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Laura Coates Live
Trump Damage Control Over Abortion Backlash; Jack Smith Framing Solution On Trump's Subversion Case; Death Row Fighting To Avoid Execution; Former Top Pentagon Official Claims Recovery Of Non-Human Specimen; Youngest Male Olympic Gold Medalist Of U.S. Track. Aired 11p-12a ET
Aired August 30, 2024 - 23:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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AUDIE CORNISH, CNN HOST: Everybody thank you so much. Thank you for watching "NewsNight: State of the Race." "Laura Coates Live" starts right now.
LAURA COATES, CNN HOST: Whiplash for Donald Trump. The mixed signals that he is now sending on abortion and why both parties are getting mad.
Plus, special counsel Jack Smith has filed his plan for how and when to move forward with his January 6th case.
And are we alone or not? A former top Pentagon UFO hunter, yeah, I said it, makes a stunning claim as he takes us inside the secret program that he once led, tonight on "Laura Coates Live."
Sixty-seven days to go until the general election and Donald Trump is struggling to confront, let alone resolve an issue that he created for himself, the end of Roe v. Wade. We find exhibit A in his very home state of Florida. Now there, there is a six week abortion ban, that amendment on the ballot that would overturn that particular ban.
Yesterday, Trump appeared to suggest that he'd be willing to vote for overturning that ban when he said this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONAL TRUMP, REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: I think the six week is too short. This has to be more time.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COATES: Now that caused panic among his base. Conservative Eric Erickson went as far as to put it like this earlier today.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ERIC ERICKSON, RADIO HOST: And if he loses in November, yesterday, August 29th in the year of our Lord 2024 will be the day he lost if he doesn't do some damage control pretty quickly.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
Well, the damage control, it wasn't far behind. Trump told Fox this afternoon that even though he still thinks that six weeks is too short, that he would vote not to overturn that ban. He claimed the reason is because the amendment would allow abortions at nine months. Now, that's not true. It would allow abortion until viability, about 23 or 24 weeks.
B0ut there's more. On the issue of signing a national abortion ban, should he win office? Trump would not say whether he'd sign one or not.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: I'm not going to have to think about it because it's working out so well right now. The states are doing it. It's a state's issue.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COATES: Now his answer is not surprising to Democrats who have built a large part of their message on this very issue. But you know who might be surprised, maybe a little bit? His running mate, Senator J.D. Vance, who said this, remember, just five days ago.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
J.D. VANCE, REPUBLICAN VICE PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: I think it would be very clear he would not support it. I mean, he said that --
KRISTEN WELKER, HOST, NBC NEWS MEET THE PRESS: M But would he veto it?
VANCE: Yeah, I mean, if you're not supporting it as the president of the United States, you fundamentally have to veto it.
WELKER: So he would veto a federal abortion ban?
VANCE: I think he would.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COATES: With me now, Sam Brodey, National Political Reporter at the "Boston Globe," Ameshia Cross, a Democratic strategist, and Jason Osborne, former advisor of the 2016 Trump and Ben Carson campaigns. Thank you all for being here. Let me begin with you, Sam, because as you see, Trump appears to have changed his tune on the abortion amendment in Florida after just, I would note, 24 hours. So what do you think is behind this shift?
SAM BRODEY, NATIONAL POLITICAL REPORTER, BOSTON GLOBE: Well, this is an extremely difficult issue for Donald Trump and the Republican Party. And I think what you're seeing right now is a candidate in a campaign in real time that is trying to adjust to some very, very shifting waters here. It is going to be very hard for this campaign and this candidate to control this issue because Florida is just one of, I think, about a dozen states that will be voting on abortion in some way, shape or form this fall. So they are going to have to react to very specific policy proposals
that are happening in these states. It just so happens that this is a unique situation, which Donald Trump is a Florida voter who is going to cast a vote on this. But this is a party where, you know, Eric Erickson noted, this is a party full of single issue abortion voters and Donald Trump is going to have to try really hard to keep those folks in his camp and showing up to vote for him while not alienating these folks in the middle who are very fired up to vote on this issue.
COATES: I mean, it's interesting to me, Jason, because first of all, Trump has shifted his stance on abortion, I mean, not just in the past several weeks or years, I mean, literally for decades. Listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: I'm very pro-choice.
I'm also proud to be the most pro-life president in American history.
The Democrats are the radicals on this because they're willing to have abortions in the seventh, eighth, ninth month.
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For the first time, the people that are pro-life have negotiating capability because you didn't have it before. They could kill the baby in the ninth month or after the baby was born.
