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The Situation Room

Interview With Rep. Lori Trahan (D-MA); Trump Meets With Tech Leaders; Lindsay Clancy Back in Court. Aired 10:30a-11a ET

Aired September 29, 2026 - 10:30   ET

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

KEVIN REDDINGTON, ATTORNEY FOR LINDSAY CLANCY: I suggest to the court they did not prove probable cause, and they certainly did not prove that she was not acting at the time of a psychosis, and should be found not guilty.

[10:30:05]

JUDGE WILLIAM SULLIVAN, MASSACHUSETTS SUPERIOR COURT: Thank you.

Commonwealth.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Your Honor, the commonwealth did file a written opposition.

And I'd mostly rely on the written opposition for a summary of the facts of the case based on the best memory. Obviously, we don't have full transcripts to cite to for the particular pieces of evidence, but I think the commonwealth did present a fair representation of the pertinent facts, although this was a lengthy trial, and I certainly don't proclaim that it's an exhaustive list of all of the relevant facts.

But as we're here addressing the motion for required finding under 25(b)(2), which counsel has cited to, the job of the court, of Your Honor, is to decide, based on the evidence presented at trial, whether the evidence was sufficient for the commonwealth, for any rational trier of fact to find that the commonwealth has met its burden as it applies to each and every element.

We're hearing now for the first time in this argument that counsel is challenging first the -- excuse me -- the sufficiency of the evidence as it applies to the three counts of murder.

What we heard throughout the course of trial over and over from counsel was that there was objections to the presentation of commonwealth's evidence on the underlying murders because the defendant admits, the defendant stipulates, whether the commonwealth agreed to the stipulation or not.

And now, for the first time, the defendant is arguing that there's no evidence that she did this. I'd suggest to you that the entire record is voluminous as to the information supporting the fact that she did this. We have she's the only one in the home with three young children. We have that her husband testified under oath that he left the house,

that she sent him out on those errands, that he went to the exact places where she directed him to go. Not only did she direct him to go based on his testimony, but we confirm that with her own cell phone data that says that she made the call to the restaurant, that she made the call to CVS, that he then went there.

He's on video surveillance at those locations during the time period in which these murders occurred. He comes home and he finds the children in the manner that they were in, and he finds the defendant where she was. We have all that information.

We have there was DNA on those exercise bands that was attributable to this defendant, and it was on the ends of those bands, the ends of those bands that she had to pull in order to strangle each and every one of those children.

We have that she woke up in the hospital and spoke to a chaplain within days of regaining consciousness, where she talks about the fact that she had these hallucinations, telling her what she had to do, that she had to kill the kids, and that she was glad that the kids were safer now.

So there's plenty of information to support the essential elements of the charges of murder. There's information that or facts that support deliberate premeditation. There's facts that support extreme atrocity or cruelty, much of them which I would more focus on and discuss with criminal responsibility.

But I ask Your Honor to consider a lot of these facts in both contexts. So, the first point that there isn't enough evidence to prove that she did it, I would suggest, is a laughable argument, and based on what Your Honor sat through several weeks of the trial that the commonwealth met its burden as it applies to that.

As far as the motion for required finding as to the lack of criminal responsibility, I did try to outline in the commonwealth's response the law as it pertains to this issue, because it is a little different, I would suggest, than what we traditionally see with required motions for required findings.

When it comes to a defense of lack of criminal responsibility, Your Honor is aware that that's something that comes into effect only when raised by the defense. And when it's adequately raised, then the burden switches to the commonwealth to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant did not lack criminal responsibility, that they were criminally responsible.

And the case law is specific when it comes to required findings that, when that is the case, again, for required finding, the evidence to be is to be viewed in the light most favorable to the commonwealth, and that the court, unless they find defense case proves that the commonwealth's case is conclusively incorrect, that the court doesn't necessarily rely on the defendant's case in order to address whether the commonwealth has presented sufficient evidence. WOLF BLITZER, CNN HOST: All right, we're going to continue to monitor

this hearing up in Plymouth, Massachusetts. Lindsay Clancy for the first time since her mistrial is now back in court. They're arguing whether there should be a retrial, what the charges should be.

