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Manhunt Continues for Gunman in Mass Casualty Shooting Event in Lewiston, Maine; Officials Say At Least 16 Killed in Mass Shooting Event in Maine; GOP. Rep. Mike Johnson Elected House Speaker; Interview with Republican Congressman Dusty Johnson. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired October 26, 2023 - 08:00   ET

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

[08:00:00]

MAYOR JASON J. LEVESQUE, AUBURN, MAINE: -- gave them the space they needed for reunification, to grieve in certain situations as well as to actually grab their loved ones, hold them, get them home.

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: Mayor Jason Levesque, thank you. And our hearts are with you especially this morning.

LEVESQUE: Thank you.

HARLOW: CNN THIS MORNING continues now.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Multiple shootings in Lewiston, Marine, a mass casualty, mass shooter event.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Police are currently searching for a car.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He dropped his vehicle. He is out of Lewiston.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He is former military. He is a certified firearms and tactics instructor.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is so often the weapon of choice for many of the nation's deadliest mass shootings.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The two hospitals have called in every off-duty staff member that they could.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I split in where the pins are and he was on top of the machine until the cops got there.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Just unbelievable that somebody would go into a place like that and start shooting at families.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There were kids just probably trying to have a family night.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We have a really strong community. We have overcome a lot, and we will overcome this. (END VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is CNN breaking news.

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning. We are continuing to follow the breaking news. I'm Phil Mattingly with Poppy Harlow in New York. Right now, an urgent manhunt is underway in Maine after mass shootings at a bowling alley and a bar and grill last night in Lewiston. Law enforcement sources tell CNN that at least 16 are dead.

HARLOW: At this hour, police are still looking for Robert Card. He is described as an armed and dangerous person of interest. We are told that he is a military trained firearms instructor, a member of the U.S. Army Reserve who was recently committed to a mental health facility. These are images of the gunman inside the bowling alley.

MATTINGLY: And in this video, you can see people running out of the building as police search the area with flashlights and their guns drawn. We are now hearing from survivors, including one man who says he was bowling when the gunman came in and opened fire just 15 feet behind him.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I was bowling, and out of nowhere he just came in. And there was loud pop. Thought it was a balloon. I had my back turned to the door. And as soon as I turned and saw it was not a balloon, he was holding a weapon, I just booked it down the lane, and slid basically into where the pins are and climbed up into the machine and was on top of the machines for about 10 minutes until the cops got there.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MATTINGLY: Investigators say a vehicle connected to Robert Card was found in a trailhead and boat launch in a nearby town. This is video of a SWAT team with an armored streak and heavily armed officers rushing to that area. CNN just spoke to a local resident hunkering down in his home with his 10-year-old daughter right near where the vehicle was discovered.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: My wife, she normally gets off for work. She came and grabbed me and was, like, hey, there is an active and he is parked down where you go fishing at. Nerves are rattled right now, keeping an eye on the woods, because I know those woods down there. They go run right back here. And I got my daughter inside. It's very unnerving right now.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: Hospital have been just overwhelmed. Sources tell CNN 50 to 60 people were injured in the shootings. Officers with rifles have been standing guard outside of the hospital in Lewiston. We have team coverage on the ground in Maine this morning. Omar Jimenez is there in Lewiston. Let's start with Shimon Prokupecz who has been in the middle of the manhunt in nearby Lisbon. Shimon, what can you tell us?

SHIMON PROKUPECZ, CNN CRIME AND JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Right, so Poppy, I am standing here at that boat launch that Phil was just talking about. This is where police last night found the person of interest, this is where they found his car, and that sort of kicked off this manhunt.

This is kind of the area that police are searching. What they are doing is mostly responding to 911 calls. People are calling 911 to say they hear things, to say that there is an open door. We were present in one of those situations where there was a 911 call. Police responded and they did a search and they found nothing. But certainly, people here in Lisbon are on edge. They have been told to stay home. School is closed. They have been told if they don't have to go to work, not to go to work. Many of the stores are expected to be closed as well.

