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21-Year-Old Guardsman Arrested In Pentagon Docs Leak Case; Trump Questioned Under Oath In New York AG Civil Suit; Second Ousted Lawmaker Reclaims His Seat In Tennessee House; NWS: Rainfall In Fort Lauderdale Likely "1-In-1,000-Year" Event. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired April 13, 2023 - 15:00   ET

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

JOSH CAMPBELL, CNN SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: But the second thing is you have to understand you have a suspect now who will go through the judicial system and be prosecuted. If he doesn't plea, the government, especially in classified document cases is always concerned about the fact that at trial, classified information could be revealed in the very act of trying to prosecute this person.

Now, there is something called CIPA, the Classified information Procedures Act, which is I use it in my past cases where it's the ability of the Justice Department to basically negotiate with a judge to provide information, present information into a courtroom without that being disclosed. But the bar for that is typically very high.

But again, in espionage cases, that is certainly a concern that the government has. If they can plea - get a plea from this person, they don't have to worry about additional information, additional secrets making them out into the public light.

So the last thing I'll say is that was also a concern here because when you have a suspect, who is facing serious jail time, that is often a consideration in whether they cooperate or whether they tried to go out in a hail of gunfire, right, we know this person was a gun enthusiast. So I think for everyone here, the operators, the FBI operators and the suspect the best possible outcome we're seeing in our screen.

BIANNA GOLODRYGA, CNN HOST: All right. Josh Campbell, Kimberly Dozier, David Priess, thank you. And Evan Perez and Colonel Cedric Leighton, please stay with us.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is CNN Breaking News.

GOLODRYGA: It is the top of the hour in a very busy Thursday afternoon. Hello, everyone. I'm Bianna Golodryga.

ERICA HILL, CNN HOST: And I'm Erica Hill, thanks for joining us in the CNN Newsroom. If you are just joining us, the breaking news, the FBI has just arrested the suspect accused of leaking a trove of highly secret U.S. government intelligence. The suspect, Jack Teixeira, a 21- year-old member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard.

So in this video here, you're seeing Teixeira walking backwards their hands on his head as he's being taken into custody outside his home in Massachusetts.

GOLODRYGA: The New York Times and Washington Post report that the suspect was a leader of an online gaming group whose members called him OG.

CNN's Oren Liebermann is at the Pentagon, but we're going to go first to CNN's Evan Perez, who covers the Justice Department. Evan, the Attorney General just spoke about this arrest (inaudible) listen on what he said.

Evan? Can you hear?

EVAN PEREZ, CNN SENIOR JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Oh, yes. Yes, I'm sorry. I thought we were about to throw to the South. Yes, so the Attorney General announced the arrest of Jack Teixeira who he identified as a member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard.

Now, the arrest was something that the FBI was working on. They knew, they had identified him, I think you mentioned a little bit about his membership in that online group on Discord. A gaming group that was apparently formed over the course of the pandemic. And in the last couple of days, the FBI had narrowed down to identify Teixeira and just a few - just in the last hour, you saw the pictures there of Teixeira being taken into custody by the FBI, the Attorney General talked a little bit about the arrest. Here he is now.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MERRICK GARLAND, ATTORNEY GENERAL: FBI agents took Teixeira into custody earlier this afternoon without incident. He will have an initial appearance at the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts. I want to thank the FBI, Justice Department, prosecutors and our colleagues at the Department of Defense for their diligent work on this case.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PEREZ: And this was the work of the FBI agents down in the Washington Field Office, counter intelligence agents who do this kind of work. They just - they specialize in hunting for leaks. And they were working with people from the Pentagon, the army, a Criminal Investigative Division, as well as obviously people from the Pentagon who are trying to do a damage assessment, which is like a work that's going to take a long - lot more time for them to do.

You saw there alongside the Attorney General, you saw Lisa Monaco, the Deputy Attorney General, Paul Abbate, the Deputy FBI Director. That gives you a sense, guys, of how important the FBI, certainly the Attorney General viewed this case because of the seriousness of the information that was being exposed.