We will continue to monitor this, stay on top of this story. Much more coming up. We will be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:39:32]

BLITZER: We're following more breaking news right now.

President Trump has unveiled a new government portal powered by artificial intelligence to help the American people navigate government bureaucracy for federal services. Right now, the president is currently speaking at an event that he says will showcase America entering what he calls a new golden age of technology.

But it also comes amid very dark concerns about AI and what some tech experts are warning is a potential threat to humanity. In just a couple of hours, the White House is hosting a lunch meeting with the nation's top tech leaders to discuss AI's rapid development and the growing incidence of AI agents going rogue.

[10:40:15]

CNN's Alayna Treene is over at the White House for us.

Alayna, how significant is this presidential meeting with these top tech leaders?

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: I think it's incredibly significant, Wolf, especially as we have heard not only from several of these leaders in the artificial intelligence community kind of ringing the alarm bells about what AI is capable of and the dangers and the risks that come with letting it go unregulated in future years, but also as we know that the president himself is still saying publicly that his number one priority when it comes to the AI space is ensuring that the United States outpaces China.

And so what this is really meant to be, I'm told from our conversations with sources in the Trump administration, is that it's not likely that this meeting with these leaders and the president is going to solve these issues that we have been hearing about really far more pressing in the last couple of weeks, but instead it's serving as a turning point to get all of them in the same room and see if they can get on the same page about what the future of AI safety and potential regulations can look like.

I should say the House speaker, Mike Johnson, someone who has been calling for all of these different leaders to be in the room with the president, he's expected to be part of this meeting today as well.

But I think the timing of this is also very interesting, because, one, we know that OpenAI has been facing some really tough headwinds with their new AI models in recent days. They just recently said that, for the second time in three months, it was pausing all training and testing on its most advanced models because one of them had found a way out of its testing environment and gained access to the open Internet.

We have heard these concerns about these models acting without human authorization, something that is leading these leaders, people like OpenAI's Sam Altman, we have also heard from Anthropic's Dario Amodei, saying that this is a cause for concern and we need to do something about it, even potentially slowing growth.

The president, though, and many of his top advisers, Wolf, believe that -- they believe that some of these companies should be regulating themselves, that they are worried about stifling economic growth. We have seen AI be a huge dater -- driver, I should say, of economic growth data centers as well, and they don't want regulations to stifle that.

So this should be a moment where we can hear -- hopefully, we can get a readout of this meeting and learn exactly where things stand and what this could look like for AI safety in the future.

BLITZER: Is the president, Alayna, still calling these accusations that AI could go rogue and do horrible things to humanity, is he suggesting still that he sees this all as a hoax?

TREENE: That's what we have been -- I mean, look, that was a statement he made a week or so ago, Wolf. He has had more conversations with AI leaders since.

For example, on Sunday, he hosted Anthropic's Dario Amodei for a private dinner at the White House. But he does still believe that perhaps there's too much of this doomsday coverage or doomerism, as they're calling it, when it comes to artificial intelligence, that people are too afraid of what he believes is going to be the future in modern -- of modern technology.

So we will see. I think that they are on different -- some of these leaders are on a very different page of what this should look like than the president, but this will be an opportunity for them to air it all out at this White House luncheon.

BLITZER: We will see what happens.

Alayna Treene at the White House for us.

Alayna, thank you very, very much -- Pamela.

BROWN: All right, here now is a member of the House AI Caucus and Democratic Congresswoman from Massachusetts Lori Trahan.

Welcome back on the show, Congresswoman.

REP. LORI TRAHAN (D-MA): Thank you for having me. BROWN: I know you are very passionate about AI. You even passed up on a leadership bid to focus on AI policy earlier this month. I want to note that.

What do you hope comes out of today's White House meeting?

TRAHAN: Well, I will first say that it's disappointing that President Trump and Speaker Johnson are having this meeting with tech executives without more people at the table, and I think, most notably, Democrats.

Just sort of signals that they're not taking the threats of advanced AI systems seriously. And if we're going to be serious about protecting Americans from the risks of this technology, we need more than dinners and meetings with just CEOs.