I believe in the three exceptions for rape, incest, and the life of the mother. I believe in that. Without the exceptions, it is very difficult to win elections.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COATES: Now, Everyone has the ability to evolve their thoughts over time. That's true. But Jason, this is an issue that is so important to so many voters and one's consistent position, all the more so. How do voters trust him on the issue overall reproductive rights when it seems to be fluctuating?
JASON OSBORNE, FORMER SENIOR ADVISER, TRUMP 2016 CAMPAIGN: Well, I watched all those clips that you just played and he did seem to shift a lot over the past few decades. You know, I think honestly, I don't know how to answer that question for him. What I would say and what I would suggest if I was still advising him would be, you know, you have to be -- what he did with the Supreme Court is exactly what the pro- life movement and Republicans have been asking for forever, which is return the issue back to the states.
He's done his job, and I think he should stand proud on doing that job and leave it be from there. Let the states decide which they are doing. And now what you're seeing is on the pro-life side and Republican side is they don't like the fact that the states are having a say in this because they're not voting the way that they thought they would be in several of these states. So I think for him, it's obviously a challenge. I don't know how you
overcome that challenge except to be consistent in saying, I did what I did in my first term. The next term, the reality is, there's never going to be a federal abortion ban in front of the president of either party. You're just never gonna get the 60 votes in the Senate. You're not gonna get the 267 votes that you need in the House. So, instead of dealing with hypotheticals, deal with what he did by appointing the Supreme Court, the three justices on the Supreme Court, and stand by that decision.
COATES: Well, that's the point, Ameshia, right, that he wants to herald as a feather in his cap the overturning of Roe v. Wade and the placement of Supreme Court justices. Then there's the idea, be careful what you wish for if it doesn't work out the way you want. But now there's this new introduction, which perhaps was foreseeable or not. It's not just about the way that life, as is defined by some, is ended, but now also how it is begun and started.
I mean, he has now vowed to make insurance companies or the government pay for IVF treatments. I mean, listen to that, to what his running mate, Senator J.D. Vance, told my colleague, John Berman, about that very issue.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOHN BERMAN, CNN HOST: How is he going to pay for it? Is this an expansion of Obamacare? Is this a mandate?
VANCE: Well look, I think you have insurance companies that obviously are forced to cover a whole host of services. The president explicitly said that he wants insurers to cover additional fertility treatments. I think it's also important to point out that it's become way too expensive to raise a family in this country, John, thanks to Kamala Harris' policies.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COATES: So, right hand, left hand, got to be on the same page, same body. Why are Trump and Vance struggling to have this coherent and cogent message on this issue?
AMESHIA CROSS, FORMER OBAMA CAMPAIGN ADVISER: Well, I think partially because they are trying to toe the line with multiple audiences. We know that the far right is not a fan of IVF, and they're also not a fan of women being able to make reproductive choices broadly. So they're trying to, when it comes to the religious right, to keep that line in place. That's why Donald Trump in 2016 chose Mike Pence so that he could get that base revved and ready to go.
Now we're in a much different place. Women are galvanizing regardless of what political spectrum they happen to be a part of. They're galvanizing across states. We've seen it when abortion is at the top of the ballot. We've seen it multiple cases be rejected by women. Women are 54 percent of the American electorate.
There is a recognition that J.D. Vance has turned off more women than is possible, well, I thought possible in general with his commentary. But when we see with Donald Trump is somebody who has flip-flopped on this issue, someone who for whatever reason believes that he can call for an explanation of policies, pricing, and everything else related to the economic agenda and economic policy plan of VP Harris, but does not want to answer that question when it comes to IVF, nor does his running mate.
And for anybody who doesn't know, IVF treatments are in the thousands of dollars. And the majority of women who will need that or have sought that treatment, they have to go through that process two, three, sometimes four times. So I would really like to know how the small government Republicans think that it is viable for them to run on expanding it because you would have to expand government and government processes to be able to push this through.
And if you're talking about making the private sector, making private insurers jump on, this is the same Donald Trump who did not believe in expansion of Obamacare.
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This is the same Donald Trump who has fought to get rid of Obamacare without anything to replace it for years now.
COATES: Indeed. I mean, on that point, Jason, the idea that the particular details are going to be very impactful for voters and the idea of grand statements and big plans, first of all, both campaigns are criticized and having these big statements. And Jason, let me ask you, because Trump last year said that Florida's six-week abortion ban was a terrible thing. When he did so, Iowa's governor criticized him, saying that it's never a terrible thing to protect innocent life.
