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Biden, Putin Prepare for Consequential Call as Russia Threatens; Uniformed White Nationalist Group Marches at Lincoln Memorial. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired December 06, 2021 - 08:00   ET

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

[08:00:00]

ATHENA JONES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: The Crumbleys were arraigned by video conference Saturday morning and charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter in connection with the deadly shooting. The couple has entered not guilty pleas to all the charges. Citing a potential risk, a judge has imposed a combined $1 million bond for both of them, and they'd have to post that full amount. An Oakland County prosecutor also stressed the seriousness of the charges.

KAREN MCDONALD, OAKLAND COUNTY, MICHIGAN, PROSECUTOR: Your honor, this is a very serious, horrible, terrible murder and shooting, and it has affected the entire community. And these two individuals could have stopped it. And they had every reason to know he was dangerous, and they gave him a weapon, and they didn't secure it, and they allowed him free access to it.

JENNIFER CRUMBLEY: I'm Jennifer Crumbley.

JONES: But attorneys representing Jennifer and James Crumbley say the couple had the gun locked up and that their son did not have free access to it.

(END VIDEO TAPE)

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: And joining us now is Oakland County prosecutor Karen McDonald. Karen, thank you so much for being with us this morning. You hear the defense, you heard them say the gun was locked. Did Ethan Crumbley have a key to it?

KAREN MCDONALD, OAKLAND COUNTY, MICHIGAN, PROSECUTOR: It's not clear. I know, what we know is that he had access and free access. And based on the social media posts and other comments and evidence that I can't comment on, the gun was considered his and it was purchased as a present for him.

KEILAR: So Michigan doesn't have a safe storage law. Does that hurt the case here?

MCDONALD: Well, it does not have a safe storage law, and hopefully that will change soon. But no, it doesn't. This is a charge based on gross negligence and failure to perform a duty. There's a lot of evidence, and some has been made public and some has not. I do want to say these are mere allegations. They are innocent until proven guilty. However, I can comment on what has been made public in the swear to in open court. And there was absolutely evidence to suggest that there was an indication he might harm somebody and even kill somebody.

We have a responsibility as a community, as a state, as a nation to hold people accountable. We can do a lot in training, and we can try to prepare for these things. But as a mom and a prosecutor, I'm interested in trying to figure out how they don't happen at all. And that goes back to the weapon.

I'm not saying people shouldn't own guns. I grew up in a house, my dad was a hunter, we have guns. I have lots of friends in law enforcement and peers that own guns, but they do so safely. And with that right to own a gun comes the responsibility to safely secure it and make sure it does not end up in the hands of somebody who is absolutely exhibiting signs that he is not OK, that he wants to harm somebody. The nation has looked at the statements --

KEILAR: Can I ask you, Karen, besides, and I don't know it needs more than this, but obviously it's important in the case that you're building, aside from the search for ammo, aside from the social media posts where he's referring to the gun as his own and his mom's media post, aside from the drawing that was incredibly disturbing shortly before the shooting, is there other, are there other data points that are revealing to you besides that about his intentions?

MCDONALD: Yes, and I can't comment on that. And I can only comment on the facts that are made public in the swear to. But I will say, Brianna, that even just the three things there that you list listed, it's just really hard to stomach, as somebody that cares about kids or any of us, that that was not revealed that he had open access to that weapon, and combined with the drawings and the statements on the drawings, I just want -- I'm going to do everything I can to prosecute this case and get justice for victims. But I also want us to do better. And we have to start addressing how somebody like that can so easily get their hands on a weapon. And we have to hold the people responsible who allowed that to happen.

KEILAR: In the conversation that school officials had with the parents, were guns discussed?

MCDONALD: Not to my knowledge. But based on the statements that the superintendent has made, not to my knowledge.

KEILAR: Did the school ask Ethan Crumbley if he had access to a gun?

[08:05:00]

MCDONALD: Not to my knowledge.

KEILAR: But it sounds like the school was aware, right, that he had access to a gun at least sometimes, because they knew, according to him, that target practice was a family hobby. And obviously if shooting sports are a family hobby, you know you can't do that without a gun, right? MCDONALD: I really can't comment on what the school officials knew or

didn't know. I can only comment on the evidence that's public at this moment.

KEILAR: But they've said that publicly, right, like that is public information that he revealed to them that shooting sports were a family hobby.

MCDONALD: I believe they have stated that he revealed to one school official after he was searching ammunition that that was a family hobby, and I think there's a lot of evidence to suggest that that's true.

KEILAR: Did the school have legal grounds to search his backpack and his locker?

MCDONALD: Yes.