We need independent safety experts at the table. We need bipartisan lawmakers at the table who have worked on this issue. And I think we need to focus on the guardrails that actually matter, right, transparency, independent testing, mandatory reporting of incidents, and a kill switch if a model is capable of a catastrophic risk.

And those are all things that we put into the FRONTIER Act, a bipartisan piece of legislation I wrote with Jay Obernolte from California. It's the strongest AI safety legislation introduced at any level of government. And it's ready to move to meet the moment that we're in right now.

[10:45:06]

BROWN: I want to listen to what Speaker Johnson said yesterday on FOX Business about today's meeting.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. MIKE JOHNSON (R-LA): The leaders of all the different AI platforms all have different ideas and prescriptions on what the supposed guardrails should be. We do not need a moratorium. We do not need to jump in and hyper-regulate this, because we will lose the race to China. The innovation is important to continue, but we have to strike the right balance.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: What, in your view, is the right balance between regulation and innovation?

TRAHAN: So I definitely think we have to -- right now, we're running on the honor system, right? The only reason why we know about any of these incidents is because these companies have chose to tell us.

So, if we have mandatory safety reports, transparency, independent auditors to verify that the company is taking all the precautions that they lay out, mandatory reporting of these serious incidents that we have seen over the last couple of months, and then a legal process that's well understood for the government to step in if one of these models is capable of a disaster, that is table stakes, right?

Right now, what they're deploying is the strategy of, trust us. And the administration has repeatedly said that, when it comes to AI safety, they're going to let the biggest corporations who are developing this technology police themselves.

Well, that's the same approach that we took with social media for the past 20 years, and we're still paying the price, especially our children, for Washington's inaction. So I hope to hear more from the speaker on the results of this meeting, but then also guardrails that have really been scrutinized and debated by rank-and-file Democrats and Republicans on where we need to go next on the frontier.

BROWN: OpenAI, as you probably know, is pulling back on releasing its latest model because it doesn't meet its standards for safety. And Dario Amodei, who is the head of Anthropic, has also been raising the alarm about potential AI concerns. Does that give you any hope that these companies are taking more responsibility over their product?

TRAHAN: Yes, look, I think, when you have three CEOs of major frontier labs basically saying that they cannot guarantee that they can control this technology, that is a message that the president, who has called this a hoax, needs to hear. The speaker needs to hear that.

And what they're proposing around transparency and independent auditors is not dissimilar from what is in the FRONTIER Act and what we have introduced with Republican co-sponsors.

I think the thing that's important to just stress is, we cannot continue down this path with a voluntary system. What's good on Friday for these companies might not be good on Monday, and Congress is the only institution right now that can create durable mandatory policy.

And so I don't -- while these meetings are great, unless we have action by Congress, it's all just a continuation of the honor system, which I don't think does anything to assure the American people that they're protected.

BROWN: But can Congress act fast enough, given how rapidly developing this technology is? And do you think enough members of Congress even are familiar enough with AI to know what they're talking about?

TRAHAN: Yes, look, I think the last month has been a turning point for congressional members, and not just calling for more guardrails, but also putting pen to paper on what comes next.

I think we need the political will. I mean, it's unfortunate that we're home in our districts right now and that the speaker canceled the last two weeks of our session and will not bring us back until after the election, because these incidents, while they haven't been harmful yet, I don't want to gamble with the next seven weeks.

We need to -- I think a bunch of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle want to get to work and do the things that are required right now, but then also start building out the whole portfolio of AI legislation that's going to hit every aspect of our economy, our national security, our workplace, and beyond.

So I do think that there's urgency. I just think that they're trying to thwart that urgency right now with meetings like this one.

BROWN: I wonder what you think about this announcement from Nvidia saying that it's launching this new tool to keep AI agents from going rogue. I mean, do you see a scenario where technology is used to keep AI safe for humanity?

[10:50:00]

TRAHAN: Look, I think innovation is a major part of the solution here.

And, at a minimum, we should be having hearings in Congress. I mean, just think. Pamela, just in the last few weeks, we haven't had a single CEO, either on the frontier side or on the chipmaker side, come in and speak to Congress so that we can engage in responsible policymaking.

And so, when the CEOs of these companies are sounding...

BROWN: Have you been asking for them to come in?

