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Netanyahu Takes Stand in Corruption Trial; Police Investigating Motive of CEO Murder Suspect; Interview With Rep. Mike Turner (R-OH). Aired 11-11:30a ET

Aired December 10, 2024 - 11:00   ET

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

[11:00:00]

JIM ACOSTA, CNN HOST: You have got to keep that in mind.

PAMELA BROWN, CNN HOST: Exactly. It's absolutely heartbreaking.

ACOSTA: Yes, absolutely.

BROWN: All right, Jim, great to see you.

ACOSTA: Good to see you.

BROWN: And good morning, everyone. You are live in the CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Pamela Brown in Washington.

And, this morning, investigators are scrambling to figure out the motives and recent movements of the man accused of murdering a health care CEO on a Manhattan sidewalk; 26-year-old Luigi Mangione is in a Pennsylvania cell alone and under -- quote -- "maximum custody level."

He had been the most wanted suspect in America after the Wednesday morning ambush of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. And he was arrested in Altoona, Pennsylvania, after a McDonald's employee thought a masked customer looked like the suspect and called police. He had a handgun and a three-page manifesto railing against corporate America.

Here's how this arrest unfolded.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DEREK SWOPE, ALTOONA, PENNSYLVANIA, DEPUTY POLICE CHIEF: Within several minutes, seconds of the first contact, he had asked the suspect if he had been in New York City recently. And that invoked a physical reaction from the suspect, who became visibly nervous, kind of shaking.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: Joining us now is Frank Montoya, a retired FBI agent and senior executive.

Frank, I want to get your reaction to what we just heard there, that this suspect, who was right there in neighboring Pennsylvania, so close by where the actual shooting happened, started shaking when authorities asked him if he had been in New York City recently.

FRANK MONTOYA JR., FORMER FBI OFFICIAL: Yes, he knew that jig was up. He knew that they had found him and were going to arrest him.

I mean, this is a great instance where individual does something and maybe doesn't think there's going to be any consequences for it and then realizes in that moment that, yes, there are consequences and you're done. You're going to get arrested and you're going to go to prison.

BROWN: And I want to talk about, what we're learning about this suspect, right? I mean, as I was just talking there with Jim Acosta, I don't know if you heard our conversation, but the court document says the handgun that he used, that the suspect used, appeared to be an untraceable 3-D printout.

So that suggests some level of sophistication, right? But then, on the other hand, there were careless parts where he put his mask down and he was sitting in a McDonald's in nearby Pennsylvania. I mean, how do you reconcile the level of sophistication and planning with the carelessness in this case?

MONTOYA: It's kind of a sign of the times. You have this world that we live in right now where you have access to a bunch of information on the Internet.

You can -- you have access to these so-called ghost guns. You have access to -- you have an imagination. You have all of these ways to plot and plan. But at the same time, actually executing the act is a lot different than playing a video game. It's a lot different than imagining it. It's a lot different than going on a Reddit post and listening into or into some other chat room and listening to people talk about how they might do this or that thing.

And actually executing it, it's a whole different kind of activity. And you're going to -- especially if you're inexperienced like this, you're going to forget things. You're going to make mistakes. You're going to leave a trail, no matter how well you try to cover yourself.

I mean, look at -- when you look at the trail that this individual left behind, whether it was the videos that were prevalent throughout his travels in New York or the witnesses that were able to finally identify him, everything from the beginning to the end, he left a lot of these trails.

And they were probably in his mind inadvertent or something that he didn't think about. But at the same time, it is what led to his subsequent apprehension.

BROWN: And his background is interesting, right? He went to and...

(CROSSTALK)

MONTOYA: Well...

BROWN: Go ahead. MONTOYA: No, I think that what that speaks to is the fact that he

thought he was probably smarter than everyone else and that he could cover his tracks and that he could commit the perfect crime.

And the fact is that very, very rarely does that happen, especially when you're somebody who doesn't have that kind of experience. And I hate to call it experience in that respect, but this is the guy who got an idea in his mind to go out and do this heinous act, and thought he could get away with it.

I think that when you look at where he was captured, in Pennsylvania, in proximity really to where he committed the crime, there was just this idea that there wasn't -- he wasn't going to get caught, that there wasn't going to be consequences.

BROWN: Right.

All right, Frank Montoya, thank you so much.

