Uvalde, Texas. Reactions are pouring in. And the horrifying question is, could more lives have been saved?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STATE SEN. ROLAND GUTIERREZ (D-TX): There's a little girl named Mayah Zamora. She received five gun shots to her upper torso. She's still in the hospital day after 20 surgeries. She is a miracle baby.

We have two babies that we know that had single gunshot wounds. They likely bled out five, 10, 15 minutes earlier. Who is to say who could have survived and who couldn't have?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CABRERA: CNN's Rosa Flores is live for us in Uvalde.

And, Rosa, one of the most maddening details from this report is the amount of law enforcement on the scene, nearly 400, and no one was in charge. What more are we learning? ROSA FLORES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Let me show you and tell you about

those failures, because at 11:28 a.m., this is the area where the gunman crashed his vehicle.

Then he jumped over this fence. This is the fence where he threw the gun, threw the backpack. And he walked through this area of the school. At that point in time, there was a coach in some portion of this ground that saw that was happening and called over the radio and was very disappointed because this individual said that that alarm for the school lockdown wasn't immediate.

At about 11:31, the gunman starts shooting towards the school. Now, you can see that some of the windows are boarded up. We don't know exactly what windows he hit, but he was shooting. There was at least 27 rounds. And you see this portion over here back here these officers are? There's a road.

Seconds after that happened, there was an actual police officer that was driving -- and you see this in the surveillance video -- very fast headed towards the back of this school. According to the report, it said that that individual thought that the gunman was back there. It was actually the coach. The gunman then continues on.

At 11:33, he goes in through that door and then takes a right. About three minutes later, that is when 11 officers enter this door. And they are. They have plenty of firepower, is what this report says, plenty of firepower to stop the gunman. And that didn't happen.

Then we know the children inside started calling 911. And we have some of those moments captured by what the officers were doing at that point in time from body camera video.

Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

911 OPERATOR: You have a child on the line?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hey, what was that?

911 OPERATOR: Room 12.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Child is advising he is in a room full of victims. Full of victims at this moment.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Full of victims. Child called 911, sir.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The room is full of victims, child 911. Child 911 call.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FLORES: And as you take another live look here, you see some of those boarded windows? That's where the students were inside those classrooms, inside Robb Elementary School. And, Ana, as we know now, police waited about 77 minutes to finally go

in and stop the shooter. And we now know, of course, that 19 students and two teachers lost their lives -- Ana.

CABRERA: Rosa, how are the family members of the victims responding to learning these new details?

FLORES: They're outraged. They're absolutely outraged about the lack of transparency, the lack of accountability.

And they feel that they will never get to the truth. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

VINCENT SALAZAR, FAMILY MEMBER OF SHOOTING VICTIM: We're not going to get the truth because there is cover-up. Everybody's throwing everybody under the bus. The only ones that ain't under the bus it's because they're six feet in the ground now. And that's our children and the two teachers.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[13:05:14]

FLORES: And, Ana, I can tell you from talking to some of these families they are just so hurt, so frustrated.

They were talking about the -- their conversations with the committee members yesterday and just how frustrated they were. And they used -- one of the families used one word to describe what they were feeling. And that was rage -- Ana.

CABRERA: Heartbroken for all of them. Rosa Flores, thank you for your reporting.

With us now to discuss, former FBI senior intelligence adviser and CNN counterterrorism analyst Phil Mudd and retired NYPD detective Michael Alcazar.

Thank you both.

So, 376 law enforcement officers on the scene, no one assumed command. How does that happen?

PHILIP MUDD, CNN COUNTERTERRORISM ANALYST: Boy, I have been struggling through this today because one of the things I anticipated, Ana, is that the report would clarify that one question.

I expected that there to be a report about confusion, about problems with command-and-control. Obviously, the report includes that. But really what you come down to is the simple question that I thought we would be able to answer a couple of months ago, and that is, why did people not enter when, regardless of the command confusion, they knew there was an active shooter?

