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Luigi Mangione Back in New York Courtroom; Judge Set to Rule on Bodycam Footage of Woman Shot by CBP; Trump Admin Shifts Story on Gabbard's Presence at Election Office Search. Aired 10:30-11a ET

Aired February 06, 2026 - 10:30   ET

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

[10:30:00]

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Happening now, Luigi Mangione is back in the New York courtroom this morning. He's the man accused of assassinating the CEO of UnitedHealthcare. Manhattan prosecutors want his state trial to be held in July before a federal trial set for September. His lawyers argue that having two trials would amount to double jeopardy. Mangione has pleaded not guilty to state and federal charges related to the killing of Brian Thompson.

Also happening now, the Chicago woman shot by a Border Patrol agent last year, Marimar Martinez, will attend President Trump's State of the Union address later this month, that according to her attorney. And this comes as a federal judge is set to decide next hour whether body camera footage of that shooting should be released to the public.

CNN's Omar Jimenez is joining us from Chicago right now. Omar, what are Martinez and her attorney saying as we wait for the judge's ruling?

OMAR JIMENEZ, CNN ANCHOR AND CORRESPONDENT: Yes. So, Wolf, well, for starters, the judge has said this is the hearing where she plans to decide whether to release body camera video tied to this incident, along with other investigative materials as well. All materials that Martinez and her attorney have argued are crucial for clearing her name. This has now been more than four months since the shooting.

Now, on the video itself, the video, the government actually doesn't oppose releasing the video and other FBI related investigative materials. What they do oppose is releasing text messages that the shooting agent, Charles Exum, sent to his wife and other agents in the immediate aftermath of the shooting. You remember some of the text messages that have been released already appeared to show him bragging to agents in a group chat about his accuracy in shooting Martinez.

And when you talk about Martinez, they say they want to clear her name. Really what she's saying is the government already dropped their charges against her. So, criminally, she's not liable for this. What she means is that since those charges were dropped, the Department of Homeland Security has publicly described her in this event as a domestic terrorist.

And another reason they want this out is because they believe it's crucial in helping the public understand how DHS responds to incidents like this and events across the country, including in Minneapolis, which is a dynamic that Martinez is very aware of. She was on Capitol Hill earlier this week sharing her experience as part of a public forum. Take a listen to some of what she said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARIMAR MARTINEZ, U.S. CITIZEN SHOT MULTIPLE TIMES BY BORDER PATROL AGENT: The mental scars will always be there as a reminder of the time my own government attempted to execute me. And when they fell, they chose to vilify me. I am Renee Good. I am Alex Pretti. I am Silverio Villegas Gonzalez. I am Keith Porter. They should all be here today.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JIMENEZ: And those were all people killed at the hands of federal immigration enforcement in places across the country. Now, part of the reason the government argued it didn't want these additional text messages out is they believed it would sully the reputation of the agent even further than it already has been.

[10:35:00]

Well, Marimar Martinez and her attorney essentially pushed back on that, calling it ironic, saying that, well, the government has been able to sully her reputation, calling her a domestic terrorist repeatedly. And then they have not been able to release evidence like the body camera video, which they've described more as objective to push back on some of those claims. So, we'll see what the judge decides here. But obviously, a very significant moment for video that we've heard described to this point. And now, after more than four months, we could see released. Wolf.

BLITZER: All right. Omar Jimenez on the scene for us. Thank you very, very much.

PAMELA BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: All right. Wolf, let's get some analysis from former federal prosecutor Alyse Adamson. She is also the host of the podcast, "At-Lyse You Heard It Here." Thanks so much for being here. So, Martinez's attorney says they're pushing for the release of this body cam footage because the Trump administration is labeling her a domestic terrorist even after they dropped all those charges against her. So, is that argument compelling to a judge?

ALYSE ADAMSON, HOST, "AT-LYSE YOU HEARD IT HERE" PODCAST AND FORMER FEDERAL PROSECUTOR: Yes, thanks so much for having me, Pamela. I think it is because what a judge is balancing is the public interest in transparency against specific articulable harms from disclosure. And here I think there is a very clear interest in transparency where you have a government narrative that one thing happens. And Martinez's attorney, who has actually viewed all of this footage, is saying that is inconsistent with the footage.

So, in order to achieve that threshold, the government would have had to make a showing of articulable harm from disclosure. But now, Pamela, the government is no longer opposing this disclosure. What they're saying now is, yes, you can release the video, but you have to do so in a limited way with redactions, blur the faces of the agents. And I think that, Pamela, is also in reaction to the most recent shooting incident with Alex Pretti. The public is demanding more transparency in these incidents.

