Another Tragic School Shooting
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for every life-saving treatment, for every next step, for every care in the world. Cleveland Clinic. It's Thursday, September 5th, right now on CNN This Morning. Love will prevail over what happened today. I assure you of that. Another tragic school shooting. A 14-year-old student kills two classmates and two teachers. And... I agreed to do it because they wouldn't do any other network.

Donald Trump and Kamala Harris finally reach an agreement about their debate face-off set for just five days from now. And... We know when the government encourages investment, it leads to broad-based economic growth. Vice President Kamala Harris splits with President Biden on some key economic policies. And... We'll be voting for Kamala Harris in this election.

Another Republican opponent of Donald Trump throws her support behind the Democratic nominee in 2024. All right, 6 a.m. here on the East Coast. A live look at the beautiful sunrise in New York City this morning. Good morning, everyone. I'm Casey Hunt. It's wonderful to have you with us.

We're going to begin in Georgia, where once again a community is devastated by a senseless act of violence and where once again parents are learning unimaginable pain and where once again children are waking up to a world turned upside down. On Wednesday, in what has become an all too familiar sight, high school students were sent fleeing from their classrooms seeking safety from a gunman, this time at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia. Second period had just started when the gunshots rang out.

There's a knock at the door, so you look at the door and he's there and she's there as well and she looks and she sees him and she says he's here and we're about to open the door until the girl who was going to open it kind of steps back and is like, oh wait. And then you just kind of see him through the little window turn almost and you just hear shots.

In the minutes that followed, four people were brutally murdered. Two students, Mason Shemmerhorn and Christian Angulo, both just 14 years old, and two teachers, Richard Aspinwell and Christina Ereme. The suspect, a student at the school, surrendered when he was confronted by police. Officials say that 14-year-old Colt Gray will be charged as an adult for the murders.

He was questioned just last year by law enforcement in connection with online threats about a school shooting. No charges were filed at the time. As this investigation unfolds, local officials say that teachers and staff at the school prevented an even larger tragedy. When someone preys on kids, it's tragic. Like I said earlier, hate is not gonna prevail in our county and hate's not gonna prevail in our state. I'm proud of the men and women who protected these kids. I'm proud of this staff. I'm proud of this community.

And I just ask for prayers. All right, joining us now, Donnell Harvin with Georgetown University's Emergency and Disaster Management Program. Alex Thompson, CNN political analyst, national political reporter at Axios. Karen Finney, CNN political commentator. And Mike Dubke, former Trump White House communications director. Welcome to all of you. Donnell, let me start with you because we are learning this morning that this pandemic

who will be charged as an adult, but a child, was actually questioned a year ago by law enforcement over online threats. This is all of these parents, all of, it's my worst nightmare as a parent, right? What do you think happened here that law enforcement was kind of onto this kid? And then here we are today with four people dead.

- Well, it's not unusual to have threats online being reported. Not in the defense of law enforcement, but we get thousands of these when I was the chief of Homeland Security in DC. And to be able to sift through these and vet through them, it sounds like they did their due diligence.

What we don't know is what happened afterwards. We do know that Georgia doesn't have a red flag law. They may not have been able to continue to track this individual. He may have gone from one school to another, and these threats weren't reported. And so that's gonna come out as the investigation proceeds. It's clearly tragic. As you mentioned, sending our children to school should be a zero risk endeavor, and clearly it's not.

How many, when you say law enforcement are inundated with threats, I was talking to a former police chief in Aurora, Colorado, where they obviously investigated that horrible theater shooting. He also mentioned there's just so much of it, right? And it's really, really difficult to get your arms around it. How

How many of the threats that are kind of flagged result in questioning somebody? Because this kid was questioned by law enforcement. Do they all get that far? I can't imagine that they do. Yeah, it depends on the number of threats, how many people reporting it. And then there's some background information that has to go through. You have to understand whether the child has had problems in school, whether the school's reporting it versus someone else in the community, and if there's guns in the home.