I walk away today having read the report. And quickly I'm waiting for the FBI report, which we haven't seen. And I still come away saying, I can't figure it out, Ana. There's one question you asked in that circumstance. And that is, why don't you chase the shooter down? I still don't have an answer.

CABRERA: Michael, with all these different agencies, you can see there was chaos. But what do you see as the root of the problem when it comes to establishing command here to make sure that there is a cohesive movement in the right direction?

MICHAEL ALCAZAR, FORMER NYPD DETECTIVE: When you have so many responding agencies, each agency probably has their own line supervisors, and that's who they look up to, to listen to for their orders.

In this situation, there was no unity of command. There wasn't one person that took control that they can take their orders from. So it created confusion. You can see in the video that some police officers are saying, what are we doing here?

So, obviously, there's also a breakdown in communication. A sergeant was getting radio calls talking about children inside. And it's not being relayed to everybody, everybody that was on the scene, every responding officer. So there was a lot of confusion.

CABRERA: Phil, coming back to what you said, you don't have to be a police officer to know that the standard is, in an active shooter situation, we discuss it every time there's a mass shooting, that you run to the gunfire, you try to take out that shooter as soon as possible to save lives.

And so not only was there a lack of command here, but it just seems like no officer did what they're trained to do, which is to go after the shooter. If nearly 400 officers with guns can't take out a mass shooter with an AR-15, I mean, this can't just be a lack of training.

MUDD: I completely agree with you.

Let me give you two messages here. First is, I agree with the comments that we have had in the past few minutes, which is there is a problem with command-and-control. There's a problem with communications, obviously different agencies present.

That said, you come back to a simple question, Ana, which is whether one specific department would sit there, let's say, 10 minutes in and say, this is chaos. We're trained to move. Regardless of what the other agencies here have to say about this, regardless of chaos in command-and-control, we're moving.

We should not let chaos prevent us from asking the question about whether a single agency didn't move. The second thing I'd say is, there's already a cultural change. You're talking about specific training and guidance. Anybody across the country who responds to one of these shootings, and we will get more, I cannot believe they won't go in, regardless of their training today, tomorrow or next week, and say, I have got to move.

Otherwise, my agency, my people, my country will turn against me. Already, there's been cultural training, I think, Ana.

CABRERA: We know, Michael, there was confusion about whether there were actually students in the classroom with this shooter.

There were, however, several officers in the hallway who knew the shooter was inside with children. We played that sound there at the beginning before Rosa's hit in which we hear it on the radio in the discussion among some of those officers.

But, instead of breaching the door, the school district police chief, Pete Arredondo, tried to negotiate with the shooter. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PETE ARREDONDO, UVALDE, TEXAS, CONSOLIDATED INDEPENDENT SCHOOL DISTRICT POLICE CHIEF: Sir, if you can hear me, please put your firearm down, sir. We don't want anybody else hurt.

I know. I know what we're doing. We're trying to get him out. They're going to break the window.

Sir, if you can hear me. Please put your gun down. We don't want anybody else hurt.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[13:10:03]

CABRERA: Michael, right before that, shots were fired.

And you heard it right there. Arredondo knew there were kids in that classroom. How does he just end up treating this as a barricaded suspect situation?

ALCAZAR: Obviously, Arredondo made the wrong decision there. He made the wrong assumptions.

You can't assume that it's a barricaded bad guy with a gun if there's shots being fired. You got to act right away. And now we see Arredondo was, in fact, was not the incident commander. He was actually acting more like a tactical capacity.

He's playing the role of negotiator. And in a situation like that, there's no negotiations. Time is of essence, and you got to act immediately.

CABRERA: And, Michael, officials say the gunman fired more than 100 shots in a matter of minutes. Does the type of gun, in this case an AR-15-style rifle, change the type of response?

