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California Governor Says, At Least 14 Dead as Extreme Storms Slam State; Classified Documents from Biden's Time as V.P. Found in Private Office; CNN Reports, Husband of Missing Mom Searched How to Dispose of Woman's Body. Aired 10-10:30a ET

Aired January 10, 2023 - 10:00   ET

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

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JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: Top of the hour this Tuesday. I'm Jim Sciutto.

ERICA HILL, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Erica Hill.

Happening right now, we're following these deadly storms pummeling the California coast. Rescues and evacuations underway in several parts of the state. You see this video here, mudslides, flooding, the impact of that is just massive. Power knocked out to more than 230,000 customers, a number of roads are closed, some highways just impassable. And 14 people at least we know have died. We're going to take you live to California for the very latest.

SCIUTTO: Yes, the pictures are incredible.

Plus, President Biden is facing questions this morning over his handling of classified material while he was vice president. This after his attorneys discovered documents, some classified, in a private office, those attorneys then returned them to the National Archives. We're going to discuss the impact but also how this case differs from former President Trump's handling of classified documents.

We do begin though with the deadly weather in California. Where many areas now have seen more than a month's worth of rain in just the last 24 hours. 14 people have died at least.

HILL: We look at all of this, I mean, you can see the impact there, perhaps not surprising that the heavy rain and the flooding have forced evacuations. It is also making it tough for people who are actually trying to get to safety, as you can see in some of this video here.

CNN's Kyung Lah and Camila Bernal are covering for this for both us.

So, Kyung, first to you in the southern part of the state, you're there on the 101 Freeway. Clearly, no one commuting there this morning. What are those conditions like? KYUNG LAH, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: You know, it is really our first good look at what we are standing on because the sun is just starting to peek out from behind the clouds. And this is the 101 Freeway. You can see it is completely caked over in mud, there is water that is completely washed over this freeway.

And the reason why this is completely shut down and why this standing water is still there is because below the freeway is the Ventura River. In just 12 hours yesterday, that river rose 17 feet. So, that is -- just gives you a snapshot of what we're seeing here in Southern California. In Santa Barbara, the airport there reports one day of rain that is higher than the average month of January. So, just an incredible amount of water. And it is impacting tens of millions of people.

I'm going to take a look behind and make sure no one is coming. We're seeing emergency crews beginning to move and down the 101 but they haven't been able to clear this yet because there are still so many emergencies happening.

There is rain. Rain is expected throughout the morning here in Southern California. So, Jim and Erica, it is not over. The morning commute is still going to be happening. And there is a lot of concern about what is going to happen as people start to head to work.

SCIUTTO: Camila, tell us what you're seeing where you are there and are the waters expected to rise again?

CAMILA BERNAL, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Hey, Jim. Yes, a very similar situation, a lot of standing water and a lot of clean-up to do in this area. If you just take a look at the street, same scenario as Kyung. The sun is starting to come out, so you can see just how much water is all over this neighborhood. House after house having to deal with all of this.

And, unfortunately, there was nothing they could do to stop that water. I talked to some of the residents yesterday who were telling me I wanted to put those sandbags out and I didn't but it made no difference because the water still got into the homes here and in many other communities across Santa Cruz County.

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There are 32,000 people in this county that are under evacuation orders, the sheriff's deputies going door-to-door over the last couple of days, telling people to evacuate their homes, to leave immediately because of the dangerous conditions. You don't want to be in your home when it is like this.

And not just the water, but you're also losing power in many of the areas. We've seen crews over the last couple of days working to try to restore that power. But it is everything put together that makes it really difficult for these residents.

I talked to people yesterday who told me, look, I am just so tired of cleaning up, of going through the rain, because it is coming closer together in terms of the timeframes, a storm after another storm. And so people are frustrated, people are tired and it is becoming very dangerous.

Just like in many other parts of the state, they're telling people, if you do not have to travel, do not get in your car, because, again, the streets look like this. So it is much better to stay home, to try to be as safe as possible because, yes, more rain is coming in the next couple of days. And so, they're starting to do anything they can to prepare for that next storm already. Jim, Erica?

SCIUTTO: No question. Speed is of the essence. Kyung Lah, Camila Bernals, thanks so much to both of you.

All right, another story we're following closely this morning, sources tell CNN just now that President Biden and his White House legal team do not know exactly what is in the classified documents, all from his time as vice president that his lawyers found in his private office last fall and then returned to the National Archives.

HILL: We're told it is less than a dozen documents. What is in them?

CNN Senior Legal Affairs Correspondent Paula Reid joining us now with more. What do we know this morning about these documents?