And so when they knock on the door, that's one of the things they want to understand is that there's guns in the home. Is this individual able to operationalize or motivate themselves to actually have the tools to become violent? And so there's a lot of calculus. There's a lot of different checklists. The issue is that there's no national standard for this, right? And so this is happening on the state and local level based on their protocols and based on their procedures. There's no high-level federal standard for how to investigate these type of cases.

In terms of what happens next, I mean, one of the things that we've seen, obviously, Ethan Crumbly's parents were held accountable in this case. This kid's pretty young, 14 years old. Is this happening younger and younger? And what role do you think the parents play or didn't in this scenario?

Yeah, this may shock the viewers, but the actual mean of a school shooter is 16. So if you look at the distribution curve, 14 is not that far out of the range, which is unfortunate. This year, and I know we're talking about school shootings now, but this year there's been nearly 200 school shootings resulting in almost 50 deaths.

And so we're on track for last year. Whatever we're doing, it's not good enough. And so looking at these younger individuals, they may be getting bullied online, the online environment, what's happening in school. There's a lot of things that have to go right for these shootings to not happen. And clearly in this case, things didn't go right.

Alex Thompson, the sort of unfortunate reality is that every single one of the, every single time something like this happens there is a political conversation about what to do about it. He was talking about how there's no federal standards for dealing with these things, Georgia doesn't have a red flag law, etc., etc. In some ways it seems like those conversations are becoming more and more brief because the realities here in Washington are such that there aren't major policy changes that happen regularly

but this is something that has become part of our national consciousness in a way that a lot of political issues don't mean this is something that every household is aware of is kinda in the ether in a way I that may potentially lead to some sort of ground shift going for we did hear from both the candidates from Donald Trump and Kamala Harris

yesterday. But what role do you think these horrific conversations we have to have about gun violence are currently playing in our politics? I mean, you've seen Democrats become more and more confident running on gun control every single cycle after one of these shootings happens.

they they see a actual political advantage on calling for gun control you can see come a hair's hasn't put out that much policy but gun control was actually a key part of her sort of freedom the met theme your freedom from gun violence it was never use the phrase gun control but that

putting it that way is something that they absolutely, you're absolutely right. Freedom from gun violence has been a huge part of her campaign already. And the fact is that Republicans on some ways are on their back foot. You saw Republicans vote for, you know, a very light form of, you can call it gun control, whatever. But just this. They would call it gun control. But the last two years, that was the first time, you know, you asked if you'd have Senator John Cornyn of Texas vote for at least some form of gun control 10 years ago. He wouldn't have, but he did this time.

yeah all right we're gonna uh pick up this conversation later on in the show and we talked to uh the prosecutor in that uh crumbly uh situation and we're also donnell will come back as well to talk more about this uh but up ahead here on santa this morning donald trump's town hall in the pivotal swing state of pennsylvania making his case on the economy right after his opponents

speech on the issue. Plus, Kamala Harris tries to hone her pitch on the top priority that voters have, and she's splitting with President Biden in some critical places. We're going to talk to a senior spokesman for the Harris-Walls campaign and Liz Cheney, one of the latest Republicans to reach across the aisle and support the Democratic nominee.

Because of the danger that Donald Trump poses, not only am I not voting for Donald Trump, but I will be voting for Kamala Harris in this election.

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You said in your Reagan Library speech, "Men are running the world and it's really not going all that well." Do you think voters here in the U.S. are ready for a woman to run things? Sure. I also do think that we're at a moment where people ought to be judged based on competence. They ought to be judged based on character. And I stand by my statement.

competence and character. Former Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney told me two years ago the country's ready for a female president. You saw it there. Now, she says, she's ready to vote for one. Cheney, who is of course a longtime Trump critic and the former vice chair of the January 6th select committee, became the latest in a series of Republicans to say they will be voting for Kamala Harris.

