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Many Mail-In Ballots Still Being Counted In Key State Races; John Bolton To Plead Guilty To Mishandling Sensitive Material. Aired 4:30-5a ET

Aired June 05, 2026 - 04:30   ET

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

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[04:31:01]

LYNDA KINKADE, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back to CNN newsroom. I'm Lynda Kinkade coming to you live from Atlanta. Great to have you with us.

Well, there are new allegations coming to light against Maine Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner. The New York Times interviewed six women who dated Platner in the past. Some described him as a fun and caring partner and said they felt safe. Three others talked about the relationship, calling it complicated as well as volatile, toxic, unsettling and emotionally wrenching. They said Platner could be charming and charismatic, but also demeaning to women.

Even physically threatening in at least one case, adding that he drank heavily and was regularly unfaithful. Platner has responded to the allegations. Take a listen.

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GRAHAM PLATNER, U.S. SENATE DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATE: There are some allegations in this piece that I just want to be kind of unequivocal about are simply not true. Anything alleging physicality, anything alleging that I knew what my tattoo was, these are the statements of someone who's politically motivated.

In this piece there's a lot about my struggling not being a good boyfriend, certainly self-medicating with alcohol, and I've been very upfront since the beginning of this campaign that that was a pretty dark period of my life after I come -- came back from my combat service. And that's what that combat -- that's what that kind of life looks like. And so there are things in this that I absolutely will take responsibility for and have been speaking about openly for months now. But those serious allegations are just not true.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KINKADE: In that same interview, Platner said he was not dropping out of the race.

More than two days after California's primaries, votes are still being counted and could be some time before all the mail-in ballots have to be sorted. Republican former Fox News host, Steve Hilton, remains ahead of the governor's race, but former state Attorney General Xavier Becerra, a Democrat, is nipping at the heels. The two top vote getters land on the November ballot regardless of the party.

In L.A., the mayor's race about two thirds of the votes have been tallied. Current Mayor Karen Bass has earned a spot in the general election, but it's still too soon to know who she's up against. City Council member Nithya Raman has been gaining on reality star Spencer Pratt.

President Trump is repeating his long standing and unfounded allegation of vote rigging. On Thursday, he posted "Watch California Everybody" and compared the state, state selections to those of a, quote, "third world country." More now from CNN's Elex Michaelson.

ELEX MICHAELSON, CNN ANCHOR: President Trump suggested that there's fraud in counting the ballots in California, but he hasn't provided any evidence of that and we're not seeing any evidence up close. Welcome to the LA County Processing Center. What's happening right here are these are all mail-in ballots which are being processed. That machine is checking the signature on file with the signature provided to try to match those two things. There's a machine version of that.

There's also a human version of that to make sure that the person is who they say they are. If that passes, then the ballot is then counted.

There's a long process in California, that's on purpose. California lawmakers have decided that they want to give folks up until the very last minute to vote by mail, that they can put their ballot in the mail on the very last day. And as long as it's postmarked by that day, there's up to seven days for those ballots to reach here and then be counted. So at this point, there's still an ability for ballots to come here that we don't even know are coming here. So we do not know the total number of ballots that will be counted.

That is, by law. They're moving as fast as they possibly can here. This room over here is where they actually are officially counting the ballots that come in and have been approved and clear. And it is a long process. We got to wait the seven days for the ballots to come in.

[04:35:08]

Then there's 10 days after that to, quote, unquote, "cure your ballot." If there's a problem with your signature verification, you can come here. You add all this together, the whole process takes about three weeks. So we may not know for a while who is moving on in the LA mayor's race and the California governor's race because of this process which California lawmakers have put into place.

Elex Michaelson, CNN, City of Industry.

KINKADE: Well, President Donald Trump's former national security adviser appears to be wrapping up some of his legal problems over his handling of sensitive national security information. Sources tell CNN that John Bolton, who is now a staunch critic of President Trump, has reached a plea deal and has agreed to pay more than $2 million fine. Our Katelyn Polantz has more from Washington.