We're talking about documents that showed very recent intelligence products from - throughout the intelligence community and that showed really some intrusive - the intrusive - the intrusion of the U.S. intelligence community on Russia as well as some of our allies. Again, something that is extremely serious and extremely viewed very extremely seriously by the by the FBI and by the federal government here.

So that's reason why we expect now once he gets presented to a judge in Massachusetts, he'll be brought to the Washington, D.C. area where he will face those charges at the Eastern District of Virginia.

[15:05:00]

HILL: Oren Liebermann also with us.

So Oren, we just heard you there in the briefing at the Pentagon, there are so many questions about how this could have happened, what safeguards were or were not in place. A lot of those questions, obviously, were sort of deflected, saying, look, this is an ongoing investigation. But there was some talk about changes that are being made in the wake of these leaks. What do we know about those initial changes, Oren?

OREN LIEBERMANN, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: This is a point that a number of the correspondents there in the Pentagon briefing including myself kept hammering in on what is the Pentagon doing to look at the distribution of this level of documents across as we've learned thousands of people distribution lists that some officials have said are simply too wide and too far out there.

Now, the Pentagon wouldn't go into specific steps that it was taken. But eventually the Pentagon acknowledged and the spokesperson acknowledged that they have pared down those distribution lists as CNN has reported, so that not nearly as many people or I should say not as many people have access to this, because they won't give us a sense of how much that has been pared down.

One of the other key questions, of course, was how did an airman first class, an E-3, a low-ranking member of the enlisted community in the Massachusetts Air National Guard have access to top secret documents that would eventually find their way up to, for example, the top U.S. general, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

To that, the Pentagon said that they are - there are background checks and there are positions for background checks that require access to this level of classification. And those are intended to find people who perhaps don't deserve or shouldn't have this kind of access. Obviously, in this case and they wouldn't talk about this specific example, in this case, that was problematic. It didn't flag something here, perhaps, that should have led to DOD knowing, hey, there may be an issue here.

So that part of the process and reviewing how do people get access to this level of documents and how are these distribution distributed to make sure that they should only go to those people who truly need them. In terms of who else and how these spread on Discord, a chat and messaging platform, the Washington Post spoke with somebody who said he was a friend here on the server and that revealed something that could be just as damaging to U.S. National Security and that's - that the leaks didn't start over the course of the past few weeks, but months ago. Take a listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I was first made aware of these documents I want to say about six to eight months ago, I was in a Discord server by the name of Doug Shaker Central (ph). And in this channel, there was classified documents being posted by a user who I will refer to as OG from this point. The documents were often listed as Ukraine versus Russia at first. However, it slowly spiraled into just intelligence about everything.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LIEBERMANN: The Pentagon wouldn't say if other members of the Massachusetts Air National Guard, the 102nd Intelligence Wing had access to classified documents and top secret information restricted in light of the investigation, but they did repeatedly say this is a deliberate criminal act.

HILL: Oren Liebermann, Evan Perez, we appreciate it. Thank you both.

Joining us now, CNN Political and National Security Analyst, David Sanger. He's a White House National Security Correspondent at The New York Times and CNN Military Analyst, Colonel Cedric Leighton, back with us as well.

Gentlemen, as we look at what's happening, if we pick up Col. Leighton, if we could, where Oren left off in terms of these questions about measures that are in place to flag any potential issues for people who would have access to highly classified sensitive material. Does this raise concerns for you and is there anything that you have seen in your time that would cause you to say those measures may need to be looked at again?

COL. CEDRIC LEIGHTON (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Hey, Erica.

I definitely think these measures need to be looked at again, because what you're dealing with here is people's lives. And as things change in a person's situation, let's say, their financial situation or their exposure to different people, foreign people and on this discord platform, we know that he was - the suspect was contacted by Russian nationals on that platform.