PAULA REID, CNN SENIOR LEGAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Erica, in order to understand what is it going on here, let's go back a few years, between the time that Biden was vice president, before he became president, 2017 and 2019. He's an honorary professor at the University of Pennsylvania and he has an office here in D.C.

Now, just a few weeks ago, November 2nd, his lawyers were cleaning out this office and they uncovered what they say are fewer than a dozen classified documents. They say they immediately did what they were supposed to do, which is notify the National Archives, which we're told took possession of the documents the next day. The Justice Department has appointed the U.S. attorney in Chicago to review this and to do a damage assessment.

And, Erica, what is notable about that is the U.S. attorney in Chicago is one of only two Trump-appointed U.S. attorneys still serving in government. The other one is a U.S. attorney in Delaware who is overseeing the investigation into the president's son.

Now, the Biden team, they say they are fully cooperating with the Justice Department, fully cooperating with the Archives. And while that lays out what with we know, the facts that we have from our reporting, we still have a lot of questions. Among them, why did they go to this specific office on this specific date, just a few days before a critical midterm? Why did they send lawyers and also why did they let this get out to the press and not get out ahead of it?

SCIUTTO: Paula, you've noted the similarities, classified documents found in a private office. Tell us what the differences are between this and Trump's handling.

REID: So, in the Mar-a-Lago case, that really does appear to be a much more complicated case. It is a full-blown criminal investigation. First off, we're talking about a different volume of information, right, fewer than 12 documents versus hundreds of documents.

The level of cooperation, Trump, we know, was not very cooperative, refused to hand over many of the documents until subpoenas were obtained, and then there's also the nature of the investigation.

They're doing a damage assessment, the U.S. attorney in Chicago, but when it comes to the former president and Mar-a-Lago, it is a special counsel investigating not only the possible mishandling of classified information but also possible obstruction of justice and other crimes.

SCIUTTO: And that's the thing, it gets to not even just -- not cooperative, right, but resistance to cooperation, which we'll see if they have legal implications.

Paula Reid, thanks so much.

HILL: Joining us now to discuss, CNN Political Analyst Jackie Kucinich, Washington Bureau Chief for The Boston Globe, and CNN Political Analyst Seung Min Kim, White House Reporter for the Associated Press. Nice to see you both, as always, this morning.

So, I'm curious, as we look at this, you are going to see, Paula laid out, sort of the apples to apples part of this and then the apples to orange part of this when we are talking about what was found in that locked closet in the former office President Biden, what was found at Mar-a-Lago with former President Trump. Seung Min, is there a sense this morning that the White House has a handle on this in terms of what the story is?

SEUNG MIN KIM, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, in terms of the procedures that they followed, obviously, as Paula pointed out, they did what you're supposed to do when you discover these documents. His personal lawyers contacted the White House Counsel's Office immediately, which then contacted the National Archives, which, as we've pointed out, is significantly different from what those around Trump did.

But I think what the White House is grappling with this morning is that there are still a lot of questions that we in the media that the public rightly have.

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And President Biden is in Mexico. He is facing the press later this afternoon when he stands with the other two leaders from Canada and Mexico at the so-called Three Amigos Summit, and he's going to face some tough questions and particularly on which, if this happened -- if this discovery happened in November, right before the midterm elections, as we should point out, why is the public only learning about this now? Why wasn't this proactively disclosed by his attorneys? And certainly we have a lot of other questions about what particularly were in those documents and several other questions as well. SCIUTTO: Jackie Kucinich, there is the legal questions here, right, cases are different legally, particularly with the obstruction aspect but then there are also the political questions and the attorney general has to make decisions about a number of cases involving Trump and politics are part of that judgment. As a practical matter, does this change or influence or cause pause, right, in the mind of the attorney general as he considers various cases, particularly the classified documents case against Trump?

JACKIE KUCINICH, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, I mean, I think this is why he referred it to another office, right? He immediately didn't want that conflict of interest. But, again, I think you mentioned politics, none of these facts that are meticulously just laid out by Paula and Seung Min are going to matter for House Republicans. They are going at this. You are already hearing them equate it to what happened with former President Trump and even though it is very an apples to oranges situation, even at a casual glance at this point.

However, when you're talking about a House majority that is launching all sorts of investigations into the Biden administration, you have to imagine this is going to be very much top of mind.

HILL: As we're watching all of this play out and we hear more from Republicans, we're also seeing things happen in Congress, right? So, the rules package was passed. I was struck in comments just a short time ago, we heard from Dusty Johnson, we've heard from other Republicans who have said in terms of George Santos, there needs to be a full and complete investigation from the House Ethics Committee, Democrats obviously calling for this as well.