KATELYN POLANTZ, CNN CRIME AND JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: John Bolton is expected to plead guilty to one criminal count of mishandling or retaining national security information, classified information that he would have received when he was the national security adviser during the first Trump administration. So that top job, it put him in the situation room, it put him inside gifts, it gave him briefings about very sensitive subjects that he was learning as the national security adviser for Trump. And Bolton, in this case, when it was charged last October, he was alleged to have essentially written himself diary like entries of his time serving for President Donald Trump. And he was then e-mailing those diary entries to himself with classified information in them and then having them printed out and kept in his home.

When the FBI searched his home last August, they did find documents marked secret or confidential classified documents. And now the case is going to end with Bolton pleading guilty to one count of retaining national classified information. A significant situation for the Justice Department because Donald Trump has so disliked John Bolton since he left, was fired by the Trump White House. He also had written a book after he was in that position as national security adviser, a memoir that Donald Trump had tried to block him from publishing. This case, though, it had been investigated for some time.

There were hackers that got into Bolton's e-mail and it became known to the FBI that it was possible Iran had access to some of this classified information that Bolton had taken for himself. So it resulted in 18 charges against him. Now he's pleading down, but it is something that could still carry a stake penalty for John Bolton. This would be a felony charge. And with this felony charge, he could face prison time somewhere up to 60 months in prison.

That'll be det0ermined by the judge, as will a fine he will pay, although sources are telling me that the fine could potentially be as much as 2 million or more than $2 million. That would be a very steep amount for Bolton to be paying in a case like this, a national security case. But it is a big day for the U.S. attorney's office in Maryland, having carried this investigation through the Biden administration into the charges in the Trump administration. And now with Bolton agreeing to plead guilty, a court hearing is set for him at the end of June. Back to you.

KINKADE: Our thanks to Katelyn Polantz.

Well, the Kennedy Center's top lawyer has directed staff to begin removing President Trump's name from buildings by June 12th. That's in an internal memo obtained by CNN. The center's general counsel also ordered staff to immediately revert official documents to institutions originally named or simply named Kennedy Center.

The move comes just days after a federal judge ruled that the Kennedy Center's board broke the law by renaming the building. The judge also blocked the center from closing for renovations. The ruling marks the latest setback in President Trump's attempts to leave his mark on Washington.

But his efforts are far from over. The president now says he plans to have a new walkway built that will connect the Lincoln Memorial to the Potomac River. And it may or may not be bearing his name.

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DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: It's called the Promenade, the Promenade. They want to call it the Trump Promenade, but I don't know if I want to do this. But it's going to be beautiful. It's a beautiful project, and it's going to take the Lincoln Memorial right down to the Potomac, which it was always scheduled to do. But when they built the roads, that was the end of that.

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KINKADE: After weeks of renovation work, crews are starting to refill the reflecting pool at the Lincoln Memorial. The president said last month that the cost to redo the massive pool would be less than $20 million. He initially promised a price tag of 2 or $3 million.

Well, after more than 10 years and $850 million, the Obama Presidential Center is ready to open. Our Jeff Zeleny takes us inside the cultural institution in Chicago nicknamed the Obamalisk.

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JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: So when you walk inside the Obama president center, the first thing you see is toward a more perfect union with a message from the president saying America has always been a work in progress. But you stop and listen and hear the president's remarks, "Yes, we can," --

BARACK OBAMA, 44TH U.S. PRESIDENT: Yes, we can.

ZELENY: -- we all remember that anthem --

OBAMA: Yes, we can.

ZELENY: -- of his candidacy that led him to the White House.

And here is the replica Oval Office. When you walk inside here, it's reminiscent of most every presidential library and museum. Everyone has them, right down to the replica Resolute desk. Of course, Donald Trump is not mentioned at all in this presidential center. But when you look around this room, perhaps this is the most striking example of how very different things are.

TRUMP: We handle it with great love and 24 karat gold.

ZELENY: And on the eighth floor is the Sky Room, the final stop in the Obama Presidential Center. It has sweeping views of the south and west sides of Chicago as well as Lake Michigan. But even more than that, these giant letters that are etched in stone are from a particular speech, the one he delivered on the 50th anniversary of the march on Selma. And the architect said seeing these letters is like looking into his mind as he's writing the speech.

OBAMA: What a glorious task we are given to continually try to improve this great nation of ours.