Now, when the RNC changed the party platform at Trump's behest before the convention, there was an anonymous anti-abortion leader who told "Politico," quote, "Trump and his campaign officials are willing to sacrifice the pro-life cause for the sake of their political expediency."
If you go on further, this week, Lila Rose, the leader of anti- abortion group Live Action, said that Trump and Vance are, quote, "making it impossible for pro-life voters to support them." So, do you think that anti-abortion supports, excuse me, will turn out for Trump, given all of this?
OSBORNE: Absolutely. I mean, I think at the end of the day, you know, obviously there are folks that are single issue voters, right? I mean, there's on the gun side, the gun control or anti-gun control side, and the pro-life side. Those are typically your predominant single issue voters. And they're going to see this presidency, a Trump presidency, as being a much better presidency than a Kamala Harris and Tim Walz president or vice presidency.
So I'm not worried about the pro-life movement turning out. They know that, you know, Donald Trump represents a better future for their families, for their own selves, for their jobs and their job security. So at the end of the day, they're going to come into the ballot boxes or they're going to mail in their ballots and they're going to decide that Donald Trump is better than Kamala Harris.
COATES: Sam, we have a couple data points thus far, right? You've got the conventions, you've got the upcoming debate, you've got the interview just yesterday with my colleague, Dana Bash. And there was a moment that people were wondering, even Quentin Tarantino at one point, essentially to paraphrase him, was saying, just don't mess it up. Don't mess up the actual interview. I do wonder from just last night alone, do you think that there will be more interviews with the press to flush out conversations like this about the platform positions, either before the debate or more intensely after?
BRODEY: Well, I would certainly hope so as a member of the press both before and after. I think you know there's an interesting discourse around the big interview last night, you know, really indicating that they might behoove them, you know, strategically to just do a lot of them and so as to not build up so much anticipation on one single, you know, media appearance that just, you know, it increases scrutiny and scrutiny on missteps.
But you know the fact is that on the Harris campaign has not rolled out a really much of the issues or policy area of their website much at all. We have an idea, of course, of what the vice president wants to do heard about specific plans a lot of the convention but nothing in the way of like here's a broad really and deep look at what she and Governor Walz might do if a lot of --
COATES: Trump, either, right?
BRODEY: Yeah, Trump either, of course. So, I think -- but you know this -- the fact is that, you know, this is a ticket, a Harris-Walz ticket that has spent less time on the trail. So, I think it would be smart for them to view these opportunities to flesh out aspects of the platform, not have so many eyeballs and so much anticipation on missteps in particular interviews and yeah, I would hope that there would be opportunities for press, print, you know, T.V., all the above to really get into the details with them before and after the debate.
COATES: I'll be curious what strategy they employ and to what extent the voters are concerned with the actual vehicle of those conversations. Thank you so much for everyone joining me tonight. Alright everyone, I've got a key filing. It's just in tonight. I have it in my hand. It details the path forward that's been proposed by Jack Smith's January 6 case against Donald Trump. I'll tell you all about it in just a moment.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
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COATES: Breaking news, a key filing in Trump's January 6 election subversion case just submitted to the court hot off the press. I want to get right to Hugo Lowell, a senior political correspondent for "The Guardian," and Tim Parlatore, a CNN legal commentator and former Trump attorney. All right, just looking at it, first of all, to orient the conversations. We knew this was going to be litigious. We knew that neither party had a real shot of getting a trial in 67 days. It seems, though, Hugo, neither are asking for a trial to happen
before that. But the real headline is neither are asking to have that evidentiary hearing we often heard about, the mini trial, before that date either. It seems they're arguing that this should be done on the papers for the judge to determine immunity and what is official on the papers alone. Explain.
HUGO LOWELL, SENIOR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT, THE GUARDIAN: Yeah. So I think several points, right? Number one, the schedule that has been laid out by Trump, because this is a joint filing, Trump's laid out his position, the government's laid out his position, the Trump schedule basically kicks all of this past the election. They have shoehorned these little appointments clause filing in the middle to get themselves past November 5th, because they don't, I mean, frankly, they just don't want any discussion about the January 6th case before the election.
COATES: And hold on, the appointments clause discussion is whether or not they were entitled to have Jack Smith even oversee these matters, whether he was rightfully in that position. An argument that was raised by Judge Cannon down in Florida. Go ahead.