KEILAR: But they didn't?

MCDONALD: It doesn't -- no. We don't know exactly if that weapon was in his bag, where it was. We just know that it was in the school, and he had access to it.

And I just want to say, I'm sympathetic to parents. My husband and I have raised five children, and I'm certainly not suggesting that parents should be criminally prosecuted for any bad act of a child. But in this case, you can't possibly look at their actions and say that they didn't have reason to believe that there was real concern about a violent act.

And again, these are just the details that I'm -- that we've made public. So going to the source, if he had not had access to that weapon, if it was secured away from him, whether it's locked or not, he had access to it. And all of this could have been prevented if he hadn't had access or if just one of those parents said I'm concerned about what I'm seeing right now, and I also want you to know we just bought him a gun for Christmas. And that didn't happen.

And I just can't let that go without holding them accountable. And I think most of the country feels that way, too. No one's trying to take anybody's right to possess a weapon. But four kids were murdered, seven more were shot, and hundreds and hundreds more, their lives will never be the same. So I just think it's time we stop talking about how terrible it is we have school shootings and look to see what we can do to actually prevent them from happening again.

KEILAR: Look, I could not agree with you more on that. I do not want to cover these school shootings anymore, but I am sure that I will cover them again. In this particular case, the parents, we're told, resisted taking Ethan Crumbley home after this meeting they had shortly before the meeting. So did they flat-out refuse to take him home?

MCDONALD: I only know the same as you in terms of the recent statement from the superintendent. I can't confirm that the statements made by school officials are consistent with that, but I just don't know. But we all know that a school -- they don't have to agree to their son going home.

KEILAR: I just want to be clear it was law enforcement, it was law enforcement that said they resisted, and it's sort of hard to understand exactly what that means. But I do just want to ask you, have you ruled out charging any school officials?

MCDONALD: It's under investigation, so no, we haven't ruled out charging anyone. Right now we're focused on -- I'm focused on making sure this community know ss our first priority is keeping the community safe and holding the people accountable who could have prevented this. And right now, the Crumbleys are those two people. None of this should have happened. A 15-and-a-half-year-old should not be sitting in jail facing life in prison. These children who were terrorized and killed and shot, none of it should have happened, and it could have been prevented.

KEILAR: Karen, I really appreciate you joining us. Obviously, there's so many details we do not know. I know that that is on purpose, but I appreciate you sharing with us what you can. Karen McDonald, thank you.

MCDONALD: Thank you.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Back with us now, Elie Honig, CNN senior legal analyst, former federal prosecutor. Elie, how hard of a case is it to make against the parents? And from what we just heard there from that, does she have the evidence to convict?

[08:10:04]

ELIE HONIG, SENIOR CNN LEGAL ANALYST: This is not going to be an easy case. I think we all need to be clear about that. This is really the first of its kind. First of all, we're talking about an involuntary manslaughter charge in a case involving a mass shooting like this. I've never seen anything like it. I think it's essentially unprecedented.

What the prosecutor has to show is not just negligence, not just carelessness, but that the parent's actions were so inexcusable that they created a situation dangerous to life or to great bodily injury. That's a fairly high bar.

The prosecutor, I think, just made clear she has three pillars of her case. There's the purchase of the firearm by the father for the child, which may have been illegal, a straw purchase, if an adult who is allowed to purchase a gun purchases it really on behalf of the child. There is the search, the Internet search for ammunition, which I think the strongest piece of evidence in the case is the mother's text to the son saying, lol, just don't get caught next time. And the parents' response or lack of response when the school brought to their attention the drawing and the warning. So those are the three pillars of the case. Legally I think it's a justified charge, but it's not an easy win. BERMAN: What about the school there? And I will say, she said they

haven't made any decisions yet, but her body language was I'm focused on the parents, not the school, but she did say the school had grounds to search the backpack.

HONIG: She's definitely right there. It's a very low bar for a school to search a backpack or a locker. We know from the Supreme Court, it's reasonable suspicion, which is very low. I also think it's very unlikely that she would charge the school with a criminal offense here.

BERMAN: But just because they had grounds to do it, the act of not doing it doesn't necessarily make it illegal, is that what you're saying?

HONIG: Right, that may fall under what you call negligence, but to me it doesn't rise to criminal negligence. There are situations all the time where schools may or may not want to search or need to search, and we can say they should have, but I just think it's a bit of a stretch to say that school administrators engaged in a crime here.

BERMAN: Elie Honig, thank you very much.

So new U.S. intelligence findings estimate Russia could amass up to 175,000 troops along its border with Ukraine. This news comes just ahead of tomorrow's high stakes talks tomorrow between Joe Biden, U.S. President, and Russia's Vladimir Putin.