And as a conservative, as someone who believes in and cares about the Constitution, I have thought deeply about this. And because of the danger that Donald Trump poses, not only am I not voting for Donald Trump, but I will be voting for Kamala Harris. All right. Panel is back. So, I mean, Mike Dubke, the big difference here seems to be that

you know, there were all of these anti-Trump Republicans who were willing to say, well, you know, I'm gonna write in John McCain. I'm gonna write in someone else, you know, Lindsey Graham or whoever that was not Donald Trump.

her argument and this is the argument we heard from some Republicans at the Democratic National Convention is that the risks are too high for that considering what happened around democracy January 6th. That's of course Liz Cheney's animating thing here. It's not a surprise to me that she's voting against Donald Trump. Do you think this impacts anything? No.

Oh, I'll expand on that. No, I'm actually surprised. I'm actually surprised it took this long for Representative Cheney to come out and make that statement. But no, I don't. There are a number of Republicans who have...

where the Republican Party and this party led by Donald Trump have gone a different direction and they have voiced their concerns about it, their opposition to that. I don't think this is really gonna change a whole lot. I don't know that there is a group of Cheney voters that were waiting for her to make this decision.

But, you know, look, I think it's a we're in a democracy and she has every right to do that. And I frankly, I respect her reasoning to get there. But no, I don't think it's going to make a difference. Are you surprised she hasn't played a bigger role in this election cycle that like we learned about this at an event in Duke that was closed press? You know, there were others that were on stage at the time.

at the DNC. Yeah, I'm surprised. And her team has dodged calls on this for months because obviously if there was going to be a prominent Republican name that was going to endorse Joe Biden, she is, or then Kamala Harris, she was going to be one of them. So I was a little bit surprised that she would announce it in this way. I don't even know if she intended it to become public. It also speaks to the scrambled nature of our politics that Liz Cheney just endorsed Kamala Harris and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. just endorsed Donald Trump. Mm-hmm.

Again, Donald Trump can have the dead bear in the park cut off the whale head guy. That's fine. He's a falconer, though. Oh, okay. Well, that makes it okay. Wait, what does that have to do with cutting off a whale's head?

- Well, it had to do with the dead bear in the car. - He likes birds. - He's weird. - I was just following the line. - Okay, well, with Liz Cheney though, I know she's doing some other work in this election that may have been part of the reason for the delay and the timing of this. - Would you like to expand on that? What do you mean?

you know, she's perhaps doing some work for candidates and, you know, she's got some work that she is doing. But the other thing I would say, here's where I do think it matters. It matters potentially as to, she is someone who can help create a permission structure for

the Haley voters, right? The sort of, you know, sort of moderate conservative suburban voters who think she's a reasonable, thoughtful person who may be on the fence, who are listening to her reasoning. And I suspect we'll hear more from her. And who, January 6th does still stick in their mind. It does still bother them quite a bit.

And it does bother them when they hear Donald Trump saying, it's perfectly okay for me to do what I did around the 2020 election. So that's where I think she matters. And again, in an election where it's football season, it's a game of inches, right? It's going to be close. It's going to be tight. Every vote matters. That's why I think it's a contact sport. I'm actually frankly surprised if I'm surprised by anything on this.

is that the Harris campaign didn't do more with it. Now, maybe it was because it was at a private event at Duke University and they haven't. But these are the kind of things that campaigns love to roll out. I mean, back in the day, we would have all of the Democrats that were switching over to the Republican Party and you'd do a big thing with, you know, bringing them, giving them some spotlight here. I'm a little surprised the Harris campaign. Well, I mean, it seems clear she doesn't she didn't want it, that she didn't want it.

But she made a conscious decision to make that announcement there. So that wasn't an accident. Correct. And she may do other events when we still have 60-some days, right? Yeah. And to your point, the Biden and now Harris campaign have made a real point of going after Nikki Haley voters. And are they able to deploy her in some of these states, in some of these suburban counties, and try to rally some of those voters? It'll be interesting to watch.

Yeah, the suburbs of Philly, you know, talking to suburban moms, not a bad place to put Liz Cheney, for example. All right, so we come here on CNN this morning. It's almost go time for Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. The first debate with Harris at the top of the ticket now just days away. How they're preparing ahead, plus stunning video from an ATM heist. This is going to be one of the five things you need to see this morning. Take a closer look.

