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Three Students Dead, 5 Critically Wounded In Campus Mass Shooting; Shooter's Father: My Son Turned "Evil" When His Mom Died; Shooter's 2-Page Note Said He Was Going To "Finish Off Lansing"; Former VP Pence To Fight Special Counsel Subpoena; Pence Fights Special Counsel Subpoena As He Weighs 2024 Run; Nikki Haley Becomes First Trump Challenger In 2024 GOP Campaign. Aired 1-1:30p ET

Aired February 14, 2023 - 13:00   ET

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

[13:00:00]

JOHN KING, CNN HOST: The First Lady Jill Biden is spreading the love this Valentine's Day with a holiday display at the White House. It's called Valentine to the country. Mrs. Biden's message to the nation is reached out with open hearts and helping hands.

Thanks for your time tonight in "INSIDE POLITICS". We'll see you again tomorrow. Kasie Hunt picks up our coverage right now.

KASIE HUNT, CNN HOST: Good afternoon, I'm Kasie Hunt in Washington. Right now, new disturbing details about the man who went on a deadly rampage at Michigan State University, killing at least three students. Police say he had a note in his pocket. His father calling him evil, bitter and angry.

Last night, the campus in terror. Students staff running, barricading themselves in rooms after he entered a classroom and attacked.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DOMINIK MOLOTKY, IN CLASSROOM WHERE SHOOTING TOOK PLACE: Right when that first gunshot went off, I booked it to the far corner of the class. I was sitting right next to the door where he came in.

CLAIRE PAPOULIAS, SHOOTING SURVIVOR: I could hear gunshots like directly behind my head. And I could see the smoke like gunpowder or something from the weapon firing and then I could smell. And immediately, I dropped to the floor with all my classmates and someone was yelling that there was a shooter and everybody needed to get down on the ground.

And at that moment, I thought that I was going to die and I was so scared. I will never forget the screams and my classmates and they were like screaming in pain for help.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: Police say that 43-year-old Anthony McRae then fled to another building where he shot another student to death. We're told he had no ties to the school. And he killed himself after a caller's led police directly to him.

The campus is shattered. All eight victims were MSU students. And we just learned two of their names, sophomore Brian Fraser, and junior Alexandria Verner were killed. The five students who survived are still in the hospital. The doctor in charge of their care and state leaders overcome with emotion.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. DENNY MARTIN, CHIEF MEDICAL OFFICER, SPARROW HOSPITAL: All five individuals who remain in critical condition this morning. We received a lot of texts that were just, you know, I'm on my way, just within people showing up where they need me.

GOV. GRETCHEN WHITMER (D), MICHIGAN: Parents across Michigan were on pins and needles, calling their kids to tell them that they love them.

REP. ELISSA SLOTKIN (D), MICHIGAN: And we have children in Michigan who are living through their second school shooting in under a year and a half. If this is not a wakeup call to do something, I don't know what is.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: That second school shooting the congresswoman referred to was Oxford High School in 2021. As for this year, so far, at least 67 U.S. mass shootings in just 45 days.

CNN National Security Analyst and MSU Professor Shawn Turner is standing by for us in East Lansing. But first CNN Senior Crime and Justice Correspondent Shimon Prokupecz has new details on the gunman from his own father. Shimon?

SHIMON PROKUPECZ, CNN CRIME AND JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Kasie. And so part of what law enforcement has been doing is trying to figure out what was going on in this gunman's life. And so they have talked to the father, they've talked to friends, they've talked to the sister, but we here at CNN as well, have talked to his father as well.

And certainly, the dad is painting a picture of someone who was very troubled. And he points to the fact that his mother died just about two years ago. And that since then, the government has not been the same. But this doesn't really give any more clarity as to the motive here.

But let me tell you what the dad has been telling reporters and certainly law enforcement and that he describes that his son at some point became isolated, and evil and angry, and that he was getting more bitter, angry and bitter, and that he let himself go. And sort of indications of that was that his son stopped cutting his hair, stopped taking care of himself.

He even said that his teeth started falling and falling out. And so he lived with the dad, but certainly the dad is painting a picture of someone who was very troubled. Other indications of whether or not the dad may have known that something like this or that the son was thinking of something like this is really unclear and what steps he did to alert authority to any concerns over his son. And also the fact that it appears that he had at least three guns on him at the time, you know, and were any steps taken to let law enforcement know that this man possessed these weapons.