Joining us now, CNN anchor and chief national security correspondent Jim Sciutto. Jim, you helped break a lot of this news about Russia, what Russia is doing on the border, and these plans to invade. And now there are plans that they have drafted for a possible invasion, I hope I'm phrasing that correctly. But Jim, the bottom line here is that President Biden is going to speak to Vladimir Putin tomorrow. What is this conversation going to be like?

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR AND CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: A difficult one. And it's not just plans, right, John. It's resources, and U.S. intel assessments have been glaring red for weeks now on this because of the weight of resources that Russia has amassed on and along the Ukraine border. And you could see it here, it's in the photos. This was an empty deployment area June 16th, 2021. This is after it is filled with both heavy military equipment but also forces to back up that equipment.

The information several weeks ago was a force of about 100,000 arrayed along the border here both to the east but also the north of Ukraine. More recently the concern is, and that's the latest headline, the latest assessment, that eventually that force could rise to 175,000. And the concern is that that force not only outmans Ukrainian forces there, and this is even with U.S. and NATO backup, but it also outguns them. And you can guarantee that when Biden speaks to Putin tomorrow, much as Bill Burns, the CIA director, when he spoke to Putin by video conference a number of weeks ago will say, we know what you're doing, but also it appears part of the message will be the U.S. is prepared to penalize Russia if it were to go forward with an invasion. BERMAN: How do you penalize Russia enough to stop it from doing it?

SCIUTTO: It's the million-dollar question, right? Because the U.S. has been penalizing Russia economically for seven years since it invaded and annexed Crimea. Seven years later, post-2014, Russia still controls this part of the country, calls it part of Russia, even though the U.S. view and the rest of the world's view is that this is part of a sovereign nation of Ukraine. Russia is also occupying a whole portion of the eastern part of Ukraine. So the sanctions applied for seven years since then has not changed the calculus on the ground at all.

So the question is, what can the U.S. do to raise the economic price? The targets appear to be Putin's financial assets and the assets people close to Putin. The big questions, John, are does the U.S. take an even greater step in terms of sanctions? And that would be going after, for instance, the ability of Russian energy producers to raise money in debt markets, that sort of thing. That's considered, I don't want to use the term nuclear option, but from a sanctions perspective, that would be considered an escalation. We know that's a possibility for the Biden administration. Whether they would choose to do it is an open question.

BERMAN: One other point, Jim, I think is worth making here so people in the United States understand. This aggressive attitude towards Ukraine from Russia, it's not just Vladimir Putin. This is something that's popular.

[08:15:00]

Alexey Navalny, you know, the imprisoned dissident, more or less supports the Russian aggressive posture toward Ukraine in the past.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: This is a fundamentally different view of Ukraine. Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union, Soviet Union broke up in 1991. And by the way, Russia signed an agreement with Ukraine, you know, recognizing its sovereignty after the breakup of the Soviet Union, then President Boris Yeltsin.

So, Russia has acknowledged that in the past, but it's not the first time Russia has tried to change history to fit its current narrative.

The thing is, within NATO, you have a division now, John, as to how boldly to push back against Russia. And what you see is a sort of geographical difference within NATO that the Eastern countries, no surprise there, the ones closest to the Russian threat seem to be more alarmed, more firm in the kind of response they want to Russia than some of the Western countries.

It's not a straight dividing line, because the U.S. is very firm in this, by the way, we're on the other side of the ocean, but there is that difference there and Russia is trying now to exploit that difference, right, division in the ranks, they hope makes any pushback less severe than they might face otherwise.

It is an open question as to whether Russia invades, John. There are folks in this administration in The Pentagon who believe that's a very real possibility.

BERMAN: That sentence in and of itself should make people sit up straight. It's an open question whether Russia will invade, Jim, which is why your reporting is so important here, which is why this talk tomorrow is so delicate and the situation is so dangerous.

Thank you so much for helping us understand at this point.

SCIUTTO: Thank you.

BERMAN: So, a chilling scene at the Lincoln Memorial, white nationalist marching in broad daylight.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: And is the new omicron COVID variant making people sicker? The so-called Fauci of South Africa tells us what he has seen.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:20:29]

BERMAN: A chilling sight in the nation's capital, a white nationalist group known as the Patriot Front descended on the National Mall over the weekend. Its members wore masks, some carrying plastic shields, and according to their banner, they were marching as they put it, to reclaim America.

Joining me now "Early Start" anchor and CNN correspondent, Laura Jarrett, and back with us, CNN senior political analyst, John Avlon.