All right, 24 minutes past the hour. Five things you have to see this morning. An asteroid streaking through the atmosphere over the Philippines. The European Space Agency detected the three-foot-long asteroid just a few hours before, and that's only the ninth time that humankind has ever spotted one before impact. Wow, okay.

A life-saving rescue by the Italian Coast Guard after a boat carrying migrants sank off the coast of Italy. Seven Syrian nationals were rescued. 21 others, including children, are missing. Then there's this. Talk about a smash and grab. Thieves in Seattle using a front loader stolen from a construction site to steal an entire ATM, pushing its safe down the street.

Both the front loader and the safe were later found abandoned about a half a mile down the road. Apparently there's no word on the money that may or may not have been in the safe, but this is, you know, extraordinary measures. All right, a man trapped in his SUV and swept away by a flash flood in San Antonio gets it all on video. He says he was just trying to stay calm once he realized his vehicle was no longer in his control.

He was eventually rescued by Alamo Heights firefighters. Wildfires burning through the night just outside Brazil's capital. Firefighters have struggled to control this blaze. It's now burned for two days and blanketed Brasilia in smoke. Local officials say they suspect arsonists may be responsible.

All right, time now for weather flood threats continuing today for more than 5 million people in southern Texas and Louisiana, while parts of the northwest could see record high temperatures. Let's get straight to our meteorologist, the weatherman himself, Derek Van Dam. Derek, good morning to you. What do you got?

Good morning, Casey. You know that flood video coming out of San Antonio is really interesting because we don't often see it from the perspective of inside the vehicle. Often it's from outside watching these swift water rescues taking place. I mean, that's probably because who takes video of something like that when it's happening to them? This seems like a terrible life choice. But anyway, continue.

Yeah, so he gets caught in this flash flood, but that is the nature of flash flooding because you never know how much water is covering that roadway. And this is the concern we have today across much of the Deep South because we've got this flood threat continuing, ongoing. It's this pesky low pressure system that's just meandering off the Gulf Coast.

lighting up our radar like a Christmas tree, but we focused in on the New Orleans region, southeastern Louisiana with the greatest flash flood threat for the day today. So anywhere along Interstate 10 and southward, we know that these areas are very low levels, low land, and it doesn't take much to flood these regions, so we're going to keep a close eye on that

for the potential of more flash flooding with more scenes that you saw in San Antonio, but this time the greatest threat again unfolding across the state of Louisiana. Now here's a look at the rest of the country. It's really the heat that's building over the west. That's the big story. 55 million Americans under heat alerts. I gotta point this out. LA today could reach 100 degrees for the first time in over two years. Look at their normal temperature, 77. So we're well above 20 degrees above average.

And more of the same for Portland. 102 today would be the first, well, let's say the third time in recorded history where we've reached that temperature in the month of September. Casey? Yikes, really tough. All right, Derek Van Dam for us this morning. Derek, very grateful for you. Thank you so much. Okay. All right, still ahead here on CNN this morning, Donald Trump pitching voters in Pennsylvania. He appeared at a town hall there just days before he gets ready to debate Kamala Harris in Philadelphia. Plus...

I'll speak with the prosecutor who tried the cases against the parents of school shooter Ethan Crumbly as America grapples with yet another senseless act of gun violence. I ask that you and our community lift up our schools, lift up our public safety, and that again we do not let this hateful event prevail.

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All right, the latest now on the deadly high school shooting in Georgia, about 50 miles northeast of Atlanta. A 14-year-old student using a semi-automatic weapon to kill two classmates and two teachers and to wound nine others. The suspect taken alive.

The priority right now for us within this investigation is to gather all the facts, to make sure that we're accurate with it because this is a murder investigation. He has been taken into custody. He will be charged with murder and he will be tried as an adult.