So these are all questions certainly that law enforcement is going to try to answer but I just want to highlight that none of this even though we know that this was an individual who was troubled and was having, you know, some difficulty in life does not give really any explanation here as to the motive yet.

HUNT: All right, Shimon, thanks very much for updating us on that reporting. Shawn Turner is a National Security Analyst for CNN, but he's also a professor of Strategic Community at Michigan State and he was on campus leaving for the night when that alert went out.

[13:05:05]

Shawn, thank you very much for taking some time to be with us. We are just learning, of course, all of this information, but I just wanted to check in and see, I mean, how are you personally feeling and doing right now? This is your community.

SHAWN TURNER, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Yes, Kasie it is my community. And I will tell you that for me personally from my family, this is just a devastating day. This community is not just part of Michigan State University. East Lansing is Michigan State University, Michigan State University is East Lansing.

So everyone here is waking up this morning in a better shock, and trying to figure out what happened here and how we're going to cope with it. So thank you for asking, but this is just a devastating day for everyone here.

HUNT: Yes, of course. So take us back to that moment when you first saw this alert go out. I mean, what went through your mind and what steps did you immediately take?

TURNER Yes. So as I said, it was about 8:15 last night. I had gone back to campus after leaving. I needed to pick up some paperwork. And just as I was arriving at my office, the alert went out. An alert telling us that there was an active shooter on campus. And to be really candid at the time, what I thought was that this is probably, you know, nothing all that serious, but I decided I was going to leave campus anyway.

I will tell you, Kasie, as I left campus, it was unlike anything I've ever seen. It only takes a couple of minutes to get off campus. And by the time I was at the edge of campus, the law enforcement officials from several jurisdictions had converged on campus. And it was clear to me at that point that something serious was happening.

Like a lot of folks, you know, I got back home and began to listen into scanners to try to understand what was going on. And it took just a few minutes to realize that we had an extremely serious situation here. So then a lot of people sort of turned to making sure that our students, our faculty or staff, were all safe. And as you know, that went on well into the morning last night here on campus.

HUNT: Yes, it really is the worst nightmare to get something that you -- I know that on Capitol Hill, for example, you get false alarms regularly. But then if you discover that something is really, really happening, that's just absolutely devastating. And we know that eight of the victims -- there are eight victims total, three of them lost their lives, and they were all students.

Have you checked in with your students? How are they doing? I mean, when are they -- when will they be ready to go back inside a classroom?

TURNER: Yes, you know, that's one of the real challenges here. There is a lot of uncertainty amongst students here. But I can tell you that throughout the morning today and last night, faculty staff, the administration here at Michigan State University, they've come together to really come up with a plan for what's next to acknowledge to the uncertainty that our students and that our teams here are feeling.

I reached out to my students last night. I've sent to sent an email just to make sure that everyone's OK. I was actually supposed to teach later on today, the university has decided that there won't be any classes today or the rest of the week. So we're just making sure that students understand that we understand just how tragic and devastating this event is.

And what we're going to do now is we're going to focus on taking care of them and making sure that we give them the care that they need, so that we can come back to class, turn our attention back to education. And I think that you're going to see that throughout this community. As I said before, this campus behind me is part of this community and this community is inseparable from that campus.

So we're -- we are devastated. But we are fortunate and that we are part of a community that's really going to wrap their arms around us and help us get through this.

HUNT: And many of my family members actually are Michigan State Spartans, and I know the campus while my sister was there, and our hearts really are with you and with your students and with the entire MSU community.

Shawn Turner, thank you very much for joining us today.

We're going to continue the conversation now with CNN Law Enforcement Analyst and former Secret Service Agent Jonathan Wackrow, and CNN Senior Law Enforcement Analyst Charles Ramsey. Thank you both for being here.

And Chief Ramsey, let me start with you because we've just heard some stunning details from the father of the gunman about what was going on. What go through your mind? What do you hear when you learn these details?

CHARLES RAMSEY, CNN SENIOR LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Well, I mean, it's another example of someone who is certainly going through some kind of mental health crisis has access to a gun and uses that gun, unfortunately, to commit a very horrific crime. Let me just offer my condolences to the families of those students that were murdered yesterday.

I mean, these sorts of things that should not happen, but they continue to happen over and over and over again. And, of course, we'll be dissecting all this as they go to take a deeper dive into this individual is history and so forth.