ALCAZAR: See, when you look at the video, you see that the police officers that responded, it looked like mass confusion, right?

They were walking down the hallway initially, guns out, guns pointed at officers' back. They didn't look like a tactical unit, a cohesive tactical unit. We see that later with the Border Patrol, where you could tell that these officers train together, work together, knew each other's functions.

And I think that was the cause of the delay. And I hate to say it. They train, they train, but then when it's time to do police stuff, sometimes they just don't do the police work. And it's sad. And we have to absolutely train better for what, sadly, might be something, an event like this that can happen again.

CABRERA: Phil, we know at least two officers are now on leave, both Arredondo, was with the school district police force, and the acting chief of the city's police department as well.

Given everything we know right now, what does accountability look like moving forward?

MUDD: Let me give you, Ana, the answer that you don't want, which is wait.

One of the things that surprised me here is the response of the state officials and local officials issuing this report. Early in June, we know that the attorney general said the FBI would be investigating. Clearly, I would assume they're talking to the same people, including officers, leaders, families, about what happened. They're looking at things like training and response and communications, some of the same things that this report addressed.

I don't see how you can step forward with accountability until you determine what the feds, and particularly the FBI, who are going to have more experience than the state local people in a situation like this, I don't see how you get accountability until the FBI and the feds respond. And that hasn't happened yet.

CABRERA: Do you know when that could happen? What would be an estimated timeline, in your experience?

MUDD: Boy, that's early June. We're at mid-July. That to me would be extremely fast. I'm going to give you a guess. I'd give it another month, maybe more, because I think -- I looked at the interview numbers for this case. They're talking about 50 interviews, which people would say -- or 50 interviewees, which people say is a lot.

That wouldn't be a lot in my book. Remember, you also have to look at phones, text messaging, training. What was going on at command centers? That takes a long time. So I think it's still going to be a little while.

CABRERA: Phil Mudd and Michael Alcazar, thank you both.

MUDD: Thank you.

CABRERA: Great conversation. Tough, tough situation. That's for sure.

To Indiana now, where three people were killed, two others were wounded when a gunman opened fire at a shopping mall, and an armed bystander is now being hailed as a hero. Shots rang out in the mall food course. This is in Greenwood, Indiana. It was around dinnertime, about 6:00 p.m. local time yesterday, when police say a lawfully armed citizen responded.

CNN national correspondent Athena Jones is here with us now.

What more are you learning, Athena?

ATHENA JONES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, we're going to learn a lot more details, we hope, in this afternoon press conference in about an hour or so with the local police.

But this is a shooting that the Greenwood police chief has called absolutely horrendous. It's shaken the community to its core. This gunman opened fire. He was armed with a long gun rifle with several magazines of ammunition, came to this food court.

It's unclear at this point whether he was targeting those three people who ultimately were killed or what the motive was. This is something that is still being investigated. Police are looking at surveillance footage and the like. So we will see what they say at this next press conference.

But they are crediting what they're calling a good samaritan, an armed civilian who put a stop to this. Listen to more from the Greenwood police chief, James Ison.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JIM ISON, GREENWOOD, INDIANA, POLICE CHIEF: The real hero of the day is the citizen that was lawfully carrying a firearm in that food court and was able to stop this shooter almost as soon as he began.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JONES: And so in this case, the sort of good guy with a gun, which is the symbolic hero you often hear about from gun rights advocates, so you hear the president of the NRA constantly saying the only thing to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun, in this instance, that did work. Three people still lost their lives, but that civilian who was lawfully armed was able to stop the shooting from going any further.

[13:15:03]

But, Ana, it is important to note that this is pretty rare that it works out that way. "The New York Times" did an analysis of over 400 active shooter situations from 2000 to 2021 and found that only about 5 percent of them were stopped by an armed bystander like this. The FBI did a similar review and found only 3 percent.

So it's not that common that the good guy with the gun is able to kind of handle the situation in this way.