All right, let's go live to Michigan. I want to bring in Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald. Karen, good morning. You, of course, prosecuted 15-year-old Ethan Crumbly for that mass shooting at Oxford High School outside of Detroit back in 2021 when four students were

were killed. We are learning that this student in Georgia was actually questioned by police about a year ago after there were threats made. Do you see parallels here with this student to what you dealt with in Michigan? And how would you, if you're looking at this, go about trying to prosecute the crime?

Good morning. You know, I think the most important thing first is concentrating and focusing on the victims in this case, not just the four victims that were killed, students that were injured, and hundreds of others that were terrorized in that school and will never be the same. Unfortunately, there are a lot of similarities, and this is what we see looking at the data in school shooters.

We don't know, of course, at this moment what led up to this, but we see, based on the reported facts, there was absolutely some notice here that there was a concern, in fact, a visit by law enforcement to parent.

And just keep in mind, this is an AR-15 and 14-year-old young man. The standard magazine holds 30 rounds, and it's designed to be able to shoot quickly, repetitively, and cause as much damage as possible. So, yeah.

It's a deadly weapon and it's a 14 year old young man. The first question has to be where did he get that gun? And the details that are coming out are very concerning.

So what role in this case, you mentioned that the fact that he was questioned before may be relevant here. Does that say that the parent may have more responsibility in terms of access to this weapon and potentially need to be held accountable as well? I mean, how did that play into the case that you prosecuted and how might it play in here?

The facts in the Oxford case with the shooter's parents are very egregious and hopefully very rare, which led to two convictions of involuntary manslaughter.

The core and the most critical point of that prosecution is whether it was reasonably foreseeable. And certainly when you have a 14-year-old who cannot drive and cannot purchase a weapon like that, and dad reportedly was on notice that there was a concern and reportedly

also said that the minor did not have any access to weapons. That was a year prior. It would be hard to argue that dad didn't know that there might be a concern.

Really very difficult. What laws may or may not be on the books here that will be relevant going forward? I mean, we know that Georgia doesn't have a red flag law, which could have potentially played a role in once the shooter, this now shooter was on law enforcement radar last year. What else do you think are, what other pieces of the law do you think are most important in Georgia

both preventing these things from happening in the first place and then also prosecuting them when they do happen

You know, I think it's too soon to tell with regard to what facts come out. I think it's imperative that the question is asked, regardless whether it leads to a prosecution or a charge for parents. But we need to ask the question about where that minor got such a deadly weapon, because we need to know that in terms of how do we prevent this going forward. But I do know this. Responsible gun owners...

are taught and absolutely store their weapons safely. It takes 10 seconds to install a cable lock. 10 seconds that would prevent tragedies like this. And responsible gun owners know that. So it's too soon to tell. I don't know the details of this case, but...

My heart goes out to these victims. I can't tell you. I was in contact with Oxford victims all day yesterday and how terrible it is to watch this play out once again, not just for the parents who lost their kids, but the kids that were in that school that day, the kids that were injured. This plays out, and these kids will never be the same. And it would take 10 seconds to prevent.

So many lives impacted for so long after something that took just, as you point out, minutes to unfold. Karen McDonald for us this morning. Thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate you coming on today. Thank you. All right, straight ahead here on CNN this morning, Hunter Biden on trial. Jury selection in the latest case against the president's son set to begin in just hours. Plus, Kamala Harris breaking with her boss on a key economic policy. We're going to talk about that with her campaign's senior spokesman.

I think we should admire ambition in each other. So I want to see 25 million new small business applications by the end of my first term. All right, 44 minutes past the hour. Here's your morning roundup. I'm blessed in many reasons. And, you know, I have a second chance at doing things the right way in all areas of my life.

Buffalo Bills safety DeMar Hamlin named a starter for Sunday's game against Arizona. It's going to be his first start since suffering cardiac arrest during a game in January of 2023. Doctors calling his recovery remarkable.

Donald Trump's legal team makes its latest move to delay the sentencing in his hush money case. The former president's attorney is asking an appeals court to stop his sentencing until judges hear their argument to move the case into federal court. The latest effort comes after a federal judge rejected Trump's motion to move the case out of the state level.