We just want to go to something that's just in the CNN, the Justice Department's watchdog just releasing this bombshell report saying that Trump's DOJ, Donald Trump's DOJ improperly subpoenaed phone records and e-mails of two members of Congress and their 43 staff members in 2017. We should note both Republicans and Democrats as well as several reporters swept up in this.

[11:05:07]

One of those staffers is Trump's own pick to run the FBI, Kash Patel, when he was a staffer on the House Intel Committee. The subpoenas are related to alleged leaks of classified information to the media, including CNN, during congressional investigations into what was called Crossfire Hurricane.

You may remember that as the code name of the FBI's investigation into connections between Trump's campaign and Russia during the 2016 election.

I'm going to go straight to Evan Perez now on this.

Tell us why these I.G. findings are such a big deal, Evan.

EVAN PEREZ, CNN SENIOR JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Well, this is a much bigger, much broader sweep of members of Congress and their staff than we knew about.

I mean, we have previously heard from Adam Schiff and from Eric Swalwell, two representatives. Schiff is about to be a senator of California. And we had heard them publicly discuss that they had been notified by their providers, by their service providers, that their records had been seized by the Justice Department earlier.

Now, this is a set of leak investigations that happened beginning in 2017, went for about two or three years. And so, again, we'd heard from those two members. What we did not know, Pam, is that there were 43 staff, both Democrats and Republicans. As a matter of fact, there were about 20 Republicans and 20 or so

Democrats who were -- whose records were seized. And among those was Kash Patel, who was at the time a staffer for Devin Nunes, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.

Now, one of the things that this report says that there was no indication that partisan politics played a role in the targeting of these people, but a key part of these investigations, of these tactics, right, to seize these records is that the Justice Department required a nondisclosure order, meaning that the service providers couldn't say that they -- that their records had been turned over.

Google, Apple, a lot of these companies have a six-year limit before they notify members of Congress, in this case, media members whose records were seized. So you have no option to really fight these subpoenas to try to make DOJ show what it has to do here. And so the big finding here is that they did not really do the work.

They really didn't have any reason to seize these records, except that these people had proximity to some of the classified information.

BROWN: And it just raises a lot of questions about separation of powers with co-equal branches of government and whether this was an abuse of that with the way that they handled this investigation, not going through the proper court process, not notifying the proper people at DOJ, and it does include reporters, as you noted.

PEREZ: Right. Exactly.

In this case, we had previously reported that reporters, including Barbara Starr and people at "The Wall Street Journal" -- I'm sorry -- at "The Washington Post" and "The New York Times," their records were seized as part of various leak investigations.

This is all happening under Donald Trump's attorney general, Jeff Sessions. And in this case, Sessions himself was not aware of the scope of these investigations. That's according to his own report. So, what...

BROWN: How does the attorney general not know about this? It's pretty stunning.

PEREZ: Right. Exactly. And I think that's part of what is so stunning about this.

BROWN: Any indication Donald Trump knew when he was president?

PEREZ: He did not know. It didn't appear that it even got to that level.

BROWN: OK.

PEREZ: This was being handled by people at the Justice Department, prosecutors who were essentially leak hunting. And this was their focus because the disclosure of this information, they found, was a problem. And so the question is, why is that process, was that process in

place? Now, we will mention that the Justice Department under Merrick Garland has put into place new rules, both on the news media, seizing their records. They have to exhaust a lot of other things before they can even do this. And they have to notify leadership about it.

Same thing with members of Congress. They need to be able to tell supervisors before they even go to this extraordinary step.

BROWN: OK. Evan Perez, thank you so much.

And according to this new DOJ watchdog report, as we were just discussing, one of those staffers improperly subpoenaed appears to be Trump's pick to run the FBI Kash Patel, when he was a staffer on the House Intel Committee.

Joining us now is the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Republican Congressman Mike Turner of Ohio.

Congressman, thanks for joining us.

Your reaction to this report that your committee, when you were on it, was improperly targeted by DOJ back in 2017.

REP. MIKE TURNER (R-OH): Right, Pamela.

Well, obviously, this report lays out outrageous behavior by the Department of Justice, where members of Congress and staff of the Intelligence Committee, the committee that I chair, had phone records and e-mail records that were accessed by the Department of Justice without court review.