So there are certain things there that become critically important and leads you to believe these kinds of background checks need to be done in a much more thorough manner. That's one of the key things and they also need to be updated on a more angle (ph) basis than is currently the case.

So yes, they definitely need to be re-examined and that there needs to be a full court press on that particular aspect of clearance issue.

GOLODRYGA: David, what we believe to know is that the intel in these leaks is based on electronic intercepts collected by American intelligence agencies and not by human sources, that is a good thing that humans have not been compromised here which would just be spies in various countries. That having been said, we know the consequences of this are

significant. But given that this is through electronic monitoring, what our efforts at continuing this process, would they be compromised at all, despite all this information being out there?

[15:10:08]

DAVID SANGER, CNN POLITICAL AND NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: It's a good question, Bianna and we don't really know the answer to that right now. When you go through these documents and I've been through a good number of them, but not all of them, it's pretty evident that the intercepts that they've got are - have been summarized.

So there's nothing in the documents, at least that I have seen, that would tell you how the NSA or U.S. cyber command or others got access to this. That said, of course, it does alert our adversaries, and in some cases, our allies, the South Koreans, the Israelis, even the Ukrainians, that the United States is listening in to at least some of those conversations. There is nothing on human intelligence I'd seen with it.

And so this point that you were just making with Cedric about limiting the - where the intelligence flows, certainly, it's a very reasonable question to ask why a 21-year-old guardsman in Massachusetts needs to see this material that is intended for the Joint Chiefs.

But remember that the reason that we are spreading this intelligence or intelligence in general more broadly is because after 911, we came to the conclusion that we had kept everything too siloed and that you needed to spread information out, there was a reason that the FBI and others didn't know that there were - the Saudi hijackers were in the United States.

So there's a risk here of constricting too much and then having some incident happen that leads you to suddenly try to open up again. And we've got to break out of this cycle.

HILL: And perhaps breaking out of that cycle, you could almost equate it in some ways as to what we've seen, David, when it comes to airport security. One of the things that has been criticized certainly in the years right after 911 is that much of those measures were reactive, right? This was reactive, as opposed to proactive.

And so I wonder, David, based on your experience, if you see evidence that there may be a push towards more proactive moves here, where the U.S. and the intel community is constantly looking at how and where information is shared, what may have gotten out there, who may have tapped in to the U.S. who may be monitoring the U.S. and are those changes, can they happen more in a real time fashion, as opposed to when there is an emergency?

SANGER: That's right. They need to be reviewing this more and think about just the example that you used, Erica, which was the airport. So we now have a trusted traveler program, right, and we think hard about who's a group of people who you think you don't need to search as often and you could just do that more periodically, and you can go through a lighter search.

There needs to be sort of equivalents of that in the world of classified information. But there's also got to be a much broader scale declassification. As you go through a lot of these documents, you discovered that much of the material they pick is from open source data. It's from things you've read in The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal or seen on CNN.

And so we have to think a lot harder about just protecting those secrets that really need to be protected and restricting that and opening up so much more. Because otherwise, if you are protecting everything, you really don't know what it is that you want to protect the most.

GOLODRYGA: Colonel, as we heard from the Pentagon briefing that not much was revealed, except for an investigation into how officials can tighten the access to who is privy to this type of classified information. I'm just curious, what would you look into when making that decision as to who and who isn't privy to this type of information?

LEIGHTON: (Inaudible), yes, exactly Bianna. It has to be looked at in terms of the mission of a particular unit. So in the case of the 102nd Intelligence Wing, they actually have global mission. They're part of what's known as a distributed common ground system and what that really means is they get data from overseas to analyze that data. They help the rest of the military and the intelligence community, analyze things that are going on in either real time or near real time in various theaters around the world and it could very well be the case that that unit is working issues such as Ukraine, for example.

So we have to have access to some of that information, but they don't necessarily have to have access to things that are going on in other places. And it's a really tough call, because, one, your senior leadership in any unit, including a wing like the 102nd to be aware of things, to be aware of what some leaders like the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs are thinking about.