TRAHAN: Yes. Yes, there have been multiple letters, bipartisan as well.

BROWN: And what do you hear back from them?

TRAHAN: Well, the speaker has -- the speaker has put Congress in recess, which I think is -- kind of tells us the larger story about how this Congress has been these last two years.

But in terms of this moment, when Americans are calling for Congress to act on AI safety, it is completely irresponsible for us not to be there having these hearings, debating this legislation and these really important next steps. These meetings are fine, and welcome that these CEOs are engaged in what the future will be.

But, right now, we're working on the honor system. There aren't nearly enough people at the table. We don't have one safety expert at the White House today. When we wrote the FRONTIER bill, we had so many stakeholders, from workers, to community -- consumer advocates, to safety experts, to the industry themselves.

And that's how you arrive at legislation that really puts the needs of the American people front and center.

BROWN: All right, Representative Lori Trahan, thank you.

We will be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:56:07]

BLITZER: We're following the breaking news.

A judge in Massachusetts is right now addressing several motions in the Lindsay Clancy case. Her triple murder trial ended in a mistrial, and now prosecutors are pushing for a retrial.

Let's go back live inside the courtroom and watch.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: ... and should be protected, because the commonwealth believes that a juror's right to privacy, a jury's right to come to a verdict without any type of fanfare or unwanted attention or persecution, it should be sacrosanct.

And so we would object to any type of public hearing, where information, private information, about that juror would be discussed.

REDDINGTON: Can I be heard?

SULLIVAN: Sure.

REDDINGTON: Thank you very much.

I am so tired of hearing persecution, attacking, I am doing all these terrible things to this juror. I filed one motion and said nothing. Every comment I have made has been in reaction to people from Donald Trump, on down to Nancy Mace, down to Cruz, not the DA, but the politician, calling for her execution.

I have responded to these outlandish comments, including the guy from Houston. I just wanted to say that, Judge.

SULLIVAN: We're talking about this motion for access to arguments regarding sidebar conferences. Anything else you want to add to that on that issue?

REDDINGTON: On what?

SULLIVAN: On the issue that we have just been talking about, "The Globe"'s motion.

REDDINGTON: No, I'm just tired of hearing about me persecuting people.

SULLIVAN: All right.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I never said...

(CROSSTALK)

SULLIVAN: No, listen. We talked about this motion, all right? I'm going to take it under advisement. I think I understand everybody's position. So that matter will be under advisement.

Thank you, counselor.

All right, I think those are the motions that we have. I'm going to take a number under advisement. Now, just in regards to scheduling now, I know we have a November 2

date for hearing regarding some other motions that will be heard. I'm going to suggest at this point, and, please, I think counsel knows this, but anybody who's sitting out there, don't read into the fact that we're going to get another date.

This is not indicating that -- how I'm going to rule on any of the other motions. But I think it's important that this case move forward if it has to move forward. If motion to dismiss is allowed, well, then that's fine. That's a different thing.

But rather than wait 30 days or 60 days to pick the next trial date, my thought is to pick that now. And then we can work towards that and backfill the dates in regards to that. So, really, I guess that brings us back to the original reason we're going to be here, status.

So, Commonwealth, what's the status in regards to the trial, your trial dates at this point?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Your Honor, I think we need to obviously argue these motions, have rulings. There are appellate rights to those rulings.

And so, once all of that's complete, I think we could select a trial date once we know what those rulings are. And appellate rights could take some time, right?

SULLIVAN: Right.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: So, I think, if we select a trial date now, that might not actually be a real trial date, depending on how this case proceeds and what happens with any appellate rights from either side.

SULLIVAN: Well, let me hear from the defense.

REDDINGTON: Believe it or not, I agree with her.

(LAUGHTER)

SULLIVAN: Well, I just...

REDDINGTON: So we will...

(CROSSTALK)

REDDINGTON: ... stand together and say we'd rather defer until you make your rulings and then any appellate arguments are presented, rather than pick a trial date.

SULLIVAN: Why don't we just pick a trial date? And that -- that will get this case moving.

REDDINGTON: Because there's no...

SULLIVAN: Because the discussion -- the discussion three weeks ago was, let's try this thing in a week, right?