Now, this affects, as the report says by Inspector General Horowitz, the constitutional authorities and the individual constitutional rights of the individuals that were impacted. Now, even though the attorney general now says that they're going to put into place some protections for these processes of the Department of Justice, it's clearly insufficient.

[11:10:10]

The -- we need to pass statutes that can require a court review and authorization. Actually, in this process that the Department of Justice went to access these records, the courts didn't even know the Department of Justice was accessing e-mails and phone records of members of Congress and their staff merely because they had access to classified information.

This is a grave constitutional violation.

BROWN: And, as Evan just noted, it appears from this report that the attorney general at the time, Jeff Sessions, didn't know about this. Donald Trump, he was president, but, as we know...

(CROSSTALK) TURNER: You have to remember also, Pamela -- Pamela, you also have to remember Jeff Sessions was recused from many of the Crossfire Hurricane and Russia hoax investigations that were going at the time. So it's not surprising that some of these, he would not have been involved in.

But the report does indicate that, by processes at the time, the Department of Justice did not require that the attorney general be notified. The new rules that are put in place by Attorney General Garland would require the attorney general be involved.

BROWN: OK.

TURNER: Those rules, I think, are very important. It's great the attorney general has done that, but it is not enough. This requires, I think, absolute court review.

And we're going to make certain that there are statutes that go in place, because this affects the constitutional workings of Congress.

BROWN: How significant is it that Trump's pick to lead the FBI was ensnared in this, Kash Patel?

TURNER: Well, it really shows that he understands the weaponization that has happened of the FBI, the Department of Justice against Americans and really against our own government.

I mean, here, you have the executive branch in effect spying on Congress. That weaponization goes right to the heart of really what we expect of the oversight processes. I mean, here, Congress is doing its oversight, and they access the e-mail records, the phone records of members of Congress and their staff merely because they had access to classified information.

They were doing their jobs here at Congress. That can't be. We need to have statutes in place that both protect members of Congress and hold these people accountable so this doesn't happen again.

BROWN: And just to reiterate to our viewers who may just not be joining, this, again, was happening when Donald Trump was president. This was Donald Trump's Department of Justice.

Kash Patel, for his part, has said he would go after members of the media, either criminally or civilly. Should this be a warning to Kash Patel about how the DOJ and FBI wield their power moving forward?

TURNER: Well, absolutely.

Kash Patel, who I have a great regard for, certainly understands the aspects of the deep state. And that is those individuals who really look at the workings of government, the weaponization of government and use them to both go after, I think, the workings of government. Here, we see members of Congress, their staff that were targeted.

And, certainly, we see both civilians and individuals who at times are targeted in ways that their constitutional rights and their individual rights are impacted. Here, with this report, we have the inspector general specifically saying that the constitutional authorities of Congress were impacted.

BROWN: So, you talked about these new rules that the current A.G., Garland, put in place in response to how this investigation for 2017 was conducted.

What I hear from you is, you would like to see the incoming administration keep those rules and actually add on to those rules to provide further protections in how members of Congress and members of the media are investigated, right?

TURNER: Right.

So, what Garland is doing is basically within the Department of Justice, within the attorney general's office raising the scrutiny, the higher echelon of the review before they pursue subpoenas or review of members of Congress or their staff.

But I believe that it requires actual notice and a higher review, a basis for court review. You shouldn't just have one branch of government being able to access the documents and subpoenaing another branch of government. I think this requires court review.

There certainly are circumstances in which those documents should be able to be accessed, but this shows absolutely abuses of authority that are going to require statutes.

BROWN: Very quickly, in order to appoint Kash Patel, who we were just talking about, president-elect Trump would have to fire Christopher Wray, a man he also appointed. Do you think Wray deserves to be fired?

TURNER: I think that President Trump, as he comes in, is going to have a lot of things to balance. He certainly deserves to put in place a team that responds to both his needs, and I think he's going to lay out what that team is going to be.

BROWN: All right, Congressman Mike Turner, thank you for your time.

TURNER: Thank you.

BROWN: Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee responding to this report just coming in from the DOJ's watchdog.

[11:15:03]

BROWN: And still ahead this hour: A year-and-a-half after a mystery medical emergency left him in a coma, Jamie Foxx is finally explaining what happened to him while on set in Atlanta -- the emotional revelations next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: New this morning, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu making history after he took the stand today in his corruption trial.