BROWN: Well, and my understanding is that the evidence Martinez's attorney is trying to make public. Some of that is currently covered by a protective order that prohibits their disclosure outside of a court case. Can you help us better understand that? Is that typical?

ADAMSON: That's absolutely right, Pamela, and that is why we're having this dispute and that is why the judge is employing the balancing task that I just described. It is very typical in a criminal case for raw discovery such as body worn footage and other texts that are not yet part of the judicial record. That means haven't been put publicly in a trial. They are subject to a protective order, and that is for a variety of reasons. It protects the integrity of the investigation, of the potential trial and of certain law enforcement sensitivities.

Now, here the case has already been dismissed, and that's an important distinction with regular cases. However, the government has argued it is still up on appeal and that some of the law enforcement sensitivities that they've articulated still apply, even though the case has been dismissed.

So, is it typical? Yes, but we're in a slightly atypical posture because there is no active criminal case, Pamela.

BROWN: All right. Alyse Adamson, thank you so much. Wolf.

BLITZER: Also happening now, the White House is still struggling to give a cohesive answer about who sent the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, to Georgia, where the FBI carried out a search warrant at an elections warehouse in Fulton County.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: She's working very hard and trying to keep the election safe, and she's done a very good job.

TODD BLANCHE, DEPUTY ATTORNEY GENERAL: The fact that she was present in Atlanta that day, you know, is something that shouldn't surprise anybody.

I don't know why the director was there. She is not part of the grand jury investigation.

TRUMP: I'm not involved in it, but they are inspecting and checking the ballot.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Why is Tulsi Gabbard there?

TRUMP: I don't know. Why is she doing it? Because Pam wanted her to do it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: Agents ended up hauling off 700 boxes of voter records from the 2020 election. For years, President Trump, as you well know, has pushed the baseless claims that the election was stolen from him due to fraud. Want to be clear again, Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election and he won Georgia. There were multiple recounts. Despite the fact that the election was certified, Trump's claims have been debunked again and again. He is still repeating them. And of course, that is notable because we are in the year of a midterm election.

CNN's Tom Foreman is back in the Situation Room. Always good to have you here, Tom. First off, what more do we know about this search in Fulton County?

TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Exactly what you pointed out there. Not much because their narrative just keeps changing and changing and changing about what was really going on here. But what skeptics believe is going on here is quite simple. They're saying once again, you take the 2020 election conspiracy, that lie that's been out there for so long.

You do things like this and say, what can we find? What possible evidence can we find to say there's something wrong with the elections, even though the elections in this country have over and over again been proven to be quite secure? And as much as Donald Trump raises questions about his 2020 loss, same procedures in 2024, and he won. He doesn't say that that was a fraudulent election or that should be investigated.

[10:40:00]

In any event, when you move on from this, the big concern here seems to be the midterms. Trump has acknowledged, as many political observers have long seen, that when you win the presidency, you don't win the midterms or you tend not to win in the midterms. He's concerned about that, even to the point that he has said, when you think of it, we shouldn't even have an election this fall.

So, all of this is highly, highly unusual and raising a lot of concerns among people about, yes, what's going on in Georgia? What's going on in other places?

BROWN: The White House claimed it was facetious when he said that. But I think a lot of people looked at that and it was concerned, given the overall context.

FOREMAN: Right.

BLITZER: Certainly did. And it's interesting, Tom, this week, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed California to use a new congressional voting map that could benefit Democrats during the midterm elections coming up. Democrats there made the move after Republicans in Texas did the same thing as president -- at President Trump's request. What do we know about this redistricting push?

FOREMAN: Well, we do know that the White House started this fight, but we're not sure who's going to end it. When you look at the map out there, there are a lot of places in play right now. Which ones will actually be able to come through, which ones will not stand up to court challenges? We don't really know.

But we know it's a very, very close race for control of the House. And the Republicans are trying to grab every seat they can to hold on to them while Democrats are trying to make bigger incursions there. But as the president pointed out, generally, especially when a president is very unpopular, as this one is in the polls right now, his party tends to not do very well.

We know there are other efforts as well. For example, the Trump administration is demanding voter records in many places, even up in Minneapolis. Amid all that trouble, there was a suggestion of, well, if you'll give us your voter records, maybe things will change up here. This is not a normal communication about voter records like we've seen in the past. This is an effort to reach in and get driver's licenses, to have details of Social Security numbers.

And again, skeptics believe that this is because they want to target certain voting areas, either for efforts that might suppress the vote or to challenge afterward. Because remember, that map we showed about how tight it is in the race, if you could simply remove a couple of cities or a couple of states by saying there were irregularities here, that can make a very different result in what we come out of the midterms with.