LOWELL: Yeah. So they are basically pulling the argument that was in the documents case with respect to what's Jack Smith unlawfully appointed. That's Judge Cannon in the documents case dismissed. That prosecution and it's now on appeal. And what Trump's lawyers have done is to take that argument and shoehorn it in here and try and get this before the judge in order to push the schedule out by weeks and weeks. And we knew this was coming down the pipe because, you know, Todd Blanche, Trump's lead lawyer, was always contemplating trying to kick the can down the road as long as possible.
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But I think what's also interesting, and, you know, Tim and I were talking about this just now, is the government also doesn't lay out a schedule that contemplates anything coming before the election. And to me, it does tacitly suggest the government has finally decided. It cannot get this to trial. It cannot get these hearings in a timely fashion before the election, and they've given up that road for now.
COATES: Well, now, of course, if you're the prosecutor in these cases, normally you're not contemplating an election as your deadline for when you can bring a case. And just because they can't get it done before the election doesn't necessarily mean that they don't believe in the merits of their case. But the schedule is really interesting, the way that Hugo has laid out, that even Trump is saying maybe beginning of 2025, maybe the fall of 2025 would be prudent here. Why do you think it is that Jack Smith as counsel and his team believe this should be argued not with an evidentiary hearing and a mini trial, but look, your honor, read the motions, read the paperwork, and then you decide?
TIM PARLATORE, CNN LEGAL COMMENTATOR: And I think that this is only an argument that he can make because he went and got that superseding indictment earlier this week. COATES: Oh, why so?
PARLATORE: Because what he did was, he tried to figure it out himself instead of having the evidence you're hearing where the judge would cut apart, you know, what is in this not immune. Jack Smith made his own determination, went back to the grand jury and tried to represent the case cutting out all the things that he thought were immune so that he could kind of avoid the hearing altogether and move forward much more quickly.
Obviously, this new indictment is going to be subject to attack by the defense, but he's hoping that through the papers that the defense is not going to be able to raise any issues that it would create a factual dispute where a judge even needs to have a hearing. And so by doing that indictment first and then briefing it -- and he's even offered a kind of a reverse schedule. It's the defendant's motion. And so ordinarily when a defendant makes a motion, they put in their briefing first, then the government responds, defendant gets the last word.
Jack Smith is proposing the opposite. He's saying, I've cleaned up the indictment, let me file the brief first, saying why everything is not immune, the defendant can respond and then Jack Smith wants the last word. So it's kind of reversing things.
COATES: Yeah.
PARLATORE: So it's all based on the new indictment.
COATES: What's interesting to me about this, and frankly, it's relatively short, which in a world where we are used to seeing from Jack Smith and counsel like, dozens and dozens and dozens of pages, this actually is far more routine where the parties get together, they're trying to work things out, the judge just wants an answer. When do you want to do it with the schedule? But importantly, and to your point, Tim, that Trump is likely going to file additional motions to dismiss. They all acknowledge that in this particular motion and what they've decided.
One reason is because they think that the superseding (ph) indictment is based on immunized testimony or things that should not have come in. And they are intimating that the grand jury, the new grand jury that heard it, probably heard things that were is also subject to the Supreme Court's decision. So they're asking the judge to essentially decide the immunity issue first, to resolve that first, because if they find that the Pence or any other material about that in fact was immunized, they can't go forward. They acknowledge that.
LOWELL: Yeah, and you know, I think this has always been the issue with the superseding indictment is. You know, if Judge Chutkan for whatever reason decides anything in the superseding indictment is official conduct and has to be struck, and you know, we've talked about this before about how the Supreme Court in its ruling said you can't advance evidence or present evidence that you weren't going to be able to take to trial either. And so that would have tainted the grand jury process and it would
have tainted the superseding indictment. And so the special counsel would have had to go back, get a new superseding indictment with a new grand jury that hasn't heard the evidence that has already been tainted. And so I think it kind of envisions that process coming down the line.
COATES: So what's Chutkan going to do? I mean, the ball is in her court. It's her prerogative in terms of scheduling of it. She's not going to think about the general election as her cutoff at all. But what's she to do?
PARLATORE: Well, I mean, I think that, you know, one thing that we're gonna see here is for the first time since we've finally gotten past the idea of doing this before the election, we're gonna see what a real trial schedule looks like. And I think that the judge is going to set out something far more reasonable. It's not gonna be what the defense is suggesting, but it's not necessarily gonna be exactly what Jack Smith is suggesting either.
Jack Smith is saying, why don't we take a lot of these motions and just consolidate them and file them all at the same time? Whereas the defense is saying what we need to do immunity first, what they really wanted to do, appointment clause first, then immunity, then the other ones. So I do think that she may, you know, consolidate some but I think it's going to be, you know, it's somewhere in between.