[13:10:03]

But the bottom line is he was able to get his hands on a gun and use it. And it's just another example of a terrific gun violence that happens in this country every day.

HUNT: It is indeed. And speaking of other incidents of gun violence, I mean, Jonathan, what do you make of the fact that the shooter left this two-page note, and it referenced other shootings?

JONATHAN WACKROW, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Well, listen, you know, this is what investigators are actually looking at. They're going to look at, you know, in the investigative process now, what is that modem? The challenge is, is that there's not a typical model of individuals who engage in these types of violent acts. They come from different backgrounds, and they have various motives.

But, you know, the note -- and as Shimon Prokupecz stated earlier, the comments by the father around how this had the suspect, you know, you let himself go, those are all indicators, those are all behavioral indicators that law enforcement is looking at, right? Think about it this way, it is not normal to wake up, walk into a location and actively kill somebody, right?

People just don't do that. There has to have been some red flags, some behavioral anomalies that precipitated this event. And that's where we, as a community, need to get smarter, and be able to quickly identify those behavioral anomalies, especially if someone has access to weapons, you know, weapons, guns, long guns, handguns, they're all the common denominator here in these these mass attacks. We have to get ahead of that. And we have to look at what these warning signs are.

HUNT: What else, Jonathan, will police be digging through besides the things we've already heard about? I mean, will they be interviewing family members, thinking through social media? I mean, can you -- what are the some of the other examples of things they're going to be doing?

WACKROW: Absolutely, they are going to absolutely do that. They're going to look at everything that is connected to this suspect. You know, who did they talk to? Were they influenced? Did they express what's known as concerning communication before this event? And Secret Service has done numerous studies by the national threat assessment center in a majority of mass attacks. The perpetrator actually telegraph through concerning communications, that there was some type of grievance, that they were going to, you know, engage in some sort of violent act. That's what investigators are looking for.

Who did they speak to? Was it family members, friends, co-workers in really hone in on why this occurred, and then again, how to prevent this in the future.

HUNT: So Chief Ramsey, the police tweeted out a photo of the suspect. And just a short time later, there was an alert citizen who gave the police a tip and that led directly to him. And from what we know, he took his own life, there was no altercation with the police. I saw the police really thanking the public for doing this. How significant was that tip?

RAMSEY: It was very significant. The police response in this case was very good. I mean, a multiple jurisdictions responded very, very quickly. They did a thorough search of the buildings and campus grounds. Once they got information from a video of the individual, a photo of the individual, they got it out quickly to the public.

Again, you know, they really, really I thought acted in a way in which you want to see police respond. And they do respond that way in a vast majority of cases, that led to this individual at least being located. Now he took his own life, which is not uncommon when you have people to do the kind of things that this individual did.

But the fact that it alerted a member of the public, who could then provide them with the information to find this individual. It would not have happened had to police not put that information out as quickly as they did.

HUNT: Yes. Chief, so the suspect did have a criminal record in Michigan. He pled guilty to this firearm charge in 2019. He got off probation in 2021. He had at least two weapons on him, a handgun, there was another one in the backpack that he was carrying.

We're just learning that inside the note, he wrote that he's -- he was going to, quote, finish off Lansing, end quote, that just in to CNN. What are those details will tell you?

RAMSEY: Well, I mean, he had more violence plan, obviously. I mean, you know, we'll never know exactly what it is that he had planned. But I think just based on what he did at Michigan State, it's pretty safe to assume that more people would have died, had he not taken his own life, had police not been able to locate him and really cause him to take his own life.

So, you know, again, this is an example of an individual should not have access to firearms. There are millions of people in this country, millions of firearms. Most people are responsible gun owners, but guns still fall into the hands of the wrong people. And we just refuse as a society to sit down and talk about it, and try to come up with something. [13:15:01]

That won't be 100 percent effective but it'll be better than it is now. 67 already this year, it's only the 14th of February. And I can almost guarantee you that that number will be in the hundreds before the year is out, unfortunately. Because we just won't do anything, and it's just going to continue and go on and on and on.

And that's not counting the day-to-day gun violence that happens on the streets of our cities every day where one or two people get shot to death. And the media and others don't even talk about it.

HUNT: The fact that it is in fact February 14, Valentine's Day, and this is what we're talking about. Just underscores the devastation.

Jonathan Wackrow, Chief Ramsey, thank you both very much for taking some time with us today. We really appreciate it.