CABRERA: Yes. And in that "New York Times" analysis, I think almost half of those in which a good guy with a gun responded were off-duty or plainclothes officers, as it turns out.

JONES: Civilians, it's a lot higher bar. CABRERA: Yes. Thank you so much, Athena. What a story.

He refused to cooperate with the January 6 Committee and now longtime Trump ally Steve Bannon is on trial for it. What's at stake?

Plus, one of President Biden's energy advisers says a drop to $4 a gallon at the gas pump might not be too far away. When exactly and is that as low as it will go? We will discuss.

And after two years, two years in a coma, this West Virginia woman wakes up and names her alleged attacker.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:20:34]

CABRERA: The criminal trial of Steve Bannon is under way. The key Trump ally arrived at the D.C. courthouse this morning. You see him waving, smiling.

Bannon is facing criminal charges after refusing to cooperate with the January 6 Select Committee. Now, this case could have major implications for the Trump movement and for Congress' subpoena powers.

CNN senior legal analyst and former federal prosecutor Elie Honig is here to break it down for us.

Elie, let's just start with the basics. Remind us of the charges he's facing.

ELIE HONIG, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Yes, Ana, so it's been 39 years, by the way, since we last had a criminal trial in the United States for contempt of Congress.

That case back in 1983 actually resulted in a not guilty verdict. So these are rare, and they're unpredictable. Now, the nature of the charges here, the January 6 Committee subpoenaed Steve Bannon back in September, and he essentially defied them across the board, as alleged in the indictment.

So Bannon is now charged with contempt of Congress, two counts, one for refusing to testify, the other for refusing to produce documents. Now, this is what we call a misdemeanor, meaning it's less serious than a felony. The maximum sentence is one year behind bars, but really unusual, there's a 30-day mandatory minimum, Ana. So, if he's convicted, he goes away for 30 days, at least, no matter what.

Also important, this does not force Steve Bannon to testify, even if he's convicted. This is about punishment, not testimony.

CABRERA: I mean, just leading up to the trial, there's been a lot of interesting developments. What do we expect his defense to be?

HONIG: Well, Steve Bannon said recently -- quote -- "This is going to be the misdemeanor from hell." However, the judge has no interest in that. So the judge last week, Judge Carl Nichols, who, by the way, is a Donald Trump appointee from 2019, doesn't seem to have any favoritism in mind for Steve Bannon, because, last week, the judge said, no, I'm not allowing you to use any of these political defenses, I'm being targeted, rejected Bannon's argument that the entire committee was illegitimate.

And the judge said, we're going forward and you're only left with certain very narrow defenses, prompting Steve Bannon's criminal defense lawyer to say in open court -- and I quote -- "What's the point of going to trial if there are no defenses?"

I have heard a lot of lawyers say a lot of things, but that is a first. Essentially, it looks like Bannon's defense is going to be some combination of, I didn't understand the subpoena, or I thought it was just an opening salvo, or he may seek what we call jury nullification. He may try to convince some jury to just say, forget about the law and the facts. I don't like this prosecution for some reason.

CABRERA: The misdemeanor from hell. That quote could come back to bite him in terms of not the way he thought it was supposed to play out.

HONIG: Yes.

CABRERA: What do we expect in terms of the trial itself? What can we expect going forward?

HONIG: So, as we speak, they're in the process of selecting their jury. They're about one-third of the way through that process. You don't want jurors who've never heard of Steve Bannon or the January 6 Committee. You want jurors who you believe can be fair and impartial.

Then we will get on to opening statements. The prosecution will make its case. They have the burden of proving their case beyond a reasonable doubt. And then the defense case. Will Steve Bannon take the stand in his own defense? That's rare. But this is Steve Bannon. That may be the platform that he's looking for.

