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No Mention Of Nichols Punched, Kicked In Initial Police Report; Forty-Plus Million Under Winter Weather Alerts As Ice Storm Slams U.S.; Santos Confirms He Wants Off Committees: I Decided "On My Own"; Two People Who Found Classified Docs Testify Before Grand Jury. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired January 31, 2023 - 15:00   ET

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

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[15:00:20]

VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN HOST: Top of the hour on CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Victor Blackwell.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN HOST: And I'm Alisyn Camerota.

We now know the first police report written after Tyre Nichols' arrest does not line up with the brutal and ultimately fatal beating that we see on body cam video. CNN has confirmed multiple contradictions, including claims that Nichols grabbed an officer's gun, which was heard in one of the body cam recordings released last week by one of the officers talking about it, but it's not visible on the video.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And he was going for my gun too, so I'm like (inaudible) ...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He grabbed one gun (inaudible) ...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Look, we got him out of the car and I say hey bro you good? (Inaudible) swung, pow, almost hit me.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He reached for my gun, slammed him to the car.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLACKWELL: So far, 10 city employees have faced consequences in the wake of Nichols' killing. The latest, two EMTs and a fire department lieutenant have now been fired. So that's three in the fire department and a seventh Memphis officer has been relieved of duty. Last week, five of those seven officers were charged with second degree murder and assault for Nichols' death.

CNN's Ryan Young has the latest from Memphis. Also here, CNN Chief Law Enforcement and Intelligence Analyst, John Miller.

Ryan, first, the discrepancies between the video and this initial report, talk to us about them. RYAN YOUNG, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, something that we're still digging into and, of course, you guys can ask John about this later. But I've been talking to Memphis Police Department officers today and they've been telling me that when you file an initial police report, you also include the use of force part of the report as well. So if you had to escalate that you go hands on or use some type of force, you usually include that in the police report, but these discrepancies kind of stand out to us as we've watched this video over and over.

We'll take you through some of them. It says Nichols was an aggravated assault suspect, so that stood out to us as well. And then it said he was sweating profusely and irate upon exiting the vehicle. As we watched that video, you saw the officers actually approach that car with a lot of force. And then it says Nichols grab for Detective Martin's gun and then Martin listed as a victim in this case. Of course, we don't see that initial pull for any officer's weapon.

And then it says Nichols pulled on officers' duty belt and there is no mention of the kicking or punching of him. And again, after talking to an officer who's worked in this police department for quite some time, he said that would be listed in that incident report at some time. Of course, not only have we called to see the full report that was initially put in, we also have asked for that seventh officer name, hasn't been released just yet. So still a lot of questions surrounding this initial report that has come out.

CAMEROTA: Okay. So John, are discrepancies like this in police reports common?

JOHN MILLER, CNN CHIEF LAW ENFORCEMENT AND INTELLIGENCE ANALYST: Well, there's nothing common about this incident because the report is does not reflect what happened. So it's more than discrepancies.

But Alisyn, it seems as that - as if they have built into the narrative a series of justifications and it's interesting that you hear them mouthed, some of those at the end of the beating on tape, as if they're building a story that goes somewhere other than we dragged the guy out of a car and started beating him and didn't stop till he was in a fatal condition.

CAMEROTA: Meaning the part where he grabbed the gun. I think he grabbed the gun. I think he grabbed gun. Like it starts to take on a life of its own.

MILLER: Even more than that, because when you heard them talking in that scene we just played, one of them says, I said, hey, brother, and he came out of the car and bam - now, we've all seen that first video.

BLACKWELL: Right.

MILLER: They're screaming at him before he's ever out of the car and he's saying what did I do? What did I do? I'm getting on the ground. Okay. Okay. So they're constructing a false narrative that is false from the beginning, not just the elements they had at the end. BLACKWELL: But they also know that they're being recorded, that there's a body cam that both is picking up the story, but also has the incident that doesn't reconcile with what they're explaining.

MILLER: Great question, but it cuts both ways. They know that the body cam is going to be blocked, there's all kinds of chaos and confusion. Not everything is going to be recorded, so you can see it plainly. So they are building that narrative while they are still recording because they know they're still recording.