COATES: What's fascinating is the interplay of all these different cases, the Judge Cannon case, the classified documents case, the Supreme Court's decision in the immunity case, and now of course, this matter in Washington, D.C.
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Not only judges are not having to consider how to resolve other court's motions as well. But they're all interacting in a way that every single one is connected issue.
LOWELL: Yeah, and the Judge Cannon thing in particular is interesting, right? And, you know, this is something we'd also talk about at length, is the fact that you now have a ruling in the Southern District of Florida in the documents case where Judge Cannon has dismissed that prosecution on the basis of Jack Smith's unlawful appointment.
Depending on how the 11th Circuit rules on that, we are going to have a potential split circuit decision between the D.C. Circuit and the 11th Circuit. It may be that Judge Cannon is reversed and it goes back and that's all done, but we now have this situation where Trump can raise the motion in the D.C. case to say, hey, look, the judge in Florida has dismissed it and so we think this is a viable motion here as well, and we're gonna shoehorn it in, and we're gonna try and extract a little bit more delay. And if that hadn't happened in Florida, if Jack Smith hadn't brought the documents case, for instance, that would not be a play that's available to them right now. COATES: By the way, I mean, even the rationale for the schedule is
multiple pages, and my eyes immediately catch, and we'll come back to this point, that they have a control date set of December 13th to file motions to compel discovery, which means that no matter what, it can't just be you saying that you use testimony that was not under the official acts, they got to hand it over as well. More litigation, everyone. Stand by, Hugo and Tim. We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
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COATES: A dramatic legal battle is playing out in Missouri over a death row inmate set to be executed in less than a month. Marcellus Williams was convicted in the 1998 murder of Felicia Gale, a one-time reporter found stabbed to death in her own home. Williams has always maintained his innocence, and his case is raising concerns that a potentially innocent man could be put to death. It's also pitting Wesley Bell, a local prosecutor running for Congress as a Democrat, against Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, a Republican seeking re-election.
In January, Bell filed a request to have Williams' conviction overturned. After testing, found that his DNA was not on the murder weapon. Now, prosecutors were expected to present evidence in court just last week to support that very motion. But the hearing did not happen. Why not? New DNA testing showed the knife had, quote, "been handled by many actors, including law enforcement." And the Attorney General's office argued that it could not, therefore, exonerate Williams.
Then Bell's office announced that it had reached an agreement with Williams to get him off death row. It would have allowed him to be resentenced, this time to life in prison. It was approved by the court and the victim's family. But the Attorney General's office, they opposed the deal and they appealed to the state Supreme Court, which then blocked that agreement. The Supreme Court then opened a St. Louis County judge to -- and ordered that judge to hold an evidentiary hearing. Now that did happen earlier this week, and we're now waiting on that ruling.
St. Louis County prosecutor, Wesley Bell joins us now. Wesley, thank you so much for joining. I mean, this case and just the iterations and the journey is very striking to so many people. He is set to be put to death on September 24th. If this current hearing does not go in his favor and the judge does not spare him execution, what happens next? Would the governor intervene?
WESLEY BELL, ST. LOUIS COUNTY, MISSOURI PROSECUTING ATTORNEY: Well, we're in uncharted water, Laura, to be perfectly honest. Our legislature passed a law giving prosecutors standing to bring cases or reopen cases where there is evidence of innocence or wrongful conviction. And so we opened this case under that statute and we believe that there are serious concerns with this conviction.
Obviously, this conviction was from 1998, so it predated me, but we created a conviction incident review unit so that we could make certain that we had safeguards in place to make sure we get it right. And in this case, there are serious questions about this conviction. And at the very least, regardless of your politics on the death penalty, we should not -- no one should be executed if there's questions about the conviction.
COATES: You know, it seems like everyone but the Missouri Attorney General, Andrew Bailey, agree that life in prison for (inaudible) was the way to move forward. And I should note, it was based on an Alfred plea, I understand, where he was not agreeing to say that he was guilty, but that he was agreeing that the government had some level of evidence that could possibly meet their burden, but he was maintaining his innocence nonetheless.
Why do you believe that he is so determined to have this execution happen even when the family is on board with the new plan obviously the inmate as well and your office?
BELL: You know I'd be speculating on why the Attorney General's office is taking this position, but it is just disappointing. We took an oath to bring justice not just to bring convictions. And in a case like this where there is serious concerns and issues with the evidence, an irrevocable sentence like death should be the last thing that's on the table.