We will get into closings. The jury will deliberate. They will deliver their verdict. If it's not guilty, it's over everyone goes home. If it's guilty, the judge may revoke Steve Bannon's bail, it's possible, and throw him in prison right away, because he's got to do those 30 days at least, no matter what. After that, he will go to sentencing.

And then he has the right to appeal. And, Ana, of course, in Bannon's first time through the criminal justice system, he was pardoned by Donald Trump back in 2021.

CABRERA: That's right.

HONIG: I don't think there's any pardons in play here.

CABRERA: Yes, that pardon doesn't apply here. And this could go very quickly, right?

HONIG: Yes.

CABRERA: Just even the next couple of days, it could be done?

HONIG: If I had to guess, I'd say we will be done by the end of this week.

CABRERA: Wow.

Elie Honig, as always, thank you, sir.

HONIG: Thanks, Ana.

CABRERA: All right, let's fast-forward to this week's January 6 Committee hearing expected Thursday in prime time.

The committee says they will reveal what then-President Trump was doing in the 187 minutes from when his supporters stormed the Capitol to when he issued that first public statement. Here's committee member Republican Congressman Adam Kinzinger.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. ADAM KINZINGER (R-IL): The reality is -- I will give you this preview -- the president didn't do very much but gleefully watch television during this time frame. We're going to present a lot more than that.

But I could only imagine, as -- I mean, I knew what I felt like as a U.S. Congressman. If I was a president, sworn to defend the Constitution -- that includes the legislative branch -- watching this on television, I know I would have been going ballistic to try to save the Capitol. He did quite the opposite.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CABRERA: The committee also says it expects to receive missing Secret Service text messages within the next 24 hours. The texts are from the day before and the day of the Capitol attack and were allegedly erased as part of a device replacement program.

[13:25:04]

CNN justice correspondent Jessica Schneider joins us now.

Jessica, explain how the committee is expecting to receive texts that were supposedly deleted.

JESSICA SCHNEIDER, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Very good question, Ana.

And there really has been this mounting confusion about these missing text messages and whether or not they can be produced. So that's exactly why the committee here has subpoenaed the Secret Service. And, by the way, it's the first time that we know of any subpoena from this committee for an executive branch agency. So committee members, they're saying that the Secret Service has

really been unclear about whether these text messages still exist and whether any of these texts from January 5 and 6 at issue will in fact be handed over tomorrow, per the subpoena.

So, in particular, committee members are pointing really to the Secret Service's statement where it says in one part that, yes, data on some phones was lost when they performed this phone replacement program in early 2021. But then the Secret Service also saying, but, wait, none of the texts that were being sought by the inspector general was actually lost in the migration.

That's quite different than what the I.G. has claimed here. The I.G. has claimed that he needs these texts from Secret Service on January 5 and 6. He said those texts were erased. So the question is, will they be retrieved? Will the committee get them possibly by tomorrow? Or were they lost for good in that phone replacement migration program?

Of course, we know the I.G. met with the committee Friday, and now the committee is saying that, if these texts still exist, they expect to have them, per subpoena, by tomorrow. Here's what one committee member elaborated on.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KINZINGER: So, is this anything big? We're not sure. But we need to chase every lead down on this, and there's a question of, why are they not cooperating with the I.G.?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCHNEIDER: So, you can see, a lot of lingering questions there.

So, Ana, Congressman Kinzinger really saying they will know more tomorrow about whether these texts still exist. Secret Service, though, they're saying that they have been cooperative with the I.G. They say they have already handed over 800,000 e-mails, nearly 8,000 Microsoft Teams chat messages.

But the big mystery still is, where are those texts from January 5 and 6? That could shed a lot of light as to what the president, former President Trump, was doing -- Ana.

CABRERA: Right. What's in those texts is the big question.

SCHNEIDER: Yes.

CABRERA: Jessica Schneider, thank you.

A gallon of gas is costing a little less right now, down from record highs, but just how much relief can Americans expect to get in the coming days and weeks ahead?

That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)