We got a chance to speak to the police chief, the Lisbon police chief, who talked to us about some of the things they have been going through, through the night. Take a listen to that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHIEF RYAN MCGEE, LISBON POLICE: There's a lot of officers involved in the search. I don't want to give anything away. I can say my whole department is involved.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And how many officers is that?

MCGEE: -- in this area, every department. I have seen departments across the state of Maine have responded. So we want to locate the individual and make sure our community is kept safe. So the biggest thing I can say is make sure that if the community sees anything, stay inside, don't approach, call the police department just like we just did here.

[08:05:04]

Someone heard something, they called. It's the right thing to do. I would rather it turn out to be a deer then this person, but we want to locate them.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do you know if the person of interest knows this area?

MCGEE: I can't comment on any of that right now. We have intel, and we are just working in conjunction with our state and federal partners. Everyone is involved. We are just trying to keep the community safe. Obviously, it's a very tragic incident that happened and we are doing our job to the best abilities to locate this suspect.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How confident are you that you will get him?

MCGEE: I would say that we are not going to stop until we locate him. So you don't have to worry about that.

(END VIDEO TAPE)

PROKUPECZ: And Phil and Poppy, what's making it so complicated here, just look around this whole area. There are woods everywhere. This entire area surrounded by woods. There are trails. There's rivers. And there are homes, people living in homes. And that's what's got everyone so on edge here, that perhaps, obviously, that he could be hiding in one of the homes and that's why we see police respond to almost any 911 call that they get for any kind of suspicious activity. But certainly there is a lot of people on edge here and, hopefully, they can find this guy pretty soon.

MATTINGLY: Yes, understandably so. Shimon, stay with us. Omar, police are set to give a press conference at 10:30 a.m. What do we know? What's the latest there?

OMAR JIMENEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, well, bottom line, this is still a very fluid investigation. It's a very fluid situation. We obviously know the manhunt is continuing as Shimon laid out there, but also the investigations into what actually happened at these scenes is going on. We are right near the bar and grill, which is one of two mass shooting sites, two sites of the mass shooting that unfolded last night. We got a little bit of an elevated view here. We have been watching investigators come and out of this scene throughout the morning. As the sun's come up, a little bit more of an increased presence here, of course, as they try to piece together what happened there. This was at the bar and grill. A few miles from here at a bowling alley was where another one of the mass shootings happened.

And look, it's why they have put out the picture of Robert Card as a person of interest. It is, as we understand, the person that law enforcement are trying to track down right now, and it is the person they consider armed and dangerous. We know that these were mass casualty events. Some were killed. Many more were injured. But also many survived. Take a listen to two people who were inside the bowling alley as those shots broke out.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: She was grazed by a bullet while we were running.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I never thought I would roll up and get a bullet in my leg. And it's just, like -- like, why? Like, why do people this?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JIMENEZ: That one at a bowling alley, this shooting at a bar. Both places where people were out trying to have fun before it quickly became a nightmare. Schools are closed out of an abundance of caution. Places across this area are being told to shelter in place out of an abundance of caution. All of them waiting for answers from law enforcement. Hopefully, we get some of those answers at this press conference that's happening a little bit later this morning. But as we know from them, it is still a very fluid investigation and situation, and they hope to bring some peace of mind to people soon by capturing this person. But obviously, it's going to be a long process here. HARLOW: Omar, thank you. Shimon, thank you.

MATTINGLY: Joining us now, CNN chief law enforcement and intelligence analyst John Miller. Very busy night. The resources that flowed in have been significant. How does it work when you have the ATF, the FBI coming up from Boston, you have the local police department, state police as well, how does this all work?

JOHN MILLER, CNN CHIEF LAW ENFORCEMENT AND INTELLIGENCE ANALYST: So there is a system. It's called the Incident Command System, or ICS. And it's an interesting question, because without it you have everybody doing their own operation and no coordination. With it, you have a designated incident commander. You have a command post. You're running the operation from there. That person is calling the shots. You look at your perimeter, you divide it into sections. You have your FBI SWAT team, your ATF SWAT team, your SWAT team --

MATTINGLY: Just to pull up the locations themselves right now. You are looking at the map. What are they all trying to do right now?

