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Police Seek Motive in Madison, Wisconsin School Shooting; Today, House Intel Committee to be Briefed on Drone Activity; . Aired 10-10:30a ET

Aired December 17, 2024 - 10:00   ET

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

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[10:00:00]

JIM ACOSTA, CNN ANCHOR: Investigators are looking into online posts and a possible manifesto left by a teenage girl who brought a handgun, that brought a handgun to a small Christian school in Wisconsin and opened fire. We'll hear from the young witnesses and survivors.

Plus, at least three states in the northeast are deploying drone detection systems, while the White House says more than 5,000 tips showed no threat to the public.

And CNN's K-File found that Donald Trump's pick for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth spread baseless conspiracy theories about the January 6th attack on the Capitol and the 2020 election.

Good morning. I'm Jim Acosta in Washington. You are live in the CNN Newsroom.

School shooting in Wisconsin has shattered the community in Madison just before the holidays and police are scrambling to understand why it happened. A teenage student opened fire at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison. One student and a teacher are dead. Six people are injured, including two students who are in critical condition this morning. Two others are in stable condition. Adding to the horror, it was a second grade student, a second grade student who had to make the call to 911.

And in an unusual twist, police say the killer was a 15-year-old girl. She was a student at the school named Natalie Rupnow. She went by the name Samantha. Police say she shot herself and later died.

Today, children and adults at the school bear the scars of what they witnessed.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ADLER JEAN-CHARLES, SIXTH GRADER: We heard them and then some people started crying. And then we just waited until the police came. And then they escorted us out to the church.

I was scared. Why did they do that? Why?

NORA GOTTSCKALK, SECOND GRADER: I just heard sobbing and there was a teacher and she was screaming like, ah, my leg, help. Help.

REPORTER: Were you scared?

GOTTSCKALK: I was really scared and I was really sad.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ACOSTA: Let's bring in Congressman Mark Pocan, a Wisconsin Democrat representing the Madison area. Congressman, thank you for being with us on such a sad day. How is your community coping? And I guess what goes through your mind when you listen to those beautiful children talk about what they experience? It just breaks your heart.

REP. MARK POCAN (D-WI): Yes, it's unbelievable. You know, you can't even sometimes think it's actually happening until it happens, I guess, in your backyard. I've sat through so many moments of silence on the floor of Congress that are followed by zero moments of action.

This is the over 80th school shooting this year, 480th mass shooting in this country this year alone. And to have it happen in your backyard and they have to hear second graders calling it in and you hear the children talking like they are right now, this is uniquely a United States problem and we need to address it much more rapidly than we are.

ACOSTA: And I just wonder, should we just write off the likelihood or possibility that we'll see any kind of gun safety measure in the coming Congress in reaction to this? Or have we just reached the point now where we're numb to it, we've accepted this as the reality in this country, we're just not going to do anything about it?

POCAN: Yes. I mean, I think we need to be more outraged, I mean, everyone. Look, Congress is going to once again bow to the gun manufacturers who make up the NRA. It's not individual gun owners. No one's trying to take away someone's hunting rifle. But this is a uniquely United States problem that's funded by the gun manufacturers. And we have so many guns, and it's become so accepted and so commonplace that Congress won't act. And we need to be more upset about this.

This many shootings in the United States, it's uniquely -- we're number one and it's not something you want to be number one in. It's so bad Jim, that, you know, we even had some media today that we originally were going to do and canceled. And they said, oh, it got downgraded to only two deaths. If that is the societal response, we are screwed.

We have to do more as a society. We have to be more outraged that you drop your kid off to a school and you're not sure they're going to be safe. That's completely unacceptable, and we all need to speak out much louder.

ACOSTA: And, Congressman, I mean, I'm sure you agree with this assessment that the Madison Police chief has done a remarkable job of keeping the community updated.

[10:05:05]

What's your sense of things right now in terms of the investigation? Do we have any more information about a possible motive in this attack?

POCAN: Yes, I think it's going to be hard. It's a 15-year-old girl, right? When kids are shooting, I don't know how you really assess the motive other than we as a society accept this way too easily. And we have to do more and we have to be more outraged about this. And we have to have some accountability for our elected officials at the state and federal level.

But, you know, we need to talk about this more as the unique problem it is in our country. And there's no reason if other countries don't have this problem, we're doing something wrong and we got to figure out what that is. And we can't wait until there's the 90th and the 100th school shooting because this is just nothing anyone should ever have to go through and no community should have to go through this.