So they're trying to say when you look at this tape, here's the parts you might have missed. Here's something that they didn't account for, the pole camera ...

BLACKWELL: Yes.

MILLER: ... which captured it all clearly. There's something else here. In the report, they say lieutenant and they name him and give his shield number made the scene indicating he was there. This is the first time we have ever heard about a supervisor, two ranks up, having been present.

[15:05:02]

So there's going to be a real question about, okay, this lieutenant got there when and was there for what part of this.

CAMEROTA: Ryan, we know Tyre's funeral is scheduled for tomorrow, so what do we know about that?

YOUNG: Yes. We do know that tomorrow, Breonna Taylor's mother will be here, George Floyd's brother will be here. We just learned the Vice President will be here at the funeral tomorrow, put all this together with a news conference that's supposed to happen just the next few hours. So much still happening here and obviously with this investigation, people asking questions about that initial incident report, and just how many times this SCORPION Unit was involved in incidents that haven't been reported or gone this far.

CAMEROTA: Okay. Ryan Young, John Miller, thank you both very much.

BLACKWELL: Joining us now, Patrice Robinson, a member of the Memphis City Council. Councilman, thank you for your time, I want to pick up where that conversation left off. We know now that there were - there are two additional officers who have been relieved of duty. We know one of them. His name was released. The other was not.

Of this, Preston Hemphill, the sixth officer, he was recorded saying I hope they stomp his ass. He's not been fired. Can any of the officers stay onboard with the Memphis Police Department, any of the officers who were involved in this incident?

PATRICE ROBINSON, MEMPHIS CITY COUNCIL MEMBER: I do believe that we're going to be as transparent as possible and I know that we're going to be fair as possible. I don't see anybody on that street at the time should work for the police department. Now, I may be wrong. The law might say something differently. But if they were there and they didn't intervene, they're all in the same boat together.

BLACKWELL: Yes. The question is can trust be restored if that officer, Hemphill, shows up on a scene and local people know that he's the person who said I hope they stomp his ass, what degree of trust and confidence will they have that they will be taken care of within the bounds of the law? Do you have a concern about the lack of disclosure of these additional officers being relieved of duty, not on the first day when it happened, but several weeks later?

ROBINSON: I have a concern, starting from the beginning of what we saw on the video and you have made it very clear, I heard it in your last segment, that when they approached him in his car, they just snatched him out. We have no idea, nobody knows why he was stopped. They said it was a traffic violation. We don't know that for sure, either.

Yes, I am concerned, I'm concerned that all the information did not come out at the same time, but I know the community have been pressuring the police department to issue everything they can and I know that they're doing investigations, but we want to make sure that we were as transparent as possible. And we made sure that we were getting information to individuals as - I mean, as soon as we could get it out of the office.

Now, we knew - everybody that looked at the video knew that other people were involved. We didn't know how they were going to be addressed, but now we're seeing that they are being addressed. And my concern at this point is what are we going to do and what will the law say that we need to do moving forward and how would the DA plug in at this point?

So obviously, there's a question of culture there, not only within this now disbanded SCORPION Unit, but these officers were wearing body cameras, they were in a neighborhood, there could have been cell phone cameras, the pole camera was there and that didn't deter or discourage any of the action that we saw.

On the question of culture, is Chief Davis the right person to continue to lead this department as it tries to shift to obviously a different culture?

ROBINSON: I believe she is the right person to help them shift to a different culture, because you can't take people that are already in the culture and utilize them to change the culture that they're used to. It really doesn't make a lot of sense. But we don't have a lot of bad players, but we know we do have some and we don't have as many as the public probably thinks.

And my heart goes out not just to that family, but to the families of all the officers knowing that their fathers, their brothers, their - that their own people are there each and every day working and they want to see their fathers at the end of the day or their husbands at the end of the day or their brothers at the end of the day. And I do believe that Chief Davis has moved us in the right direction. [15:10:00]

And there was nothing she could have done to have stopped what happened on that day. It was tragic. Those men made very poor decisions from the beginning of the video that I saw all the way to the end.