In any events, it all runs up against things like the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which, in addition to ending legal segregation, it made it clear that there should be these voting records out there, which the attorney general can inspect, but they have to provide a purpose and basis for requesting data. That's the real question here. What is the purpose and basis for what the White House wants to do with this data?

BROWN: Yes, that's key. And also, this week, with all of this as a backdrop, the president raised the idea of Republicans nationalizing elections in at least 15 places. He didn't say which places. And here's how he responded to CNN's Kaitlan Collins when she asked him about those comments.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: I want to see elections, be honest, and if a state can't run an election, I think the people behind me should do something about it, because, you know, if you think about it, a state is an agent for the federal government in elections. I don't know why the federal government doesn't do them anyway.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What does President Trump mean when he says Republicans ought to naturalize voting? What does that look like in practice?

KAROLINE LEAVITT, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: What the president was referring to is the SAVE Act, which is a huge common-sense piece of legislation that Republicans have supported.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: The SAVE Act doesn't nationalize elections in 15 states, right, Tom? It's different.

FOREMAN: No, it doesn't. It's something the Republicans are really pushing forward. Donald Trump is very much pushing for. He pumped this out the other day, the SAVE. I'm asking all Republicans to fight for the SAVE America Act. All voters must show voter ID. All voters must show proof of United States citizenship to register for voting. And then he threw in no mail-in ballots, which has been a bugaboo for him, but it's not actually part of the SAVE Act.

This is the part that has people really concerned out there. Must show proof of citizenship. This isn't just your driver's license. It's like a passport, which many Americans don't have. Or it's a birth certificate, which many people don't have access to. And there are questions of if you got married and changed your name, do you also have to bring your marriage certificate to prove all of that? Do you have to do all of this, which many of the critics of this say, all that is just about telling a whole bunch of people, you don't have the paperwork to vote, and pushing people out of the system there.

The SAVE Act is pending still. It's not been able to get through yet. But I do want to point this out. The president says he doesn't know why the federal government runs it instead of, or why the federal government doesn't run it instead of the states. Well, read the Constitution, because the Constitution says, the times, places, and manner of holding elections for senators and representatives shall be prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof.

[10:45:00]

BLITZER: Good point. Tom Foreman, as usual, thank you very, very much.

BROWN: Thank you. Excellent.

BLITZER: And coming up, Bad Bunny is getting ready for Super Bowl Sunday. What he says to expect from his halftime performance. We have details.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: All right. Happening now, Super Bowl weekend is upon us, and the countdown is on. Just two days to go until the Seattle Seahawks and the New England Patriots face off in Super Bowl LX.

[10:50:00]

The two teams playing at Levi's Stadium in the Bay Area of San Francisco. One of them will bring home the iconic Lombardi trophy.

CNN Sports Anchor Andy Scholes is in San Francisco for us. Andy, the NFL honors were last night. We saw one of the closest MVP, most valuable player races ever, right? ANDY SCHOLES, CNN SPORTS ANCHOR: Yes, we certainly did, Wolf. And Matthews Stafford winning the MVP for the first time in his career at NFL honors here in San Francisco last night. As you mentioned, it was one of the closest races we've ever seen. So, the 37-year-old Stafford, he got 24 first place votes, while Drake Maye got 23.

And Stafford, he then took the stage along with his four daughters, who were all matching to accept the award. Stafford then told them he can't wait for them to cheer him on next year, which was his way of saying that he will not be retiring and he will, in fact, be returning to the Rams next season.

Now, it certainly was a tough loss for Drake Maye, but the win he really wants this weekend here in the Bay Area is on Sunday against the Seahawks. And Maye and Sam Darnold, they both spoke with the media one more time yesterday before they take the field for the biggest game of their lives.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DRAKE MAYE, NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS QUARTERBACK: I'm really excited. A chance to play in this game is, you know, a dream come true and what you work for all year long. Still don't know as much as a lot of people do in here, but, you know, trying to, you know, figure out, you know, what's at stake and how much, you know, work needs to put in to, you know, come up with wins in the win column.