ACOSTA: Yes. And a second grader had to call 911. Of all the details, it might be that one that just breaks your heart the most. And it's just hard to get your head around, I mean, that this has happened to our society.

POCAN: You know, when I was a kid, we had tornado drills to get under your desk and what to do. Now they have shooter drills. Why do we accept this as normal? And that's got to be the question. It's not even about a particular law that would have changed this particular action that might have stopped this girl from doing it. It is about it, as a society, why are we not more outraged that there are this many mass shootings, this many school shootings, killing kids that you can't be guaranteed the safety of your kid if you drop them off because of our unique problem?

So, I think that's the real issue, Jim, and I just hope that we start to accept that sooner than later in this country.

ACOSTA: All right. Congressman Mark Pocan of Madison, Wisconsin, thank you very much for your time. Our hearts go out to your community. Thank you so much.

POCAN: Thank you.

ACOSTA: All right. Let's bring in Darrin Porcher. He's a criminal justice expert and former NYPD lieutenant and CNN Law Enforcement Contributor Steve Moore. He was a supervisory special agent with the FBI.

Darrin, let me go to you first. I mean, one aspect of this that is unusual, surprising, I don't know how you want to describe it, that the shooter was a girl, a 15-year-old girl. What did you make of that?

DARRIN PORCHER, RETIRED NYPD LIEUTENANT: Jim, Absolutely, this is an aberration. And when we look at a reflection of violent crime in the country, it's far more males than females that perpetuate acts of violence. So, this runs consistent with that demographic. But when we look to a shooting of this magnitude or the school shootings, there's a significant component that's missing, and that would be a programmatic review, because in Wisconsin, they have a tip line. So, if someone believes that they were the subject of bullying and harassment, they can call this tip line.

Bullying and harassment are the number one complaints that come into this tip line. So, when I speak to a programmatic review, there should be an assessment done of who calls and what was the actual act that occurred.

And then the reassessment is very important because oftentimes when we see a fight between two students, a teacher or a resource officer breaks up the fight and both parties go their separate ways, worst case scenario, there may be a suspension or they may call the parents, but that programmatic review would continually reassess to see if, in fact, this behavior continues. Because we no longer just have to monitor the assailant, but the victim as well, because in many of these cases, it's the victims that perpetuate the violence.

ACOSTA: Yes. And, Steve, I mean, I have two law enforcement experts, with the great law enforcement experts, so I appreciate both of you being here. But is this something that law enforcement can fix? Or is law enforcement essentially in the role of just responding to these things?

I was talking to the Congressman about this and I mean, yes, red flags are missed. Warning signs are missed. As Darrin was saying there, you can set up all kinds of tip lines and everything else. But I just wonder, is this something that law enforcement can fix?

STEVE MOORE, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Well, essentially, yes, law enforcement and security things. As long as you can walk into a school with a gun -- this just boggles my mind. There's 400 million guns in American society. If we stopped making guns yesterday, there's still 400 million guns in the United States. And so everybody seems to think that if we can stop gun manufacturer, that's fine. We need to work on this. But in the meantime, and while there are that many guns out there, why don't we lock a door?

[10:10:00]

You know, police respond within two to five minutes at the latest. If we could just delay a shooter three minutes getting into a school with a gun, we can save lives --

ACOSTA: But haven't we tried hardening these schools? I feel -- I don't mean to cut you off, Steve, but I feel like we've had this conversation about locking doors and resource officers. Please go ahead, yes.

MOORE: We've also tried to get rid of guns. Let's do the one we can do right now. We can do that right now. We haven't even tried that really as a nation. We have people going through drills and, yes, and I even taught active shooter response drills, but as long as -- ACOSTA: I'm not sure that folks who -- I'm not sure folks who are proponents of new gun safety legislation would agree with the assessment that we've tried getting rid of guns. I mean, the assault weapons ban that was passed in the 2000s expired. There hasn't been an assault weapons ban since then. The AR-15 still is very easy to obtain across the United States. I'm just saying the comment that you made is I don't know if that's accurate, but with all due respect.

MOORE: I would say that half of Congress has tried many times. And so my issue here is that yes, we need to do that. But it doesn't look to me like we're going to get it done in the next week or so.