BLACKWELL: All right. Memphis City Councilwoman Patrice Robinson, thank you so much for your time.

ROBINSON: Thank you.

CAMEROTA: And to Texas now where parts of the Dallas-Fort Worth area look like ghost towns as an ice storm wreaks havoc on much of the Southern and Central U.S.

Right now, most people are heeding the warnings and avoiding the roads after treacherous conditions set drivers sliding out of control. Crews say they have responded to more than a hundred traffic-related emergency calls. At least two people across Texas have been killed. The freezing weather also paralyzing air travel, more than 1,700 flights canceled and more than 2,000 are delayed.

BLACKWELL: Right now, 40 million people are under winter weather alert. As officials warned, ice accumulation could also lead to power outages. But Texas governor, Greg Abbott, assured residents earlier today that the State's power grid is working and no problems are expected.

Let's bring in CNN Meteorologist, Jennifer Gray and CNN's Ed Lavandera live in Dallas. We'll start in Dallas, so what are you hearing from people there, Ed?

ED LAVANDERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, as you mentioned, I think a lot of people are simply heeding those warnings and not coming out in the droves out onto the streets here and that is because the roadways really are quite a mess here.

We are standing over Highway 75 on the north side of Dallas and we've seen trucks and cars taking it extremely slowly out here on these highways. And you have really seen the sleet that fell several hours ago. We have only had one initial wave of intense sleet and icy rain here in the area throughout the day, but it has really hardened up on these highways.

And as we go into tomorrow, that is clearly going to be a sign of great concern because this is going to be even more slippery, come tomorrow after all of this hardens in intense overnight freeze. But it has been treacherous and dangerous for people who have been traveling.

We spoke with Amber and Jason Kelley who are driving from Wichita Falls to Fort Worth. They left last night hoping to beat the storm. They got stranded almost - a little bit past halfway. They spent their entire night in the freezing temperatures in their car, trying to conserve as much gas as possible to keep that car heater going.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JASON KELLEY, STRANDED DRIVER: Decided to leave last night about 9:30 and - which would be a normal hour 45, two-hour ride, it's already been, what, eight hours, I guess. And I'm sure we have at least three to four more hours ...

AMBER KELLEY, STRANDED DRIVER: I think we came to a standstill about 11 pm and we didn't move, not one inch for seven hours or something, 11, 12 (inaudible) I mean hours, we didn't move not one inch.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LAVANDERA: That drive ended up taking them 12 hours, they made it safely. But they were stranded there on that highway with hundreds of other cars that just weren't moving. And that is the situation that people are dealing with here today, Victor and Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: Oh my gosh, what an ordeal.

All right. So Jennifer, what can we expect in the next couple of days?

JENNIFER GRAY, CNN WEATHER CORRESPONDENT: Well, guys, unfortunately, we're just going to continue to get waves of this. Once this ends in Dallas, we're going to see another wave of this by tomorrow and freezing rain is the worst case scenario when it comes to winter precipitation because it latches on and freezes to all the surfaces, whether it's the roads, your car, the power lines, the trees, anything.

And so it's creating an incredibly dangerous situation. As temperatures stay below freezing, we got another round of this. So it's just going to be compounded over the next day or two. Little Rock in this as well and you can see it's already moving into Memphis, so that's another area we're going to be watching.

And you can see just looking at the roads, it doesn't look like much so it may catch you by surprise. But you are going to slide. There's no way you can drive over ice is just incredibly slippery, especially for those bridges and overpasses.

We could see up to half an inch of ice in those areas shaded in blue, about a quarter of an inch in the pink, you see all the ice reports of sleet and ice anywhere from Texas to the Ohio Valley, so this far reaching. We have seen more than a quarter of an inch of ice across Arkansas, Missouri, Texas, about a quarter of an inch to half an inch will break those tree limbs guys. We could see power outages from this as well, especially as we get into tomorrow and we go through our, what, third round of this in just a couple of days.

BLACKWELL: All right. Jennifer Gray, Ed Lavandera, thank you.