ZELENY: Now, there is no doubt there are some missing pieces here, but he does actually confront some of his challenges in ways more than I thought he would. This is one part of his legacy. But finally, this Obama Presidential Center is opening nearly 10 years after he left office.

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KINKADE: Well, Donald Trump says he replaced the America 250 concerts with a, quote, "rally to end all rallies" at the national mall in Washington, D.C. June 24. It would feature speeches, one from the president himself and patriotic music from Lee Greenwood and military bands. It's part of the nation's 250th anniversary on July 4th. Artists such as the Commodores and Martina McBride withdrew from the original concerts, some fearing that it would be too partisan. Trump mocked them, saying, "we don't want singers with no talent and big fees to put you to sleep," he posted.

An American college student has gone missing on a family vacation in Japan. We'll have a look at the search efforts and what his parents say happened shortly before their son disappeared ahead on CNN.

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[04:45:42]

KINKADE: Welcome back. A massive search is underway in Japan for an American college student who went missing six days ago. James Weston Higginbotham was traveling with his family in Kyoto when he disappeared. His family says the 20-year-old Auburn University student went into the woods to blow off some steam after an argument. They haven't seen or heard from him since.

Our Hanako Montgomery reports.

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HANAKO MONTGOMERY, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Nancy and Keith Higginbotham can only think of their missing son.

NANCY HIGGINBOTHAM, MOTHER OF MISSING AMERICAN: Every single second you think about your kid and then you have the flashbacks of when he was two, when I -- when I was breastfeeding him, the birthday parties we've thrown for him.

MONTGOMERY (voice-over): The family of four is on a first time holiday across Japan, but 20-year-old Weston Higginbotham left his parents and brother on Friday night and they haven't seen him since. The college student appeared to have switched off a GPS function on his phone and is believed to have taken a train away from Kyoto.

N. HIGGINBOTHAM: It's not unusual for Weston to blow off steam going to, you know, the woods so and just exploring. That's his happy place.

MONTGOMERY: But it was unusual that he turned off his location.

N. HIGGINBOTHAM: When he turned off his locations --

KEITH HIGGINBOTHAM, FATHER OF MISSING AMERICAN: Well, that was really concerning.

N. HIGGINBOTHAM: -- and that was so concerning because it's so out of character for him. And I just felt it.

K. HIGGINBOTHAM: His mother's intuition. She kept saying something's not right.

N. HIGGINBOTHAM: I said something's not right, something's not right. I knew something was wrong.

MONTGOMERY (voice-over): Weston is a keen outdoorsman, a vegan and an environmentalist. His mother said they had bickered after Weston got upset with her for using ChatGPT because of AI's environmental impact.

MONTGOMERY: Weston was last seen at this train station on May 29 and since then the Japanese authorities have been searching the woods in this area where they believe he might be.

Torrential rain and typhoon winds have stopped the search at times.

MONTGOMERY (voice-over): While strangers have reached out to help the family despite the language barrier --

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Many of us can't even imagine --

MONTGOMERY (voice-over): -- vigils were held back home in Alabama for a young man described as both popular and caring. The search for him continues but without any new leads.

K. HIGGINBOTHAM: I don't want anybody to think that we're thinking of him in the past because we're not.

MONTGOMERY (voice-over): Hope that Weston is OK, trapped or lost in the Japanese forest.

Hanako Montgomery, CNN, Kyoto.

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KINKADE: The U.S. Coast Guard has taken custody of the small boat linked to its criminal investigation into an American woman's disappearance in the Bahamas. It's the dinghy where Lynette Hooker's husband said he last saw his wife. The 55-year-old woman has been missing since early April. Police say her husband, Brian Hooker, told them she fell from a dinghy while they were navigating back to their yacht. The Coast Guard has been searching Bahama waters and the shoreline this week for any trace of her. Brian Hooker has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing in his wife's disappearance.

Less than a week to go before the start of the world's biggest sporting event, the FIFA World Cup. Ahead, how cities are preparing for the surge of sports fans attending the tournament. That and much more ahead.

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KINKADE: With World Cup matches just days away, host city Atlanta is encouraging everyone to use public transport to avoid traffic. CNN's Ryan Young takes a look at how World Cup cities are preparing for visitors amid potential safety concerns.