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If this individual is sentenced to life in prison, the state, the Attorney General's office loses nothing. It gives us an opportunity to continue to investigate this case, which is what we would like to continue to be able to do. But by executing him, obviously we can't bring that, take that back. And when there's a question about a conviction or potential innocence, even the most staunch death row advocates, I don't think would want to see someone executed under these types of circumstances.
COATES: Can you explain this notion about how because the murder weapon was handled by so many different people -- mishandled. You know, you have this chain of custody aspects, you want to keep your evidence pretty pure, and it's close to the moment of the alleged incident as possible to have the purest of evidence. Why would they be arguing that, because law enforcement may have touched, I think a prosecutor had touched it multiple times as well, that would not be enough to suggest that the burden of proof could not be met or that it couldn't exonerate him? It almost sounds like they're saying, yeah, law enforcement touched it, but didn't mean that you didn't touch it. Is that enough? Should it be?
BELL: And Laura, you're a former prosecutor. As prosecutors, we have a duty to make certain that a defendant not only has a fair trial, but a defendant has a fair opportunity to appeal their case. And so we have to be careful with how we handle evidence at all phases of a trial. And the fact that there is questions handling of the evidence of the case, which prevents Mr. Williams from being able to mount an appeal in this case to look at potential DNA evidence, some of which was not available at the time in 1998, is a dereliction of our duty. And again, the death penalty, you know, I'm opposed to it. It's not a
deterrent. It does not give families closure because of the scrutiny that courts give death cases, which they should. But in a case like this, when we have clear and we have evidence that suggests that not only Mr. Williams could potentially be innocent, but also that there's questions about the conviction itself, I think it is the only right thing to do and ethical thing to do is to at least spare this man from execution.
COATES: I've heard of a rush to judgment, a rush to execution. I can't believe it. Wesley Bell, thank you so much.
BELL: Thank you for having me.
COATES: Ahead, the question that many people ask, is there alien life out there? Well, my next guest says, out there? It's already here. A former top Pentagon official who ran a shadowy program on UFOs is going to tell his story and exactly what he has seen next.
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(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BRENT SPINER, ACTOR: She's a beauty ain't she? As you can see from the repairs, we've been trying to put her back together since the late 1960s.
BILL PULLMAN, ACTOR: Don't tell me you've had this for 40 years and you don't know anything about him.
SPINER: Oh, hell no. No, no, no. We know tons about him.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COATES: That was from the 1996 blockbuster "Independence Day," the scene where the president first enters Area 51 and learns the United States had been in possession of alien aircraft for decades. Could this be an example of art imitating life? Well, it very well could be, according to my next guest. His name is Luis Elizondo. He worked for many years in many different positions for the Department of Defense, ultimately becoming a senior intelligence official and running a shadowy Pentagon program investigating UFOs.
That is until he resigned in 2017, denouncing the program's secrecy. Well, in his new memoir, "Imminent," he shares some earth-shattering revelations, like his assertion that the government is in possession of biological remains of non-human origin. He also describes personal encounters with an unidentified anomalous phenomena also known as UAP. Luis Elizondo joins me now. How unbelievably exciting. Everyone is almost hitting their televisions trying to lean in on this moment.
I mean, you have written that the U.S. government has been operating a decades-long, I got to read this, crash retrieval program for these UAP, that biological remains of non-humans (ph) have been found. Are you telling me that aliens are real?
LUIS ELIZONDO, FORMER HEAD, ADVANCE AEROSPACE THREAT IDENTIFICATION PROGRAM: Well, what I'm saying, Laura, first of all, thank you very much for having me on your show. What I'm saying is that we have something that is made by nonhumans. So whatever that means, right? We're talking about aliens in the vernacular sense. Are we talking about something that's been here all along? There's a lot of options. We're just now at the point as a nation, as a country, as a government, we're beginning to acknowledge this.
COATES: Why is it that there is so little transparency around this issue? What drives that decision? Is it fear? Is it lack of information? Is it something else?
ELIZONDO: All governments want to make sure that they can provide safety and security for their people, for their citizens.
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And in this particular case, we have technologies that are being incurred into controlled U.S. airspace and over sensitive military installations performing in ways that we cannot replicate and there's nothing we can do about it. So that's not a really good conversation to have if you're a military leader, to have with the American people, right, until you have a solution.