CAMEROTA: So the investigations into Donald Trump appear to be gaining momentum. Find out who is talking now to a federal grand jury about those classified documents discovered at Mar-A-Lago.

[15:15:02] BLACKWELL: And the George Santos saga continues.

CAMEROTA: You sound tired. You sound exhausted by that.

BLACKWELL: Aren't we all? Why the New York congressman is now not serving on two House committees.

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[15:19:18]

CAMEROTA: Truth challenged congressman, George Santos, is now asking to be removed from his newly assigned committee assignments until his issues are resolved.

BLACKWELL: Santos who is under investigation for discrepancies in his financial filings, in his resume was named to the Committee on Science, Space and Technology and the Small Business Committee. Well, he told reporters today that he decided this on his own.

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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Did you make the decision on your own?

REP. GEORGE SANTOS (R-NY): Nobody tells me to do anything. I made the decision on my own that I thought best represented the interest of the voters.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLACKWELL: CNN's Chief Congressional Correspondent, Manu Raju, is with us now.

So Speaker McCarthy just named Santos to these committees, how's he reacting to the this announcement?

[15:20:01]

MANU RAJU, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, he is supporting this decision. In fact, they had met behind closed doors yesterday. Santos said that he informed Kevin McCarthy about this decision. McCarthy indicated that Santos needs to clear up these questions that continued to build up day after day.

Santos has claimed that he would have a press conference answer these questions, he has not done that. But McCarthy indicated that it's time for Santos to respond to a lot of these lingering questions. And at that point, assuming these are resolved, then he could serve on those committees.

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REP. KEVIN MCCARTHY (R-CA): I met with George Santos yesterday and I think it was an appropriate decision that until he could clear everything up, he's off committees right now.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Was that something that you asked him in the meeting?

MCCARTHY: We had a discussion and he asked me if he could do that, so I think it was the appropriate decision.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RAJU: Now, McCarthy still is not calling on Santos to resign, even though a vast majority of voters, including from one poll from his district say that he should resign, Republicans and Democrats. McCarthy has not gone that far, including Elise Stefanik, a New York Republican today also would not go back that far when I asked her about the situation.

And Santos himself indicating that he will not resign his seat, but he did put out a statement explaining a little further about why he is stepping down from these two committees.

He said in his statement, "With the ongoing attention surrounding both my personal and campaign financial investigations, I have submitted a request to Speaker McCarthy that I be temporarily recused from my committee assignments until I am cleared."

And there are still so many questions that Santos has not answered from reporters like myself in the hallway about why he fabricated major portions of his life story. All these questions about his campaign finances, as these investigations continue to swirl, possible House Ethics investigation could be launched here. But here, a sign of after weeks of defiance from George Santos, a sign here that he is bowing to some of this pressure and stepping down from two committees as others are calling for him to step down from Congress altogether, guys.

CAMEROTA: Certainly not for lack of trying to get your questions answered. Manu Raju, thank you very much.

BLACKWELL: Thanks, Manu.

New video just released from the August deposition of former President Trump. He was deposed as part of the New York District Attorney's investigation into fraudulent practices at the Trump Organization. Here's the former president explaining why he pleaded the fifth for the entirety of this interview.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Anyone in my position not taking the Fifth Amendment would be a fool, an absolute fool. One statement or answer that is ever so slightly off, just ever so slightly by accident, by mistake, such as it was a sunny, beautiful day when actually it was slightly overcast, would be met by law enforcement.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: Well, that case resulted in fines and penalties for the Trump Organization. But the former president is facing a lot of personal legal trouble as well. CNN has new reporting that two people who found classified documents in a Trump storage facility in Florida have testified before a federal grand jury. Federal prosecutors are also pushing to look at files on a laptop of at least one staff member around Trump at Mar-A-Lago.

CNN's Senior Legal Analyst Elie Honig is here. He's a former federal prosecutor. He's also the author of the new book, Untouchable: How Powerful People Get Away with It, rocketing up the charts right now.

Elie, okay, so we know there's a special counsel, so what new reporting do we have about how that investigation has gone?