Seung Min, where does that stand and how much appetite does Kevin McCarthy seem to have for listening to some of his -- some of those in his own conference who say there needs to be this investigation?

KIM: Well, there are a lot of pending investigations and calls for investigations into George Santos. We're talking about requests made to the FEC. We're talking about attorney -- state attorney investigations in New York. We're talking about federal investigations. We're talking about a potential House Ethics Committee investigations.

So, there are a lot of inquiries that George Santos is likely going to face in his first months of Congress, however long his service -- his tenure in Congress goes. But I think what those investigations do is actually give a little bit of leeway for now speaker Kevin McCarthy to defer to those investigations. Certainly, when he faces reporters later this week, he is going to be asked questions about Congressman Santos, whether he should leave Congress, whether he should get committee assignments. What should happen to those investigations?

And I think what leadership will do here is kind of let those probes play out in whichever forum they go. The problem with a lot of these investigations, certainly with the House Ethics Committee, that they can go on for a very long time and never really reach a consensus.

And in that house rules package, remember, House Republicans weakened the ethics apparatus of the House. So, we'll have to see the impact when it comes to investigating one of their own.

SCIUTTO: I was just going to say that. That is part of changes in those rules package.

Jackie, as happens when you have divided government like this, there are going to be a lot of symbolic votes in the GOP-controlled House that will go nowhere because Democrats control the Senate and the White House and there will be ways that they have genuine capability to move or block things. What are those? What is in that category?

KUCINICH: In terms of what they're able to genuinely block, I mean, there are rules within this rules package about how they're going to treat the debt limit, for example. They're going to try to use it to have spending cuts. And I think that is a great concern to the White House, and to the Fed and to lots of parts of this government and outside of government, how that debate will be handled. But they've been very bullish about that since taking the majority.

And but they're also -- even if they can't do anything about it, I think particularly as you see certain members of Jason Smith, for example, taking the helm of a ways and means, he's more populous than you've seen as the chairman and ways and means, and he's promised a lot of oversight over the IRS and to ask a lot of tough questions to IRS officials. So, we're going to see probably a lot more increase into that.

SCIUTTO: All right. Jackie Kucinich, Seung Min Kim, thanks so much to both of you.

HILL: Still ahead here, new details in the case of a missing Massachusetts mother of three.

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Authorities now say her husband was reportedly searching online for, among other things, how to dispose of a woman's body. We'll have the very latest from Massachusetts. SCIUTTO: Plus, another disturbing story, the gun allegedly used by a

six-year-old boy to shoot his teacher at a school in Virginia had been legal -- who was there when the shooting happened and actually helped the wounded teacher.

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HILL: Law enforcement sources tell CNN the husband of a missing Massachusetts mother of three searched online for how to dispose of a woman's body, 115-pound woman's body and also looked for information about how to dismember a body.

Anna Walshe hasn't been seen since early New Year's Day. Her husband, Brian, has been charged with misleading investigators in the case. He's pleaded not guilty. Police, though, now saying they found a bloody knife in the couple's basement.

SCIUTTO: So, last night, investigators then searched a trash facility in Massachusetts, pictures there, for evidence linked to Anna Walshe disappearance. Police say that they recovered several items there and are now testing them for potential connections to the investigation.

Criminal Defense Attorney and CNN Legal Analyst Joey Jackson joins me now to discuss. Joey, you've been involved in a lot of cases here, innocent until proven guilty, but some signs here, I mean, the $450 in cleaning supplies the next day, lying to investigators, these searches online. What does that add up to you so far?

JOEY JACKSON, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Yes, good morning to you, Jim, good morning to you, Erica. It adds up that they're really building, that is authorities, for the potential of a murder case.

Now, we don't know that yet. The body has not been found, if there is a body. Obviously, there are a lot of people, including her three children ages two to six and her co-workers in Washington, D.C., who are playing for her safe return.

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But authorities, as we look at the timeline of the search there have to do their due diligence and they have to expect and anticipate based upon what you raised, Jim, which is the circumstantial evidence, as you noted, with regard to internet searches of how do you dispose of a 115-pound body, with respect to misleading investigators, with regard to him apparently saying she left to go to D.C. and not there. They have to plan for the worst. I think that is what they're doing and that indicates to me that they're preparing and planning for a potential murder case.

HILL: Joey, so, he's being held right now for giving misleading statements. He's being held on half a million dollars bail, which seems really high for that charge. Is this part of we have to hold him on what we have now while that search continues?