SAM DARNOLD, SEATTLE SEAHAWKS QUARTERBACK: I've just learned a ton throughout my career. And every single year, I just -- I do what I can to make sure that I don't get ahead of myself and I take it one day at a time because I feel like that mindset, you know, has proved successful for me in every aspect of life, you know, whether it was growing up, high school, college, and now here, you know, on the biggest stage, I'm just continuing with that mindset.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCHOLES: Now, the Patriots did get a win last night. Mike Vrabel was named the coach of the year. He's the seventh coach ever to win the award for two different teams. Now, Sunday's game between the Patriots and Seahawks, it's being dubbed the Malcolm Butler revenge game because the last time these two faced off in Super Bowl 49, Butler famously intercepted Russell Wilson on the one-yard line to win the Super Bowl for the Patriots. And I got the chance to catch up with Butler yesterday, and I asked him what was going through his mind on that iconic play.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MALCOLM BUTLER, GAME-SEALING INT FOR PATS IN SUPER BOWL XLIX: When I got in the game, I'm like, man, what can I do? I really can't do nothing. If they run the ball, I'm not going to make that tackle, eight? I'm not going to make that tackle. Excuse my lie. I damn near wanted to leave from the cornerback position and go in the box and play linebacker. But I said, I'm just going to do my job. And I went against the odds. They did, too. It didn't work out right. Guy made a move like he was going to do something. And I said, I'm going to do something, too.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCHOLES: Yes. Wolf, Seattle fans still have nightmares about that play, obviously. And a lot of the players were asked about what they want to do if they're on the one-yard line. You know, they were like, ah, we would still pass it. But I tell you what, Seattle fans, they certainly want to run the ball if they get to the one-yard line in Super Bowl LX.

BLITZER: Looking forward to the game. Andy Scholes, thank you very, very much. And football isn't the only thing fans are getting ready for this Super Bowl Sunday.

BROWN: Bad Bunny will take the stage at halftime just a week after making Grammy history. He had the first all-Spanish language album to win album of the year. CNN's Isabel Rosales has more on the cultural impact of the Puerto Rican star.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ISABEL ROSALES, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Puerto Rican superstar Bad Bunny on his way to the Super Bowl for a one-of-a-kind halftime performance just months after closing out his sold out 31 show residency. A run unlike anything his home island has ever seen.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translator): Are you going to put on lipstick?

ROSALES (voice-over): Lucia Coto, maybe his oldest fan. At 101 years old, she was born six decades before reggaeton even existed. She once wanted to be a nun. Today, Lucia has proof reggaeton and Bad Bunny has no age limit.

LUCIA COTO, 101-YEAR-OLD BAD BUNNY FAN (through translator): I like reggaeton, it gives you joy. And then suddenly, your feet start moving.

ROSALES (through translator): That's what you're going to do at the show? Show me again.

COTO (through translator): Everyone starts shouting and it's contagious.

ROSALES (voice-over): It's clear this wasn't just a concert. It was a cultural moment that continues to grow as Bad Bunny prepares to take one of the biggest stages in sports. Tourism agency Discover Puerto Rico says around 600,000 visitors flocked to the island in just two months and an estimated 400 to 700 million dollars pumped into the local economy.

[10:55:00] Lucia, among thousands of other Puerto Ricans, relishing their hometown heroes first residency on her way to see her favorite artists live for the first time.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translator): Where are we going, grandma?

COTO (through translator): To see Bad Bunny.

ROSALES (voice-over): For fans, it's a cultural homecoming.

ROSALES: This house, just a little bit famous.

JORGE PEREZ, GENERAL MANAGER, JOSE MIGUEL AGRELOT COLISEUM: Famous? La casita.

ROSALES: La casita.

PEREZ: Very typical in our culture. This is where family, friends meet, have a good time. People are here for three hours and they have a great time, but they're out and about for days exploring our island.

ROSALES (voice-over): So, we went to see it for ourselves, deep in the mountains of Cialis. We joined the Cafe Con Ron tour.

Foreigners coming from near and far and staying to immerse themselves in the culture, music and heritage of the island. Here, they're discovering Plena, Puerto Rico's so-called sung newspaper. Born from African roots, it tells the story of everyday people.

Bad Bunny giving the traditional music new life. And touring with him, Jenith Rivera's three Plenero children.

JENITH RIVERA, "CAFE CON RON" TOUR ORGANIZER (through translator): And for Benito and Bad Bunny to recognize their work and bring them into the residency is very gratifying and beautiful.

ROSALES (voice-over): These tourists will leave the island, but the spirit of Puerto Rico goes with them.

RIVERA (through translator): The residency transitions into a new chapter but is has left us a legacy that we will continue to build on and I think this is the start of something bigger that we will be able to do collectively as cultural ambassadors of Puerto Rico.

ROSALES (voice-over): Isabel Rosales, CNN, San Juan.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BLITZER: And CNN has a new documentary tracing Bad Bunny's rise to cultural and musical behemoth. Bad "Bunny and the Halftime Show: Rhythms of Resistance," airs this Saturday night, 10:00 p.m. Eastern, right here on CNN, or you can watch it on the CNN app.

BROWN: And coming up here in the Situation Room, Trump Rx, the president's much-hyped prescription drug platform, is up and running. But what impact will it have on prices? We're going to ask Dr. Mehmet Oz. You're in the Situation Room.

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