MILLER: So they are gridding this out, and they are giving different teams areas of responsibility. This is your area within the perimeter. But there's also response teams, because all night long they have been getting the calls, and it's, you know, you one of my garage doors is open and it wasn't open when I went to bed. I heard a noise outside. I saw a figure cross through the yard. And they have been responding to those. Now, none of those have panned out.

HARLOW: In terms of we don't know if he has a car. I just want to make that clear. They found a car connected to him at this sort of area where there is a trailhead and also where boats can launch, but they haven't said it was his one and only car and we got it. So we don't know if he is on foot or in a car or a boat.

[08:10:09]

MILLER: That's one of the questions at the command post they are gaming out, which is what was the play here? He does multiple victim shootings at two locations, he jumps in the car, and he grows where? He goes into a wooded area. He goes down a country road into the woods. It ends at a trailhead where hikers would go and where there is a boat launch. So if we have a planning person who has gamed all this out -- and by the way, my experience with these cases is there is a lot of planning that goes into developing and planning and equipping yourself for the act and not much on the back end. But if there is a back end plan here, that could be where there was a switch car and then, as you said, Poppy, they have to look at in the intelligence cell in that command center what cars has he ever had, what cars has he ever been pulled over in, what cars has he ever received a ticket in, what cars do family members have that he has access to and look for a switch car? The more likely scenario is either that he goes off into the woods with his military training and his weapons --

MATTINGLY: To that point, though, can we talk about that?

MILLER: Sure. MATTINGLY: Because I think that's an important element here. You look at forest areas coming up right now, but we saw Shimon's live shot. When the light came up, you saw the sun and you look around and say, this is a difficult terrain for law enforcement, I would think. Is that fair?

MILLER: Well, it is. But at the end of that trailhead, there's two things. There's the trail and then there's the boat launch. The question is, does have a boat there, did he place a boat there, or is he aware of a boat that he could take there and is that a second part of a plan or just because he has done his shooting and he is in escape mode and it's where he ended up. And those are unknowns.

HARLOW: One of our guests brought up how different this is than the inmate who escaped just a couple of weeks ago.

MILLER: To the Danilo Cavalcante search in Pennsylvania.

HARLOW: Yes. That's very different. This guy is military trained in firearms use, and there is the fact that he is an Army Ranger.

MILLER: So his level of training is superior. He has got a military background. He has got a superior weapon. And, you know, he has multiple murders behind him, and he knows the area. But a lot of the dynamics are similar, which is they have got a perimeter that they believe he is within, and we learned in the Cavalcante search in Pennsylvania that sometimes you find that that perimeter has been penetrated and he is outside. In this case, they are going on what they have. Remember, the chief told Shimon we have a lot of intelligence.

HARLOW: That was interesting.

MILLER: That intelligence cell there has been running everything about him, everyone he has ever known, all the things he has said on social media, all the same things I did last night going through his notes and his travels and his friends and his messages to try and figure out who would he turn to, where would he go, is there a tell.

HARLOW: Did anything stand out to you going through those?

MILLER: What I learned from his traffic on social media is he was coming out of the military. He was talking to Army buddies. These were very normal conversations. Talking to Army buddies about, you know, I got so and so to move up here to Maine so we've got our little group together. We are doing some training at West Point was one of the things he said. We haven't verified that, but that's what he said. He made the joke, when you can't do, you teach. So it seemed like a very rational conversation between someone who was trying to reconnect with people he had been through things with.

MATTINGLY: John Miller, stay close. This is very fluid at the moment. We appreciate it. Thank you.