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MARKWAYNE MULLIN, U.S. HOMELAND SECURITY SECRETARY: Through 11 different cities we're going to have 78 Super Bowls in 38 days.

OMAR JIMENEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Across the US and Canada and Mexico this year. FIFA World Cup on tap to be the largest tournament in history with stadiums averaging nearly 70,000 seats, organizers expect the event to draw 5 million fans. That will also mean intense security.

Some recent unprovoked attacks give people reason to worry. In Los Angeles, where the U.S. tournament kicks off, police say someone stabbed and beat a 70-year-old woman back in March, leaving her with a broken neck. Not far away in Long Beach, California last month, police say another woman was stabbed and left hospitalized. And last week in Atlanta, police say a woman was fatally stabbed on a train operated by MARTA, the city's public transportation line. In months past, the Transportation Department called for improved safety measures in cities to include Chicago, D.C., New York, L.A., Charlotte and Philadelphia. Now Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy wants an investigation in Atlanta, saying "Every American should be disturbed by the horrific crimes we have seen on MARTA in the last month."

JIMENEZ: There's a big focus on safety and whether or not MARTA can meet the need when it comes to all the international guests that will be coming to town and some things that really frighten people in the city, especially a deadly stabbing that happened just last week having people asking questions, is MARTA safe enough and ready for the World Cup?

GARY GALE, ATLANTA TOURIST FROM CALIFORNIA: I think there should be extra security for sure on a day to day basis. Especially with the World Cup coming up.

ISABELLE HUMPHRIES, ATLANTA COLLEGE STUDENT: Traveling alone would not be an option right now for me on MARTA.

MORGAN BANDERLINDEN, ATLANTA RESIDENT: Safety is an issue for sure --

JIMENEZ: OK.

BANDERLINDEN: -- based on what happened last week. So definitely hesitant but still doing it. It'd be great to see a little bit more security on the trains.

JIMENEZ (voice-over): MARTA continues to tell its riders this system is safe.

CHIEF SCOTT KREHER, MARTA POLICE DEPT.: This was a senseless crime and violence would not be tolerated on MARTA.

JIMENEZ (voice-over): Atlanta police recently ran a mass casualty training exercise showing the public just how prepared they are. And from the feds --

MARLO GRAHAM, SPECIAL AGENT IN CHARGE, FBI ATLANTA: FBI Atlanta will lead drone ground intercept teams around stadiums and fan fest locations.

[04:55:10]

VINCE VELAZQUEZ, FMR. ATLANTA POLICE OFFICER (RET.), SECURITY CONSULTANT: The fans are going to come in and enjoy this World cup experience and not have an idea of all the security measures that are going on.

CHIEF JIM MCDONNELL, LOS ANGELES POLICE DEPT.: Let me be clear. Anyone who seeks to turn the celebration into chaos, who threatens the safety of our residents or visitors or who comes here intending to commit crimes, you will find no refuge in this city.

JIMENEZ: Yes, safety is going to be real concern. MARTA will be key, especially because traffic in the city normally is terrible. So you understand why MARTA is going to be needed to move all these international fans from the MARTA line to the FIFA World Cup here in Atlanta. This will be a big event.

This won't be like the Super Bowl where it's just one weekend. You're talking about a month long worth of events that will test law enforcement, the transportation and the city over a long period of time.

Ryan Young, CNN, Atlanta.

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KINKADE: Mexico City is one of 16 host cities in the all North American tournament, but it has the honor of hosting the opening match now just six days away. And that's where South Africa's footballers are training ahead of their showdown against the Mexican national team, clearly the local favorites. In Mexico's Nuevo Leon state, the governor passed out sombreros as gifts to members of Japan's team right after they landed in Monterrey. President Trump says he's planning to attend Game 3 of the NBA Finals in New York on Monday. Mr. Trump is a Knicks fan and would be the first sitting U.S. president to watch a finals game in person. He says he was invited by the New York Knicks owner James Dolan.

The Knicks are playing in their first NBA Finals since 1999. New York won game one of the best of seven series against the San Antonio Spurs. And Game 2 is tonight.

Well, thanks so much for joining us. I'm Lynda Kinkade. Great to have your company. CNN "Headline Express" is coming up after a quick break.

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