In just hours, jury selection begins for Hunter Biden's latest trial in Los Angeles. He is accused of not paying more than $1 million in taxes. Hunter Biden denies those claims, saying that he paid all his tax debts back. He could face up to 17 years in prison. All right, let's turn back now to the 2024 campaign.

If you earn a million dollars a year or more, the tax rate on your long-term capital gains will be 28% under my plan because we know when the government encourages investment, it leads to broad-based economic growth.

Kamala Harris breaking with President Biden on an economic policy, calling for a 28% long-term capital gains tax for wealthy Americans. The rate is eight points higher than the current 20%.

but 11 points lower than what President Biden has proposed. Harris's announcement comes as she is trying to appeal to middle class voters with proposals aimed at boosting small businesses and as she tries to address the economy, of course, the most important concern among likely voters in must-win battleground states. Donald Trump responding to Harris's proposal with this warning as he prepares to make an economic speech himself in New York later today.

If they do that, the unrealized capital gain, it's, you know, it's been a few years by ultra left Marxists only. Like her father's a Marxist. His country will end up in a depression if she becomes president like 1929. This will be a 1929 depression. She has no idea what the hell she's doing.

And joining me now is senior national spokesperson for the Harris-Walls campaign, Ian Sams. Ian, good morning. It's wonderful to have you on the show. Thank you for being here. I want to ask you about this policy. She is breaking with President Biden, but she's also proposing raising taxes. Why is she doing this now? And how different do you think her proposals are from President Biden's?

Well, look, I think you mentioned that President Trump speaking today on the economy. And I think that there's really a crystallized choice in the election between Donald Trump, who wants to give billionaires and big corporations more tax cuts because he thinks that they control the economy,

and Kamala Harris who's actually talking about creating more small businesses, lowering costs for the middle class, giving the middle class a tax cut, and those sorts of bread and butter issues for regular people. When it comes to the small business plan that you talk about, this week she's rolled out a really comprehensive set of ideas to try to dramatically expand the number of small businesses

that start in this country under her administration. The Biden-Harris administration set a record with 19 million. She wants to go further with 25 million new small businesses created in her administration. And how is she going to do that? Well, you have to help people afford to start a business. It costs on average $40,000 for someone to start a small business. But the tax deduction is only $5,000. She wants to tenfold expand that to $50,000 to help those people afford to start a small business.

And when it comes to capital gains and the tax code, I think that she understands that we can make sure that those at the top, the billionaires and the wealthy, pay their fair share with a billionaire minimum tax, with raising the corporate tax rate, with quadrupling taxes on stock buybacks, things that really make sure that those at the top are paying their fair share, while also saying, look, I know there are some folks out there who want to jack up long-term capital gains to 40%, 45%.

understand the impulse, but we still need to incentivize investing in startups. When you say some folks out there, I mean, one of those folks out there is President Biden. He doesn't want to do it at 40, 45 percent, but he certainly wants it a lot higher. And this is a distinction that she is making with the president. So far, it seems to be the most substantial one. Should we expect her to go farther in breaking with the president?

- Well, I think she's her own candidate. She's the president's vice president. She's very proud of the record that they have accomplished together. And she's been proud to support and be a key player in so many of the key achievements of this administration. But she's her own candidate and she has her own views of these things. And when it comes to something like the capital gains tax rate, she thinks that 39.6% is too high.

and that we can come down a little lower to 28% to better incentivize the kind of investment in entrepreneurs that we wanna see in this country to help achieve some of the broader economic goals. And so I think as the campaign continues, you'll see places where there are distinctions because she's her own candidate.

Ian, how do you explain why working class Americans, Americans without college degrees, a lot of white working class Americans, but also working class Americans of color have decided that the Democratic Party isn't the party for them?

Well, look, I think the pundits can kind of do the demographic analysis. And I think what we do as a campaign and what the vice president does as a candidate is take her message to the voters. I think that she has to be out there and she is out there explaining to people what she's bringing to the table. She wants to help lower people. But she's been part of the Biden administration. I mean, she has been part of the Democratic. Democrats have been in control of the country for the last,

three going on four years, and you are still seeing this in the polling. I mean, these working class voters are telling us right now that more of them are with Donald Trump than Kamala Harris. Why? What is it about what you guys have been doing for the last three plus years that explains that?