So, in the meantime, our kids are still going to school and people say, well, I don't want them to go to school in fortresses, because it will hurt their -- you know, they don't want that impression.

30,000 kids in America have now experienced a shooting in school. I'd rather my kids experience a locked door. I think we are really, really lax on not doing the thing we can.

ACOSTA: All right. Well, we'll pursue that storyline further. In the meantime, Steve and Darrin, got to go. We've got some breaking news coming in. Thanks very much for your time this morning. We appreciate it.

We're getting breaking news. The suspect in the Gilgo Beach serial killings has been charge now in the murder of a seventh woman.

Let me go to CNN's Jean Casarez. She has the latest. Jean, what can you tell us?

JEAN CASAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, we have another woman that prosecutors now have an indictment that Rex Heuermann, an alleged serial killer, actually murdered in about the year of 2000. Now, according to the indictment, they believe that in November of 2000 is when she was murdered. And the bail application, which has a lot more facts, describes that in November of 2000, there were hunters in the Manorville area, which is the area of Long Island, where two other young women were found the indictments before this current one, and that those hunters found a black plastic bag that had tape all around it in the year 2000. They opened up that bag and they found human remains.

And we now know Valerie Mack is the woman that was in that bag, allegedly murdered by Rex Heuermann. She was from Philadelphia. She was a mother when she went missing. She was in her 20s when she went missing. But the story doesn't end there, because in the year 2000, they found partial remains.

In 2011, in the Gilgo Beach area, when they were searching for other victims, they found the rest of her remains. And in the last hearing that they had, the district attorney of Suffolk County said that Rex Heuermann was a suspect in the disappearance and murder of Valerie Mack. And now we know another indictment has come this time, the seventh woman that prosecutors say this alleged serial killer murdered. ACOSTA: All right. Jean Casarez, thank you very much for that update. We appreciate it.

We'll be right back.

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ACOSTA: Today up on Capitol Hill, the House Intelligence Committee will get a classified briefing on the mysterious drone sightings causing concern and confusion across the Northeast. Multiple government agencies released a joint statement yesterday saying they've reviewed thousands of tips and that there is nothing to suggest at this point that the aircraft posed any kind of national security or public safety threat.

Joining us now is Democratic Congressman Eric Swalwell of California. Congressman, thanks so much for making time for us. We appreciate it.

What is your sense of it right now? Do you agree with that assessment coming out of the White House that, yes, there are a lot of these drones, people might be concerned about them, but they don't pose a threat?

REP. ERIC SWALWELL (D-CA): Well, I think this should have come a lot sooner, frankly, Jim. The American people are trusting people and they want, you know, to believe the best in their government. But when it seems like they're not getting the complete picture, that's when, you know, speculation, misinformation and disinformation can fill a void. So, if these are airplanes, helicopters, law enforcement drones and personal commercial drones, that's great. Just tell the American people that. And I think the failure here has led to all of this speculation.

One other issue, and I'm working with my Republican and Democratic colleagues on this, is that if there are drones that pose a threat to public safety or national security, law enforcement right now don't have many authorities to take them out. And we need to change that so that they can move more quickly when there is an actual threat. And you're seeing bipartisan consensus on that, and I hope we can fix that soon.

ACOSTA: Yes. And speaking of misinformation, I mean, there's a lot of it going on surrounding this. And I don't want to minimize or diminish the concerns that are out there, but one of -- perhaps you've seen this. One of Pennsylvania state senators, Doug Mastriano, tweeted out a photo with a caption claiming that it was a crashed drone that had been recovered, but, in fact, it was a replica spaceship from Star Wars on the back of a trailer.

I mean, what do you think about some of the frenzy out there surrounding all of this?

[10:20:04] Is this a sign that things have gone too far if you've got people pulling up pictures of, you know, drones and spacecraft from Star Wars movies?

SWALWELL: Yes. Well, again, the government, I think admired this problem too long and they overthought this problem too long rather than just shooting straight with the American people. And also, you know, the FBI had to issue a warning yesterday, you know, don't point a laser at an aircraft in the sky because you think it's a drone, it may actually bring down a commercial airliner. And, again, I just step back and say, let's be honest with the American people and let's do it a lot earlier.

And this is a big problem, you know, in our national security apparatus, which is sometimes, you know, we're overprotective and we think this stuff -- we think everything is a secret, we can't tell the public anything. And then they, like anyone, start to wonder what this really could be.