[15:15:01]

But you also don't want that information to be misused. And the more you spread it out, the greater risk of misuse it certainly is.

So that's - that becomes the dilemma, but that's the kind of thing that I'd be looking at. It has to be mission focused and it has to be designed to actually work in a system where those kinds of things that they need to do their job, those pieces of information that they need to do there be given to them. But beyond that, it has to be really strictly controlled.

GOLODRYGA: All right. And as we wrap this segment up, a reminder to our viewers that there has been an arrest made in the massive intel leak, a 21-year-old Jack Teixeira, the suspect in this leak has been arrested outside of his home in Dighton, Massachusetts. He is expected to appear before a Massachusetts court soon. And, of course, any developments that we hear of in this case we will

bring to you. Thank you so much, David Sanger and Col. Leighton, We appreciate it.

Moving to other headlines right now, former President Trump is sitting for deposition in the $250 million case - civil case brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James. The lawsuit alleges expansive fraud in the former president's financial practices in an effort to enrich himself.

HILL: CNN's Kara Scannell now joining us now with the very latest on this. So how long is this deposition expected to last, Kara?

KARA SCANNELL, CNN REPORTER: Well, the former president arrived here just a little before 10 am, so that's about five hours. And we know that they do take an hour break for lunch, so roughly we could guess that he's been under oath answering questions for about four hours.

Now when we look at when his children, Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump, came in for testimony and they answered questions, they went in until a little after five o'clock, even a bit later than that. So it's really unclear how long this is going to go today.

The last time he was here in August, when he asserted the Fifth Amendment, more than 400 questions and said he would not answer them, because he didn't want to - he wanted the protections against self incrimination. He left around 3:30.

So now he is answering questions. His lawyer says he's not only willing, but he is eager to testify today. We could see this continue for quite some time as this afternoon continues. I mean, there - as that lawsuit you mentioned, it's more than 200 pages. There's a lot of very specific allegations and there are specific questions that they've had for him in the past about how he valued some of his assets including how he came up with the size of his penthouse apartment on Trump Tower.

So this could continue if these questions are detailed as they were the last time and depending on how long his answers are. Now his attorney saying that he is eager to testify, so we are waiting here watching for any signs that this is wrapping up but it could continue for a bit longer, Bianna? Erica?

HILL: Kara Scannell live for us there in Manhattan, appreciate it. Thank you.

GOLODRYGA: Now to Nashville where we find a second triumphant return. Democratic Rep. Justin Pearson has reclaimed his seat in the Tennessee State House. His swearing in today comes one week after Republicans voted to expel him and fellow Democrat Justin Jones for leading a protest to demand gun reform.

HILL: Both young black lawmakers have now been reinstated.

CNN's Ryan Young joining us live from Nashville this afternoon.

Talk about the difference that a week can make, Ryan. It's been a bit of a roller coaster. What happens now?

RYAN YOUNG, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Absolutely. Bianna and Erica, look, last week this time, I probably couldn't even hear myself as I was talking. Yesterday during your show, the same thing because of all the energy all the protesters that showed up to give everyone a rousing sort of applause as they went back up to the state capitol.

Same thing happened today. Justin Pearson walked up the stairs triumphant, really happy to be back to represent the people who he was elected to be here for. In fact, when you think about all the things that have happened in the last week, Republicans have really turned the Tennessee Three into superstars across the country as they talk about gun control.

After his first time on the floor, he walked right out into - by live shot. We asked him a few questions. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

YOUNG: The last thing you said yesterday is it's time to get back to work. Is that what you plan to do? Tell ...

REP. JUSTIN PEARSON (D-TN): Exactly. So myself, Rep. Jones, Rep. Johnson, we all just spoke out against this bill and we're forcing the Republican Party in the state of Tennessee to see themselves, see what they are doing to the people in this community and we have to have this people powered movement continue to hold them accountable. And that's going to be required in the state of Tennessee and across the country.