Look, we can agree that one is too many, right? To see anyone marching, a white supremacist to the Lincoln Memorial is a sight that none of us ever wants to see.

LAURA JARRETT, CNN ANCHOR AND CORRESPONDENT: There is something almost too on the nose about having a bunch of guys dressed up like they're ready to go to war, dressed up with like battle armor and shields because in their minds, the Civil War never ended. Right?

And what they're chanting is always so telling, "Reclaim America." When was America ever taken? And who was it taken from and by who?

JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, they feel like it's been taken by white folks.

JARRETT: But since when are brown and black people ahead? Right? So since when were white men still not on top?

AVLON: We are applying logic to their anxiety.

JARRETT: My point is to say there is just -- there is there's something so remarkable about having a self-avowed, white nationalist, white supremacist walking -- marching on a Memorial for somebody who signed the Emancipation Proclamation. It just sort of exemplifies the country's ongoing struggle with racism. AVLON: Yes, and look, the fact that we're seeing an acceleration in

the wake of Charlottesville, that these are young folks, and they're masking and they're carrying shields and battle armor, which of course is a sign of their own weakness.

These are weak, anxious people trying to find definition and strength in this kind of militaristic, white nationalist nonsense. The reason it is more than just a bunch of clowns trying to march on the Lincoln Memorial is the ADL found that this particular group, Patriot Front was responsible for 80 percent of the white supremacist propaganda found on campus and elsewhere in 2020.

And it's a young person group. This isn't just a bunch of old cranks waving their fist at the sky about how the country has changed.

JARRETT: The leader is 23 years old.

BERMAN: I will tell you, they were wearing masks -- one of the things I felt that was most chilling about Charlottesville was people walking around unmasked saying, "Here I am, I have no shame over this." You know, we are free to express ourselves because that's where we think we are in this country right now. They didn't want their identities known.

AVLON: Yes. Do you know who also you know wore masks and face coverings? But I don't want to think we are going to think too much of it.

BERMAN: No, no. I'm not. I'm not, but I am saying there is a difference here. And you know, I don't know whether it's not that they think that the attitude in the country is different towards the message that they're delivering or not. I just -- you know, it is notable.

JARRETT: But the question is really what has changed since Charlottesville, right? I mean, that's 2017, the F.B.I. Director to your point, the idea that we dismiss this as sort of fringe actors, the F.B.I. Director, right, Chris Wray has told us that the number one threat to this country, domestic terrorism wise, is white supremacy.

He has said that this is on par with ISIS. And the question is, since Charlottesville, what have we done? What has the government done to address it?

AVLON: There has been legal accountability and culpability as we saw, I mean, in a verdict, you know, in Charlottesville, to the tune of $26 million.

BERMAN: That's maybe why they wore masks by the way.

AVON: It may very well be, and none of that changes the fact that these folks are cowards. Everyone who runs to find security in a blood and soil movement is because they are weak, and they're trying to pretend they're strong.

But we also shouldn't underestimate the historical resonance of this which is what Laura is saying, and the fact that this is a current issue in our country that we need to confront. When they come masked and carrying battle shields to the Lincoln Memorial, you know, pay attention, folks, because this is a problem that we need to confront, this virus of hate and white supremacy and white nationalism in our country is not done yet.

JARRETT: The only good thing is this one didn't turn violent, but the next one could, and that's always the concern.

BERMAN: Laura Jarrett and John Avlon, thank you very much.

So, what have we learned about the omicron variant from the country that first discovered it? South Africa's leading scientist standing by to answer the really key questions about the severity of the cases that he is seeing.

KEILAR: And later, the U.S. Space Force General with a warning about China.

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[08:28:55]

KEILAR: This morning for the first time in two months, the U.S. is averaging more than 120,000 new COVID-19 cases each day. The vast majority of new cases continue to be from the delta variant, but U.S. health officials have now detected the new omicron variant in at least 17 states.

Meanwhile, in South Africa, where omicron was first detected, coronavirus cases are spiking. However South Africa's President says hospitalizations from omicron are not increasing at an alarming rate.

Joining us now is an epidemiologist from South Africa who has helped lead his country's COVID response, Salim Abdool Karim.

Doctor, thank you so much for joining us today. I want to start with the two big questions here. Is this more transmissible? And are you seeing it evade vaccines?

SALIM ABDOOL KARIM, AFRICAN TASK FORCE FOR CORONAVIRUS: Yes, a very good day to you. When we look at the virus itself, it has several mutations that should confer on it the ability to transmit faster, but, of course we need to know when it is actually doing so.

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