And you saw this you know, earlier this year with some of the UAP hearings that we've had, where, you know, Congress and the American people just want its government to be more, you know, honest and straightforward with it.

ACOSTA: And, Congressman, I do want to ask you about some of Trump's cabinet picks. RFK Jr. is meeting with senators this week and has bid to be the next Health and Human Services secretary. There's a lot of concerns about some of the comments that he's made over the years, his anti-vax comments. President-elect Trump is trying to tamp down those worries. Let's take a listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REPORTER: What do you say to people who are worried that his views on vaccines will translate into policies that will make their kids less safe?

DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT-ELECT: No, I think he's going to be much less radical than you would think. I think he's got a very open mind or I wouldn't have put him there. He's going to be very much less radical. But there are problems. I mean, we don't do as well as a lot of other nations and those nations use nothing. And we're going to find out what those problems are.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ACOSTA: Yes, what do you think, Congressman? Does that reassure you?

SWALWELL: No, absolutely not. And I'm a parent of a 7-year-old, a 6- year-old, and a 3-year-old. And like most parents of little kids right now, you know, during flu and sick season, I'm going to every pharmacy in town trying to find amoxicillin because my kids have strep throat or RSV or, you know, some other, you know, ailment. And the last thing we need is to throw, you know, measles and polio and all the other diseases and illnesses that RFK would put into the mix if we don't protect our kids. Look, if the president wants a partner to lower the cost of prescription drugs, look at me and my Democratic colleagues. We'll work with them. If he wants a partner, you know, to make our food healthier and safer and get rid of a lot of the chemicals that go into them, look at me and my Democratic colleagues as a partner. But if he just wants to put, you know, some crackpot, you know, theory out there as it relates to vaccines that's coming from RFK, we're going to do everything we can to stop him and protect our kids.

ACOSTA: And let me ask you about one of your colleagues. We have some new reporting that Democratic Congressman Jared Moskowitz of Florida is being considered by Trump to head FEMA. What do you think about this? Obviously, Moskowitz has a lot of expertise in this area. He's handled this position down in Florida. But as you know, Congressman, as things shake out in the next Congress that's coming in into office here, it's going to be a very tight margin in terms of that Republican leadership lead over Democrats in the House, that balance of power. Do you want Jared Moskowitz go into the Trump administration when that seat would then be up for grabs potentially?

SWALWELL: I want our country to succeed. I want our country to be safe. Jared Moskowitz is a bright colleague of mine. He's done this job at the state level and I would feel better having him there than someone like RFK, as far as qualifications go and people going into the administration.

I'll leave that to the president. You know, we're also losing two Republicans from Florida. And so a Moskowitz special election would come at the same time as those other Republicans. So, I can see you being able to fill it. But I'll leave that to the president.

I do think Moskowitz is bright and I'd sleep better at night if he was in charge of disasters, than God knows who else Donald Trump could put in charge.

ACOSTA: All right. I did want to ask you one final question. His hush money case has -- the judge in the hush money case has denied his bid to throw out that conviction, saying the evidence in the case was not related to his official conduct as president. So, presidential immunity does not apply, I guess, going back to the Supreme Court ruling from earlier this year. Is that the right call? What do you think about that?

SWALWELL: Yes, and it's refreshing to see someone who's not just going to roll over to Donald Trump, as you've seen all of these billionaires in the last couple weeks do that. He still should be treated just like everybody else.

I still have a January 6 suit against him. It's one of the only cases that is proceeding now against Donald Trump. I'm with January 6 officers.

[10:25:00]

We're one of the last trees standing in the forest of accountability, so to speak. And I just happen to think that he should be treated no better or worse than any other American when it comes to his criminal or civil accountability. That is what this case in New York reflects and that's what the American people also expect.

ACOSTA: All right. Congressman Eric Swalwell of California, thanks very much for your time.

SWALWELL: My pleasure. Thanks, Jim.

ACOSTA: I really appreciate it.

All right, still to come, new CNN reporting, Trump's pick for defense secretary spread baseless conspiracy theories about the 2020 election and the January 6th attack. We have new reporting from CNN's K-File. What he found out, what his team found out, next.

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[10:30:00]

ACOSTA: This morning, some newly surfaced comments could spell more trouble for Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump's embattled pick to leave the Pentagon. A CNN K-File report found the Fox host speaking --