COATES: That's a really important point because it would create perhaps anxiety with the inability to answer certain questions. And yet there are people who crave the information and want to know if it's real. And by the way, you mentioned military. I mean, there's this video released in 2017 that shows Navy pilots encountering this UAP. Can you explain what we might be seeing here?
ELIZONDO: Yeah, so there's actually a lot of videos out there and the government has --
COATES: Really?
ELIZONDO: -- yes. So a lot of people are familiar with the three videos that you're showing now, but what a lot of people don't know is there's been other ones that have come out forward from the Pentagon where they released it and they said, look, we have no idea what this is. That's a perfect example. That is a another example they call the silver orb.
That is the famous gimbal video. That is a vehicle that is flying at altitude. It's going 120 knots against the wind. That is hurricane force winds, right? We're not talking about a balloon. We're talking about a technical vehicle that is going against the wind, and it begins to maneuver in a very interesting way. Most aircraft, because you have wings, when you turn and you articulate the aircraft this way, you lose lift and you lose altitude.
That's not what we're seeing in that video. We're seeing a cry -- and you can even hear the exasperation of the pilots when they say, well, bro, that's not a drone, dude, and there's some expletives there. And the vehicle begins to turn in a way that really these are trained pilots. These pilots are trained observers. They're combat. Some of them are Top Gun pilots.
They know the difference between an SU-22, a MiG-25 and an F-16 from 10 miles away. And what they're seeing there defies all description. In some cases these things don't even have wings. No rudders, no ailerons, no control surfaces, no cockpits. And so therein lies the conundrum.
COATES: Well -- and have we recovered some of these crafts?
ELIZONDO: So what I can say, so my -- I wrote my book for a very specific reason. First of all, I wanted to document and record my experiences in an actual UAP program by the Pentagon, but more importantly, I had to get it reviewed by the Pentagon. I had to go through a security review. In this case, almost a year, it went through the security review.
And so when I finally got the book back, that was the Pentagon saying, you can publish this. It is not classified and in fact anything that we don't want, we're going to go ahead and redact which I left in the book. So anybody can read and say, oh, that's a portion the government doesn't want you to see. I kept those redactions covered so people can see exactly what I wrote.
COATES: Can I have that copy?
ELIZONDO: Well, when I say the redactions are in there, what I mean is the black lines. I'm very blessed (ph). I still have my security clearance --
COATES: Yeah.
ELIZONDO: -- and I certainly don't want to violate the law or compromise national security. But this is I think is important because this is -- the ability for me to write an experience and get it approved by the government to say you can talk about it, but that's not the only time that's happened. Recently, last year, there was a historic hearing that occurred in Congress where several people, two pilots and an intelligence officer testified before the American people under oath to Congress where they talked about none other than the potential of the recovery of advanced technology not made by humans and biological samples.
COATES: Well, talking about those samples, because of course Hollywood has an image in our minds of what non-human biological data or looks like. I mean, look at this, anywhere from Tesseract from Interstellar to Na'vi from Avatar. I mean, any idea? Just -- I mean, just which might be the closest?
ELIZONDO: The material that I had been privy to, and I have to be, you know, I don't want to beat around the bush, but I also am very mindful of my security oath. I can't -- I'll go right up to that line of what I can talk about. I can't go over it. We had trained medical doctors in the U.S. government look at some of these biological samples and also the material, and research was done. And when they did their research, I am certainly not a scientist and
I'm not a medical doctor, so we have to rely on the expertise of the scientists who supported these efforts both in the past and in our program. And what they're telling us is that this stuff is truly exotic, that this stuff is -- it would be like, you know, people say, well, you found this material on the ground. Is it possible some sort of foreign adversary? And of course you have to say, yes, it is distinctly possible.
But when you look on how this material was manufactured and the precision and the arrangement of the molecules to the other molecules, it is -- we've had defense contractors come back to us and say, it's too expensive, we can't make this. And not only can we not make it now, but this material was found decades ago.
[23:49:55]
So that would be like going into, let's say, King Tut's tomb for the very first time in the 1920s, and all of a sudden finding a fully assembled 747 sitting in the tomb, right? It doesn't make sense. That type of capability to make that did not exist at the time the tomb was made. And this is the same thing, same analogy with this. We have material. We know it's there. It's real. We can study it, but we don't know how it's manufactured. And it's manufactured in such a way that is very perplexing and some of the properties are very nuanced and very interesting. And so this is why you have interest by the government to explore and study these materials.