HARLOW: We are all, obviously, going to continue to cover this breaking news. An urgent manhunt for the gunman who sources say killed at least 16 people last night. One of the scenes of the gruesome murders was Schemengees Bar and Grille in Lewiston, Maine. The restaurant posted this on their Facebook page, "My heart is crushed. I am at a loss for world. In a split second your world gets turned upside down for no good reason. We lost great people in this community. How can we make sense of this? Sending out prayers to everyone."

More in a minute.

[08:15:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MATTINGLY: We are continuing to monitor the breaking news and the mass shootings out of Maine, but we also want to turn to some other major news. For the first time in more than three weeks, Republican Congressman Mike Johnson is now the speaker of the House.

House Republicans have a speaker who will now have to navigate the familiar calls for Congress to do something, anything, in the wake of yet another shooting. Now, Johnson secured the gavel yesterday after a bruising and chaotic three weeks for his party.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. MIKE JOHNSON (R-LA), HOUSE SPEAKER: We've learned a lot of lessons, but you know what? Through adversity, it makes you stronger. And we want our allies around the world to know that this body of lawmakers is reporting again to our duty stations. Let the enemies of freedom around the world hear us loud and clear, the People's House is back in business.

(END VIDEO CLIP) MATTINGLY: The new speaker is facing a litany of pressing issues as he takes on a new role both abroad, with the future of aid to Israel and Ukraine, and here at home, where in three weeks, government funding is set to expire again. That means the GOP-controlled House will need to work with the Democratic-led Senate and White House to once again avert a government shutdown.

Joining us now is Republican Congressman South Dakota's Dusty Johnson. He and the rest of his Republican colleagues all voted for the new speaker now, Speaker Mike Johnson. Congressman, I appreciate your time. I know we've spoken about how this has been a very frustrating three-plus weeks for you.

First thing, I want to play something you said on Friday, because I thought that this was a very -- it was candid, but it was also a very astute observation about what the next speaker would be. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. DUSTY JOHNSON (R-SD): What's going to happen now is, I think we're going to need to take a little time to decompress from what was a difficult environment, and we're going to need to have some people do some soul-searching.

I think we're going to need to find some people who have never thought of themselves in this way, somebody who's not spent five or ten years trying to become the speaker of the House. We need to find somebody who, frankly, understands that this may well be the last opportunity they have to serve in politics.

We have dealt ourselves an incredibly difficult hand.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MATTINGLY: I'm not going to ask you if this is the last opportunity Mike Johnson has in politics, but it was an important point, because it, I think, alluded to what comes next, which is you have a couple of weeks to fund the government. You have, obviously, a $105 billion emergency supplemental to consider.

You still have a very fractious conference that, despite the unity yesterday, I think there are probably some that are very much still open amongst the various sides of things. So where do you think this goes from here?

[08:20:00]

JOHNSON: Mike Johnson does have a difficult hand of cards that's been dealt to him. You were right in describing the last three weeks as chaotic and bruising. That might actually help us though. People are tired of fighting. I think they have had an opportunity to realize how embarrassing it was that we didn't get legislation addressed in the last three weeks. So, I actually get this sense that there is a willingness to move forward.

You're right. In three weeks, we shut the government down. If we don't act, that would be unacceptable. Shutdowns are stupid. They don't help anything. They don't save any money; they don't make America stronger.

And so, you're going to see starting in just the next few days today, and then also next week, we're going to pass those single subject appropriations bills. They're going to be necessary to avert a shutdown.

MATTINGLY: The speaker, in his letter to the conference before he was elected, said, I think, acknowledged to his credit the reality that there will need to be a continuing resolution. Given the compression of time and the number of bills that still haven't been reconciled with the Senate, all of them.

He suggested January or April, would you be amenable to either or both of those dates?

JOHNSON: I'm willing to defer to the speaker. I think when you select a new coach, I think you've got to give them some flexibility to call the play. I'm going to go to the huddle, and I'm going to run the play that the coach calls. That doesn't mean blind allegiance.

It does mean that from a strategic perspective, I think we want to give Speaker Mike Johnson and his leadership team an opportunity to figure out a way out of this box canyon. We're in a bad spot. We were in a better spot three weeks ago, but we squandered the time that we needed to get the work done on those appropriations bills.