JACKSON: Yes, that is precisely right. And so I think what authorities want to do, Erica, is to keep him really close. And that is that that they want to, as they conduct this search and the information, all right, we know they recovered in the basement a knife with DNA, we know about the searches, we know about him misleading investigators, we know about him attempting to run them off the path, we know about what we saw before, which was authorities searching for trash and other things. What they want to do is to ensure that they have eyes on him so in the event that this escalates to a fact where there is a death here, that they can prosecute him and that he's gone nowhere. And so that is what that is all about.

And in addition to that, of course, could not charge at this point murder. You, of course, can you can pursue a murder case in the absence of a body but they want to, authorities do, exercise all due diligence, leave no stone unturned so -- to the extent that it becomes that, if it becomes that, they're ready, willing and able to move forward with a vigorous prosecution.

SCIUTTO: Now, one interesting detail here is he was wearing an ankle bracelet prior for fraud charges, federal fraud case, I believe. Does that factor into, well, for instance, their ability to hold him? JACKSON: Well, I'll tell you what it factors into. Apparently, because of that fraud case, Jim, he was required to report, right, when he leaves the home. And he has to be given permission when he leaves the home. Of course, he left the home is the indication during a time where he admitted to pick up his kids and that is the time that they found out that he was getting cleaning supplies.

And so why were you getting cleaning supplies? Of course, people could clean their home, they do often, right? But it certainly seems coincidental that you're leaving the home when should be on home confinement at a time that you were otherwise permitted to do it because you're getting your kids. The kids did not have school that day, so that's relevant. And certainly if you're on probation in connection with another case, it does not bode well for you with respect to you answering up for whether or not these charges ultimately could be elevated to something more significant.

SCIUTTO: Yes, just alarming all around. Yes.

HILL: Yes. It really is, and a lot of questions this morning, not just about where she has gone but also about what may or may not be known.

Joey, I appreciate it as always. Thank you.

New this morning, the chief of police in Newport News, Virginia, tells CNN it is a possibility that the mother of that six-year-old boy who shot his teacher in school last week could, herself, face charges.

HILL: Police say the mother legally bought the gun the child used in that shooting, and that the boy had put the gun in his backpack, brought it to school.

CNN's Brian Todd has been following these new details for us. So, Brian, what more are we learning?

BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Erica and Jim, one of many important questions, and you raised it just a moment ago, is why hasn't the mother been charged already. The police chief, Steve Drew, as you relayed, saying that it is certainly a possibility that she could be charged but Drew also said they have to talk more with investigators. They have to talk more with child protective services and with the commonwealth attorney's office to find out more facts about this case before possibly charging the mother with any possible crime in this case.

You know, we know that the handgun was left at the house, that the child obtained it, put it in his backpack, took it to school. But how the child actually got that gun, whether it was secured, we asked those questions of the police chief yesterday, he was not able to answer them as of yesterday.

We've been talking to a lot of other people involved in this case, including someone kind of hailed as a hero this morning. Lowanda Sample-Rush. She's a grandmother who was there at the school that day to pick up her two grandsons. She happened to be in the main office when the shooting occur and helped administer first aid to the teacher who was shot, Abby Zwerner, as Abby Swerner came into the office bleeding. Here is what Lowanda Sample-Rush had to say to us.

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LOWANDA SAMPLE-RUSH, PERFORMED FIRST AID ON WOUNDED TEACHER: The teacher that was shot, she came into the office saying that she had been shot. She had blood on her hand and blood on her shirt. And she said that she had been shot.

My first instinct, being a mom, a grand mom, was to run down the hallway.

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That was my first instinct. And I was about to go down the hallway.

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TODD: But Lowanda stayed in the office and helped administer first aid to Abby Zwerner when Abby Zwerner made her way into the office bleeding. And Lowanda told us that Abby Zwerner came in bleeding. She said, call 911, that she passed out at one point after kind of sitting up. It was a very dramatic scene there in the office.

A couple of other people hailed as heroes, police, of course, citing Abby Zwerner, the teacher, as being a hero because she made sure that all of the students got out of the classroom when the shooting occurred. The police say that Abby Zwerner was the last person to leave the classroom before she herself made her way to the office to try to seek help.

There is also another school employee being hailed as a hero this morning, not talked about too much, but this school employee rushed into that classroom, as the children were rushing out, and restrained the child who had committed the shooting until police got there. And the police told us that the child became combative and struck that school employee. But the employee was able to restrain the child until the police got there. Police got there very quickly but that person is a hero as well this morning, guys.

SCIUTTO: Six-year-old with a gun. Brian Todd, thanks so much.

Coming up, the White House is preparing new measures now to slow or attempt to slow a growing surge of migrants at the southern border. We're going to discuss with Texas Congressman Vicente Gonzalez, that is just ahead.

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