COATES: This is so fascinating to me. It's unbelievable what you must know and what must be out there. I knew we weren't alone. And if we're not, let them be watching "Laura Coates Live." Thank you so much. It's so great to have you, Luis Elizondo. Thank you. And the Pentagon saying in a statement the program, quote, "continues its review of the historical record of U.S. government UAP programs, adding that they have not discovered any verifiable information to substantiate claims that any programs regarding the possession or reverse engineering of extraterrestrial materials have existed in the past or exist currently."
Ahead, it's not every day you come back from summer vacation with an Olympic gold medal, but 16-year-old track star Quincy Wilson is doing just that and he's here with me next.
But first, I want to bring you this week's CNN Hero. Since 2021, a record number of unaccompanied migrant children have traveled to United States, many fleeing violence and extreme poverty. An immigration lawyer who's seen the hardships many of these kids face decided to go beyond her legal representation to meet them.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
RACHEL RUTTER, CNN HERO: The cartel started asking for money. They were telling my family they were going to kidnap me and my sister. My mother chose to just leave everything we had.
UNKNOWN (through translation): They killed my aunt. They tried to take my mom's and aunt's house.
UNKNOWN (through translation): The trip lasted like a month.
UNKNOWN (through translation): I came alone.
RUTTER: Once the children arrive here in the U.S., they've already been through so much trauma. It can be jarring when they arrive here and realize that it's really just beginning. These kids are not coming here to ruin the United States or take our jobs or commit crimes. They're coming here to be safe and to take care of their families. They want to study, they want to work, they want to achieve something here in the U.S. And they are some of the hardest-working, kindest, most resilient kids.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[23:55:00]
COATES: Late August is a big time for most teenagers. There's a buzz in the air. The new school year is about to start, or maybe it just got underway. A lot of kids will be reconnecting with their friends, filling them in on how their summer went. But try this, bringing a gold medal to class. Of course, I'm talking about 16-year-old Olympian, Quincy Wilson. He made history in Paris as part of the men's 4x400 meter relay team, becoming the youngest American male track and field athlete ever to win Olympic gold.
And Quincy, he joins me again now. Quincy, I'm so excited for you. Congratulations!
QUINCY WILSON, U.S. OLYMPIAN: Thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me.
COATES: Wow, it's hard to focus. They gave me this little medal to try to give me shade. I'm looking at yours. That is impressive. Show the audience.
WILSON: Yes, yes, yes.
COATES: Is it heavy?
WILSON: Is it? Six pounds is very heavy.
COATES: It's six pounds?
WILSON: Yes, ma'am. Yes, ma'am.
COATES: Wow. How does it feel to wear it, to know that you earned it?
WILSON: It feels great. You know, with a lot of support around me, my teammates, my family, and everyone just supported me. And I just know that when I wear this medal, it's not just my medal. It's everybody else's medal that has helped me get to the point. And so that's one of the most things that I'm so happy about and I get to showcase because everybody else has helped me get here.
It wasn't just me and it was a big family that helped me get here. So, that's one of the things that I can say and now that everyone can see what their hard work has been as it has been putting into my mom, you can see all those long days that she's drove me to practice. This is what it's for.
COATES: As a mom of somebody who plays sports, the back and forth is real. You should have her wear that and your father as well. But you know, talk to me about the experience of being there. I mean, you're 16 years old.
WILSON: Yes ma'am.
COATES: You are the youngest male athlete track and field ever to be in the Olympic games.
WILSON: Right.
COATES: What was that like when you first walked in there and knew that they had expectations, that you had to earn the reputation that you'd already earned all over again?
WILSON: Yes ma'am. So that's one of the things I would like to of course thank the veterans of track and field that let me know that it is not any new state that you've never been in. It's going to be a bigger atmosphere, more supporters, more fans, but it's not. It's just a simple regular meet, nine-lane track. It's the same as I've been doing.
And that's one of the things that I can thank Vernon and all the other 400 meter runners that were out there giving me advice. They just told me that. And that's one of the things that I kept in mind. And they just guided me through the process and guided me through the village and different things and how -- what things that you need to know, what things you don't need to know and things like that.
COATES: So, I'm leaning in. What they tell you -- you know what? Keep them under suspense, okay.
WILSON: Yes, ma'am. And just all the different things that you can look forward to in the future because they said in a couple years, they're not going to be running anymore, and it's going to be my turn to be that person and give advice to the younger generation.
COATES: The gold medal, but a reflection of the pride of a nation.
WILSON: Yes, ma'am.
COATES: Quincy, congratulations.
WILSON: Thank you so much.
COATES: Wow. Quincy Wilson, everyone. Thank you so much.