[11:20:00]

CNN's Jeremy Diamond explains why this is so significant.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN JERUSALEM CORRESPONDENT: Well, this is the first time that a sitting Israeli prime minister has taken the stand in his own defense in a criminal trial.

It is an extraordinary moment not only for the history that is being made as the Israeli prime minister walked into this courthouse and then began testifying in his own defense, but also because of the moment at which it comes with Israel facing a multifront war.

That was part of the reason why the Israeli prime minister sought to delay this very moment of testifying in this case, unsuccessfully, though, as the judges ultimately ruled that he would have to show up to testify in his own defense, a process that could take several weeks.

We expect that the prime minister will testify as many as three times a week for as long as six hours per day, initially beginning with questions from his own defense attorneys, who have been giving him a lot of running room here to make comments about foreign policy, accusations against the media, as he really tries to make his own case.

But then the more serious cross-examination will come from the prosecution. And there are three cases that are involved in the trial that the prime minister has been facing for four years now. They are Case 1000, Case 2000, and Case 4000, all of them effectively boiling down to allegations of corruption, that the Israeli prime minister offered favors to wealthy businessmen in exchange for more favorable media coverage or in exchange for lavish gifts, some several hundred thousand dollars in champagne bottles, in jewelry, and other gifts that these businessmen allegedly provided.

Now, the prime minister and his attorneys, of course, maintain that he is innocent. And we have heard the prime minister already on the stand making his case, defending himself against these allegations, insisting that he is innocent.

Jeremy Diamond, CNN, Tel Aviv.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Our thanks to Jeremy there in Tel Aviv.

And still ahead for you this hour: A rapidly growing wildfire is heading towards Malibu, California. Officials say it is burning more than five football fields' worth of land every minute. What can be done to contain a blaze that is moving so fast? We're to talk about that, these just incredible pictures coming in.

We will be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[11:27:04]

BROWN: Our top story this hour: A law enforcement analysis says the suspect in the member -- murder, I should say, of UnitedHealthcare's CEO appeared to view the targeted killing as a symbolic takedown and a direct challenge to its alleged corruption and -- quote -- "power games."

Twenty-six-year-old Luigi Mangione is now charged with second-degree murder for the death of Brian Thompson and is awaiting extradition to New York. Police arrested Mangione Monday at a Pennsylvania McDonald's after an employee called authorities, saying the masked customer resembled the suspect.

Here's what a McDonald's customer told CNN.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It started out almost a little bit like a joke. We thought -- my one friend thought he looked like the shooter. He probably heard us. That surprised me he stayed there as long as he did.

From what I was told, the worker that took his order, she said his eyes and his eyebrows, she just thought it was him. It's really -- I -- it's unbelievable. I still can hardly believe it's for real, you know?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: Mangione surrendered without incident, and police believe he was the man who stepped behind Thompson a Manhattan sidewalk last week and shot him in the back before walking away.

Former classmates of Mangione say they are just shocked that he's the suspect.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

FREDDIE LEATHERBURY, FORMER CLASSMATE OF SUSPECT: I can tell you that this is one of the last people you think would do something like this. You know, he was one of the nicest kids, most friendly kids that I had known at Gilman.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: Mangione's family released this statement through his cousin Nino, who is a Maryland state delegate -- quote -- "Our family is shocked and devastated by Luigi's arrest. We offer prayers to the family of Brian Thompson, and we ask people to pray for all involved."

Let's now go live to Huntington, Pennsylvania, where Mangione is being held at a correctional facility.

CNN's Leigh Waldman is there. So, Leigh, do we have a sense of when the suspect will be extradited

to New York?

LEIGH WALDMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Pam, good to be with you.

At this point, we're still waiting to learn exactly when he is going to be taken from here in Pennsylvania to face those charges that he was hit with last night in New York. We are hearing from sources with NYPD that they are in no rush to get him back to New York City.

Now, we did speak with officials here in Pennsylvania with the Department of Corrections. He's currently being held in this state prison facility just behind us. They say he is being held in isolation here. They said there was no incidents with him last night throughout the course of the night.

They tell us he is being held in what they're calling a maximum custody level. Now, at his initial court appearance yesterday, the judge set him without a bail, and he did not enter a plea. Officials here said they are prepared to hold him indefinitely while they wait for that extradition to take place.

BROWN: And tell us a little bit more, Leigh, about the evidence, that the suspect had on him when he was arrested.