And so, if the speaker wants to get a conservative CR that gets us to January, I'll back his play on that.

MATTINGLY: The $105 billion emergency aid request from the Biden administration. Israel, Ukraine border funding, Indo-Pacific region funding as well. I'm not saying you're going to take it as a whole and push it through, but is there a pathway for both Israeli funding and Ukraine funding?

JOHNSON: There is a strong majority of lawmakers in both the House and the Senate that understands this world is a lot more dangerous when America recedes from leadership. And clearly, we want to help our allies like Israel and Ukraine.

I do think we need to work with the White House for them to have a stronger value proposition about why these matters. Of course, in the early days of a conflict like with Ukraine 20 months ago, Americans were there. We understand the stakes.

We are appalled at the invasion by Vladimir Putin and his thugs. Over time, people get fatigued. They get exhausted, and they ask legitimate questions about, what is the end game? What has this money gone to? And I hope the president steps up and does a better job of explaining what is the mission and how these investments tie toward American interests and a safer globe.

MATTINGLY: Congressman, before I let you go, I want to ask you about the shooting in Maine. Less about what is Congress going to do here, because we don't know the type of gun, we don't know how it was purchased, we don't know so much right now.

But from the broader context of things, may not be unlike South Dakota, low levels of violent crime, and higher levels than the national average of gun ownership. I know you're a hunter as well. Is this the reality in this country, unlike every other country that's developed, like the U.S.? With the Second Amendment and with gun ownership, this is just the norm? People have to accept this?

JOHNSON: I'm glad that you mentioned the similarities to the area where I live and where this terrible tragedy happened in Maine. I think that's the human psyche, we have a tendency to look in these crises for the stories that connect with us. And you're exactly right.

I mean, I live in a rural community, communities with very high levels of gun ownership, but very low levels of violent crime. So, to have this kind of a story come out of that kind of community is jarring. And I don't think we can accept that this is the norm.

I think everything in us needs to say absolutely not. And we know that America, even aside from these mass shootings, America is a very violent country. And we have a carnage that is breathtaking with a hundred thousand suicides a year and a hundred thousand drug overdose deaths.

And I think we need to try to figure out, from a root cause, why is society fraying at the seams? I would just note that the accused did spend two weeks in a mental health facility. Although it is almost impossible to find anything positive about this story where real people have been erased from this world, I do think that is part of the solution.

[08:25:00]

The fact that his community and his society were willing to get him that help, clearly did not work, but that is the path forward because it works so many times.

MATTINGLY: But tied to that, you opposed the Gun Safety Bill that was signed into law by President Biden that had funding, not direct application of red flag laws, ERPOs. Maine has a yellow flag law, which I think is a restructured version of that, that has a couple more steps to it.

Is that an answer here? That ties to mental health, but that's always run into issues with gun rights advocates who are concerned about people's ability to have their weapons taken away.

JOHNSON: The data does not indicate that these move the needle in a substantial way. Now we're still relatively early on in the lifetime of some of these gun control mechanisms, right? So, we're going to continue to see data come out. But again, two years ago when that Gun Control Bill passed, it did more than just red flag laws, it did other things.

You're right, I voted against it, but President Biden called this a sweeping piece of legislation that would save thousands of lives. I'm a data guy, so of course I want to analyze the data. But my thought right now is that this gun violence in the last two years has continued unabated.

That, in fact, what the president said is not true, that gun control legislation didn't actually move the needle in the right direction. As a result, before we just go piling on more gun control legislation, on gun control legislation that doesn't work, I think we need to talk about root causes.

MATTINGLY: A conversation very worth having. Congressman Dusty Johnson, we appreciate your time as always sir, thank you.

JOHNSON: Thank you.

HARLOW: All right, at 10:30 a.m. Eastern time, just a couple of hours from now, police will hold a news conference with more details on the shootings in Lewiston, Maine. We're live on the ground there next.

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