YOUNG: My last question is how will people hold you accountable? What was one thing that you think you can deliver to the people after all this that's happened?

PEARSON: Yes. We are going to pass sensible gun legislation. I've got 15 bills and every single slot is going to be about gun reform. And so if you have recommendations for us to pass bills here in the state, and then please send them to me.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

YOUNG: A week ago, three representatives not many people across the country may have not known, now they're household names for a lot of people across the country. All these happening, plus yesterday, a very small group of kids decided to walk to the Governor's house to ask for more gun control.

[15:20:01]

Look, there's a swell of emotion in this state, especially after the loss of those six lives almost three weeks ago. People want to see some real change. The Governor's call for it as well. Now everyone's paying attention to the state house. We'll see what happens next, guys?

GOLODRYGA: It has been a whirlwind of a week for that state, for that city and for you, Ryan. And thank you so much for all of your hard work in bringing us all the developments in that important story, thank you.

And still ahead, Fort Lauderdale is reeling from its rainiest day ever. A one in 1,000-year event sparking floods and prompting hundreds of rescues. Just look at that video. We're live in soggy South Florida up next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:24:43]

HILL: Historic flooding in South Florida has spurred a declaration of an active emergency. In just 24 hours up to two feet of rain has fallen there. Many drivers had to be rescued. Look at that water after their cars were just swamped by these torrential downpours that hit yesterday during rush hour no less.

[15:25:03]

GOLODRYGA: And overnight others had to be pulled from their homes and then carried to safety through waist deep waters. The Broward Sheriff's Office Fire Rescue teams report running hundreds and hundreds of water rescues in just the past 36 hours.

CNN's Carlos Suarez joins us from Fort Lauderdale.

And Carlos, to talk about what you're seeing there and how surprising all this flooding was for officials.

CARLOS SUAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Erica and Bianna, the National Weather Service here in Miami has been able to confirm that two very weak tornadoes hit to the south of us. The forecasters there say they were able to take a look at some of the damage just to the south of the airport.

Now we're about a few minutes just north of where these two tornadoes hit in a neighborhood where, as you can see behind me, the flooding is very much still a concern. In fact, it's in this part of Broward County in Fort Lauderdale that we have seen a number of rescue operations take place throughout the day.

We're talking about team members with the Broward sheriff's office as well as the Fort Lauderdale Fire Rescue. As you mentioned coming out to me, they have performed what they're being put as dozens and dozens of these rescue operations. In fact, we were at a reunification site not too far from where we are live right now earlier this afternoon.

It's where we saw a number of folks being brought back after being rescued from their homes. They were taken off these boats that had been put onto these trailers. We caught up with one man who described just how his home was covered in about three feet of water and everything that he had to do just to get his family out today. Here's what he told us.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) PAUL GUERRERO, RESIDENT: We put towels and stuff in front of the

doors because we didn't have time for sandbags. We didn't know it's going to rain this fast. So we did the towels and then we just got overwhelmed. It just kept coming in and come in. It went over the thresholds. Next thing you know we're in two, three feet of water. I had to run over and shut off all the power so that way we didn't get electrocuted, all sorts of things going through my mind. I tried calling, but really nobody can come out and help us because it just kept raining and raining and the water just kept coming up and up and up.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SUAREZ: All right. And over at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, officials there tell us that airport is not going to reopen today. There had been some hope that they were going to be able to get flights up and running at some point today.

However, because of all of the flooding that has covered the runways and the taxiways there, we're being told that the airport will not reopen until at least tomorrow. Coming back out here in this one neighborhood, as you can see, folks are taking to canoes as well as anything else that they can use to get out of their homes. Again, at this late hour word that two very weak tornadoes did hit the Broward County area after all of this rain moved through yesterday. Ladies?

HILL: Carlos, appreciate it. You can just imagine, I mean, I feel for that gentleman. I'm glad he made it out. But as you watch that water rise, not being able to get help, it is so scary.

GOLODRYGA: Yes.

HILL: Carlos, appreciate it. Thank you.

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