Well, I think again, we're trying to talk to the voters and explain this message. We've got 60 days until the election. You know, we don't have time to sit around and think about why over the last few years certain things may have happened or may not have happened. We've got to go win an election. And the vice president's doing that by talking about her economic vision. And it's really different. It's a new way forward, not only for the Democratic Party,

It's really different. Can you tell me what is really different? I got the capital gains rate, but what else on the list makes it really different from what was going on the past few years?

- Sure, she wants to take into effect the first national law to take on corporate price gouging. She's talking about holding bad corporate actors accountable for their role in taking up prices on people at the grocery store, at the gas pump, all across this country. There are distinctions here in this candidate's message that she is sharing with the country every single day. And she's out there on the trail doing it while Donald Trump's talking about trickle down economics. And so, I understand the pundit class wants to sit around and maybe have these conversations,

But at the end of the day, this is a campaign and we're running to win and she's running to win. And she's talking about the economy almost every single day on the campaign trail and her plans to lower costs, whether it's in housing or groceries, her plans to give small businesses the tax incentives they need to start and the resources they need to get off the ground, a tax cut for middle class families and working parents. You know, these are the things that she's talking about that I think resonate with voters in their lives.

I think we should have some more coverage and conversation about those actual substantive plans to help make sure that the country does hear more about the economic vision she's offering in contrast with Donald Trump's trickle down.

All right, fair enough. Ian, I do want to ask you about a different subject before I let you go. The Department of Justice yesterday came out and said that the Russians are trying to interfere in the election, in part by funding a media company that's behind some right wing names that have, you know, hundreds of thousands, millions of followers.

on some of these YouTube platforms. And then we actually heard from Vladimir Putin in just the last hour or two talking about the U.S. election. I want to play for you what he had to say and then ask you about it on the other side. He spoke in Russian, but the English translation is there. Watch.

As for the favorites, there is no need to define that. It's a choice by the people of America in the end. I've said that our so-to-say favorite was the acting president, Mr. Biden. He's been taken out of the race, but he advised all his supporters to support Mrs. Harris. That's what we'll do. We'll support her as well. That's the first thing. Secondly, her laugh is so expressive and infectious. That means that she's doing well.

Ian, Vladimir Putin calls her laugh infectious, says that she is doing well and that he supports her. What do you as the campaign say back to Mr. Putin?

Well, first, I want to say I think we reject any foreign interference in this election at all, on any side, from any country. This is an American election, and the vice president feels very, very strongly that only the American people should be deciding who is the next president of the United States, and any effort from foreign actors to interfere is completely inappropriate. Obviously, the administration will speak to their actions yesterday. You know, I think everybody knows

who dictators and bullies around the world prefer in this election, they prefer President Trump.

We reject the kind of divisive dictatorial leadership that are being offered from people like President Putin. Obviously, his invasion of Ukraine was horrible, and the vice president has been a leader with the president, rallying the world against it. I'm not going to play too much psyops with the Russian president here on your show this morning, but I think that anybody who's been paying attention to the last decade knows where President Putin stands in the election and who his profession is.

candidate is, regardless of what he may say. All right. Ian Sams for us this morning. Sir, very grateful to have you on the show. I hope you'll come back as this campaign is in its final sprint. Thank you so much. Thanks. I just got to get more coffee at this hour. Well, happy to send you some. You do need a lot, you know, maybe an espresso machine for the office.

Thanks again. All right, our panel's back. And I actually want to talk about this question about Russian interference because obviously it is something that... And Danelle Harvin joins us too as well because his law enforcement background is very relevant to this conversation. But Alex, I want to ask you about this specifically because the idea of the Russians in particular is something that's very...

triggering, I suppose, for Republicans who remember what happened to Donald Trump and who view it the last time there was a long national conversation about Russian interference in elections. They remember it very differently than Democrats do. What did you make of this announcement that they made yesterday in terms of how it impacts? I mean, there are some pretty well-known, at least on the right, commentators who are part of this company that was reportedly getting money from the Russians.