A violent mob of Trump supporters wanted to hang in. So why is former Vice President Mike Pence planning to fight a subpoena from the special counsel investigating January 6? Plus, she said she wouldn't run against former President Trump but that is apparently not the case anymore.

Why Nikki Haley says she's running for the White House? And today's inflation report revealing some good news on price hikes, but there's still a lot of bad in there, especially if you happen to love eggs.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:20:20]

HUNT: Former Vice President Mike Pence apparently tried to duck out of testifying before the Special Counsel in the probe into Donald Trump. A source tells CNN that Pence's lawyers plan to fight the subpoena with an unexpected strategy. They're going to argue that since the vice president serves as president of the Senate, he is covered by the Constitution's speech or debate clause that protects legislators from having to testify in these kinds of situations.

You may remember that Senator Lindsey Graham tried to use that argument in the Georgia Trump investigation. Graham is, of course, an actual elected member of the legislative branch and that argument got rejected in that case.

CNN Legal Analyst Elliot Williams is here to help us break it all down. Elliot, obviously, I'm not a lawyer. I do cover politics. So I have plenty of theories about why from a political perspective, he wants to fight this subpoena. But from a legal perspective, is this a long shot? Does Pence have a case with this argument?

ELLIOT WILLIAMS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: It is not a long shot, Kasie, believe it or not. And you have to go right back to the Constitution. So look, Article I, Section 3 of the Constitution says, like you said, the vice president shall be the president of the Senate, the person who's in effect controls or runs the Senate, sort of why Kamala Harris over the last two years cast so many tiebreaker votes, because she was in her role as president of the Senate.

You read a little further into the Constitution, there's this speech or debate clause, Article I, Section 6, and it says that members of Congress shall not be questioned. And that's interpreted to mean in court over actions that come in their official duties.

Now, this question is, does Mike Pence count under the law as, quote unquote, a member of Congress when he seated at that dais. And it's a little more -- you and I both know, he's vice president of the United States, he's number two to the President. But that role as the principal leader of the Senate might come into some legal questioning and imports have to sort that out.

HUNT: Yes, I mean, it really is fascinating. I mean, what we were expecting, I think, was questions and discussion of executive privilege. And we know that former President Trump does plan to assert that privilege over Pence's testimony, or at least, to try to do that.

I guess my question to you is, was that already settled? I mean, does the Biden White House need to formally waive privilege to override that? Can they do that? How we're going to see that piece of this play out?

WILLIAMS: Right, because privileges would -- if we're talking about executive privilege here, that would rest with the president of -- the sitting president of the United States.

HUNT: The current president, yes.

WILLIAMS: That would be its own complicated legal fight. The challenge with this feature debate clauses uses it's far more ironclad, that executive privilege. Virtually, everything protects what happens on the floors of Congress, including perhaps what the Vice President does when he or she is seated in that seat or preparing to sit in that seat, as might have been the case in the lead up to January 6.

Now, Pence certainly can't have every conversation he had protected, because the grand jury subpoena for the information here is broader than just his role as Vice President. So it'll be really interesting to see what the courts do with this one.

HUNT: Yes, no, fascinating. Elliot Williams, I bet we're going to be checking in with you quite a bit on this topic. So thank you very much for being with us today. We really appreciate it.

WILLIAMS: Thank you.

HUNT: So Mike Pence's legal maneuvering on this subpoena may have a lot to do, as I mentioned, with his 2024 maneuvering. So let's talk about that some more with CNN Senior Political Analyst, Ron Brownstein, and Axios Senior Contributor Margaret Talev.

Ron, let me start with you. So Pence is making a show of fighting the subpoena, which, quite frankly, is a political move. And the reality is he talks a lot about his Trump conversations. His conversations with Trump around this in his memoir. I mean, he's been trying to basically have it both ways, kind of all along here pleasing both all sides of the GOP.

But, I mean, honestly, I really struggled to see where the lane is for him right now. I mean, how tough is dealing with the subpoena for him from a political perspective?

RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: You know, there was a novel in the 70s, "The Seve-Percent-Cent Solution." I feel like he's on track for a 7 percent performance in the Republican race --

HUNT: Ouch.

BROWNSTEIN: -- precisely because of what you're, you know, what you're outlining. You know, he really has not been able to decide whether he wants to run as a kind of an extension of Trump out or defining himself in greater opposition than he's done so far.