ELIE HONIG, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: Yes, Alisyn. So there are three major criminal investigations swirling around Donald Trump right now. We've been here before, the investigation's swirling phase, none of them have resulted in indictment. So let's take stock starting with that Justice Department investigation.

It has - it was 73 days ago, I counted, when Merrick Garland appointed Jack Smith as special counsel. Now, Jack Smith has two jobs to investigate January 6, first of all. We've not actually seen any movement on that lately, could be happening behind closed doors, and then to investigate the Mar-A-Lago documents, scandal as you said. We now have new reporting from our two Caitlins, Polantz and Collins, that two people have gone into the grand jury who recovered some of those documents for Donald Trump.

That tells us that Jack Smith continues to move ahead in that part of the investigation. Now, how is this going to play for now? When Jack Smith is ready, he will make a recommendation to the Attorney General, indict or don't indict. The final word, however, is up to Merrick Garland. By law he has to give Jack Smith's recommendations "great weight." So we'll see how this plays out. Ultimately, this will be up to Merrick Garland.

BLACKWELL: Of course, there's the DA Fani Willis in Georgia who is looking into former President Trump's alleged efforts to overturn the election in that state. How could that affect the 2024 presidential campaign?

HONIG: Yes, Victor. Well, this could be the most immediate case of all the pending cases. The District Attorney, we found out in the last couple of weeks, she has finished her presentation to the special grand jury. Now, we're not seeing that report as of this moment. The special grand jury cannot indict.

[15:25:01]

But what the special grand jury can do is make a recommendation. Ultimately, again, it will be up to Fani Willis whether she wants to go to a regular grand jury to seek an indictment that we did get an interesting indicator recently, Fani Willis said in court to a judge that "decisions are imminent."

Now people ask me, what is imminent? Is that some sort of legal technical word? No, it just means imminent. It just means soon. Whatever Fani Willis thinks is soon is soon. But I would take her at her word and I think we will hear fairly imminently what her decisions are.

CAMEROTA: Elie, have about that hush money payment to Stormy Daniels, is that back again?

HONIG: Well, this is the oldest and the newest. This dates back to 2016, but there are brand new developments here. We've just learned that the New York DA, the Manhattan DA, a state level prosecutor here in Manhattan is going to put evidence of these hush money payments in front of a grand jury. That could result in an indictment.

And it's interesting, because this goes back so far in time and I think the question is what has happened, this goes back six and a half years to before the 26 (ph) campaign. Why now and will the grand jury see fit to indict, and if so we're talking about New York State level crimes here. That is a really surprising new development and one that we're going to have to watch really carefully.

BLACKWELL: And you've got some reporting in the new book Untouchable that says that Feds at the SDNY they actually looked at this as well, but they decided not to pursue it, why?

HONIG: Yes. So this is in my new book, Victor, I actually take us inside the Justice Department, the Southern District of New York. Now, I get into the federal decision. They are across the street. This is my old office across the street from the Manhattan DA, they consider this very question in 2021 as Donald Trump was getting ready to leave office. They had a series of internal meetings, do we indict him, do we not invite him, they were contentious, they were high stakes, I take you inside those meetings.

We know the outcome. We know the Southern District of New York did not indict Donald Trump on those hush money cases. But what I found really interesting in my reporting is it wasn't because they felt they didn't have the evidence, there was some variation. But generally, they felt they had enough to indict. But they decided not to for various political and practical reasons and so I think it'll be interesting to see does the DA now weigh that evidence any differently.

BLACKWELL: All right. Elie, thank you. And congratulations on the new book.

HONIG: Thank you so much. I hear it's the hottest thing in town right now.

CAMEROTA: Yes, unbiased. I totally I cannot wait to read it next.

HONIG: I can't wait for people to see it. I think there's a lot in there people will love.

CAMEROTA: Thanks so much, Elie.

HONIG: Thanks.

BLACKWELL: Florida lawmakers are proposing a bill that would allow people to carry a concealed gun without needing a gun permit. We'll speak with one of the bill's sponsors next.

CAMEROTA: Also a disappearing leopard, a dead vulture and two missing monkeys, the weird things happening at the Dallas Zoo. And also the man with a thing for Doritos that police want to talk to.

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