Yeah, you already saw Democrats basically jump on this and say this is the latest example of Russia trying to interfere in our elections in order to help Donald Trump. And, you know, Republicans do remember 2016 differently and that they feel that this was used as an excuse by Democrats to explain away their defeat.

Donnell Harbin, let me ask you about sort of the mechanics of this, because basically the allegations are that this money went from the Russia Today employees involved in sending money to this other media entity. What do you know about how the Russians are operating in this space this time around, how it's different from what we've seen before, and what this action that the DOJ is taking might lead to?

Well, I'm not quite sure about the DOJ part, but I will tell you, because I ran the cyber threat intelligence here for D.C. for many years, the playbook is not much different from 2016 and 2020, in fact. They use our civil liberties, our First Amendment against us. The mechanisms by which they get

U.S. persons or U.S. actors to engage with them and post these things is obviously a lot more elaborate. The fact that the social media outlets, there's no guardrails for them. We've seen X, we've seen all these things just take the guardrails down, makes really the playing field so much more vast for them.

And so, so long as they can work out the financials, right? 'Cause we don't allow foreign operatives to really influence financially our elections. It sounds like that's what they're doing. They really have a wide range of tools to use and clearly internet's one of them.

Mike Dupke, two of the names that are associated with this company are Benny Johnson and Tim Poole. And they both put out separate statements yesterday saying that they were the victims of this scheme, that they maintained that they had their own editorial control of the content that they created. Johnson said, quote, were disturbed by the allegations in today's indictment, which makes clear that myself and other influence were victims in this alleged scheme.

Poole said, should these allegations prove true, I as well as other personalities and commentators were deceived and are victims. Still, it is telling that the Russians seem to be interested in promoting the kind of content that these two guys create.

The Russians, the Chinese, the Iranians are all, and I applaud the DOJ for going after the Russians here. They are all trying to interfere with our elections, whether they're using means of social media, whether they're trying to find two wannabe journalists and promoting their site to move that forward. The one part though I do wanna come back to that we don't talk about enough

at least from my time in the White House, in 2017, it was President Trump that used deadly force against Russian troops in Syria. It was President Trump who sent deadly weapons to Ukraine that the Obama administration did not want to send. So when you look at what the actions were of the Trump administration, especially early on,

there were very anti-Russian actions in terms of deadly force. So we've got to focus on this. We need to stay on this. I condemn all of that, but there's a lot more to this. Just real quick, if I'm not mistaken, though, just to correct the record here, the weapons that ended up going to Ukraine that was after...

threatening to hold them up when he was asking for help. Not the previous ones. That was on the early side. Okay, on the early side. Well, it was something that the Obama administration, after the invasion of Crimea, refused to do. So, look, I'm just saying that there is more to this story than just, you know, a news conference in Helsinki that gets brought up every time. Hold on. Can I just...

Having gone through this in 2016, Ian and I both on the campaign, it is triggering because we know it is a fact in modern campaigns. And, you know, when you are inside a campaign and that is happening, there's not much you can do. You're hoping that.

the FBI, you know, the DOJ, that there are resources being put to trying to stop it. But it is coming at you from multiple countries. We have 30 seconds. Yeah, well, and Mike is right, though, that basically what Russia did in 2016, other countries now are copying that playbook. It's not just Russia. And the administration has been very out front trying to address the, like, send a warning signal very early on. And they should be. And they should be. Yes.

All right. Thanks to all of you guys for joining us this morning. I really appreciate it. Thanks to all of you for being with us as well. I'm Casey Hunt. Don't go anywhere. CNN News Central starts right now. From all over the world, people turn to Cleveland Clinic for our expertise and our compassionate care. As leaders in heart, neurology, and cancer, the future of specialty care is happening right now at Cleveland Clinic.

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