You know, he did his duty on January 6. There's a question about whether he has done his duty since January 6 because certainly no one has a closer, you know, up front and personal view of whether Trump's actions render after the election of 2020, render him unfit to be president. And that is something who has just not been willing to regret.

[13:25:15]

I don't think prosecutors need it, the January 6 Committee didn't need it to present a pretty strong case against Trump. But I think it is indicative of the larger political problem that you're outlining that he really has not been able to pick a lane here in this emerging race.

HUNT: Yes. And Margaret, I mean, the reality here, you know, my sense is he needs to be seen fighting this if he hopes to be competitive in a GOP primary, right? So that's part of why we're seeing this. But the reality is that fighting this in the courts, you know, as Elliott was kind of outlining, I mean, it's not been fought before. It's going to take a lot of time.

I realized it's only February, but we've got another person jumping into the 2024 campaign that we're going to talk about in a second. I mean, it's not like he's got all the time in the world here before he's in the middle of campaign season having to answer questions about this.

MARGARET TALEV, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, Kasie, that's right, but it does seem that the former vice president wants to be able to get into that campaign season, suggesting that he's not a political turncoat or traitor, so that he can not lose that part of the base that, in theory might still care about Donald Trump, but be interested in Mike Pence too.

To Ron's point, I don't know what percentage of the party that is but there is -- Mike Pence is not the only figure thinking about 2024, who's trying to figure out kind of how to have it both ways. And I think Nikki Haley, with her campaign video today, and her expected announcement tomorrow in Charleston, is to some extent dealing with a similar problem, which is that at first she was completely against Donald Trump.

Then when he became president, she joined his administration, served as as U.N. ambassador, then said she wouldn't run if he ran, then was against his handling of January 6, and said he was too tainted, but then said if he ran, she wouldn't run. But now she's running again.

So I think again, this kind of jockeying -- they have a right to change their mind, people have a right to say, I mentioned when I said it, I just changed my mind for whether the argument is generational change or, you know, strong moral compass. If that's the attack, you're going to do ---

HUNT: Yes.

TALEV: -- what you are saying is Donald Trump couldn't be president again. But then you don't come out and say it. And I think that's going to be a messaging problem in base. And if you become the nominee, it would become a problem in a general election.

HUNT: Yes. So Margaret, just let me put a pause here, because you're a little bit ahead of me, because I want to show all of our viewers a little bit of Nikki Haley's announcement from today, before we start to really dig into some of the arguments that you were just making take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NIKKI HALEY, FORMER GOVERNOR OF SOUTH CAROLINA: Republicans have lost the popular vote in seven out of the last eight presidential elections. That has to change. Joe Biden's record is abysmal. But that shouldn't come as a surprise. The Washington establishment has failed us over and over and over again. It's time for a new generation of leadership.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: So, Ron, I mean, a lot of the points that Margaret was just making are on display there. I mean --

BROWNSTEIN: Yes.

HUNT: -- you didn't hear her talk about Donald Trump, but she did say Republicans keep losing the popular vote. If that's not a dig at Donald Trump, I don't know what it is. She's making a generational argument. If that's not an argument against Trump, I don't know what is but that said she won't say his name, like how can she be effective if she won't do that?

BROWNSTEIN: Well, look, I also think whatever ever she frames her argument, her entry into the race is on balance, a gift for Donald Trump. The fundamental, the core divide, the key dynamic in the Republican race is the difference -- the divergence between Republican voters with and without a college education. Each about half of the primary electorate almost exactly half.

And in 2016, Donald Trump dominated among the non-college Republicans, but he won only about a third, Kasie, of college educated Republicans, even as he, you know, marched toward the nomination. His situation I think, in 2024, is not that different. He is still much stronger among non-college than college Republicans.

So anything that splinters the vote among those college Republicans who are the most resistant to him, and who I think would have to be the foundation of a DeSantis candidacy benefits Donald Trump. And Nikki Haley, like Tim Scott, like Chris Sununu, like Larry Hogan, like Glenn Youngkin are all candidates who are likely to draw more of their support from the college side of the party than the non-college side with the risk that those voters again splinter among too many candidates to power a true alternative to Trump strength among the blue collar side of the party.

HUNT: Yes, and bottom line, this helps explain why when Nikki Haley previously said she wasn't going to run against Trump and apparently, they talked ahead of this and he's all fine with it.