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FBI Says New Orleans Attacker Did Not Act Alone; Cyber Truck Filled with Fuel and Fireworks in Front of Trump Hotel in Las Vegas Possibly Linked to New Orleans Attack; Two Witnesses to New Orleans Attack Describe What They Saw. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired January 02, 2025 - 08:00   ET

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

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ELIZABETH WAGMEISTER, CNN ENTERTAINMENT CORRESPONDENT: -- assert unilateral control over every aspect of the production, and that Lively's public image suffered as a result of a series of high-profile blunders -

BLAKE LIVELY, ACTRESS: Grab your friends, wear your florals.

WAGMEISTER: -- which she tried to deflect with her complaint. Attorneys for Lively sent CNN a statement on Tuesday saying "nothing in this lawsuit changes anything regarding her claims."

Elizabeth Wagmeister, CNN, Los Angeles.

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SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: This morning, the FBI investigation saying the New Orleans attacker did not act alone. The investigation into the deadly attack now stretching across multiple states as authorities search for possible accomplices. We will speak with witnesses who were there when that truck plowed into dozens of innocent people trying to celebrate the new year.

And investigators look into whether this powerful explosion in a cyber truck outside a Trump hotel in Las Vegas is connected to the attack in New Orleans. New details show some similarities in the suspects and where they rented their vehicles.

Also, some GOP hardliners threatening House Speaker Mike Johnson's fight to keep the gavel. Republicans now pushing to shore up support ahead of tomorrow's vote, and warning a speakership battle could delay certification, Donald Trump's White House win.

I'm Sara Sidner with John Berman. Kate Bolduan is out today. This is CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, developing this morning, the FBI in New Orleans said very clearly they do not believe the terror driver who killed 15 people there acted alone. Officials are calling it a deliberate act of terror as they enforce search warrants in several states. There are new details this morning about the killers' ties to ISIS as serious questions arise about whether this attack is tied to the cyber truck explosion at a Trump hotel in Las Vegas. There are notable similarities.

Let's get right to CNN's Ryan Young, who is live in New Orleans on the ground for the latest on the investigation. The sun's come up, Ryan. We can see Bourbon Street right behind you.

RYAN YOUNG, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes. John, a lot of changes so far. We know that, we've been told that a lot of cleanup effort is going on in the streets behind us. That scene has pretty much been released by the FBI to the sanitation department so they could actually start the massive cleanup process here.

This investigation, of course, is ongoing. But as we were out here getting ready to do this live report, we saw one of our city councilmembers who lives in this area. You've lived in here for quite some time. Can you talk about the impact that this has had over the last 24 hours?

HELENA MORENO, NEW ORLEANS CITY COUNCIL: Well, I mean, it's been incredibly tragic. As you can imagine, our community is really in a great deal of shock. But we are a resilient community, and we will move forward. I mean, as you already saw today, the FBI has cleared this scene. This does not mean, of course, that the investigation is by any means over, but they have cleared the scene, which means that sanitation can go in and out. You'll see more movement through Bourbon Street. And ultimately it will be up to the New Orleans Police Department superintendent and the mayor to determine when Bourbon Street will be fully reopened.

But we're getting back to normal. And the best way that we beat this terrorist, this coward, this murderer, is by us getting back to normal. And I'll say this. I mean, we have the Sugar Bowl coming up today. And, you know, a few days ago, I was not going to go to the Sugar Bowl. I'm not a Notre Dame or UGA fan. But based on what happened yesterday and knowing all the security measures happening, I will be going to the game, not to celebrate or watch a football game, really, but to show that we're not going to be beat. We're not going to go be beat by this murderer.

We're moving forward. We're having this game. We're getting back to normal. But at the same time, this incident, what happened here really needs to be reviewed, looked at what happened here. Was there anything missed?

YOUNG: And let me ask you that, because there's going to be a lot of focus on that part of the investigation. Do you feel comfortable with what you're being told so far about the security measures that were in place?

MORENO: So I think so much needs to be looked at. And I'm not just talking about the local level. I'm talking about the intelligence side, too. Was there something with this, with this guy that, you know, maybe was a flag that was missed? Maybe there was something that showed that he could potentially be a threat to our country, or potentially a threat to the city of New Orleans that our law enforcement officers on the ground could have been notified about. Was there something there? And look, I mean, ultimately, yes, this was an attack on New Orleans

and an attack on the people of New Orleans. But really, this was an attack on America.

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And so whatever happened here needs to be very closely looked at so that it can be prevented in other cities.

YOUNG: I've got to ask you this last question. Just from a perspective of someone who has lived here for quite some time, how heartbreaking was this for you and your family?

MORENO: Oh man, it was unbelievable. And yesterday I was with families who were at University Medical Center looking for their loved ones because they weren't at any hospital, but they were on Bourbon Street last night, or the night before. And last night, you know, I saw flash across the screen, a young man by the name of Hubert Gautreaux, and I had been sitting with Hubert's family earlier that day, as they were hoping to get information that he had been found in one of the hospitals. And unfortunately, he was here.

YOUNG: Thank you for taking the time.

MORENO: Yes, thank you.

YOUNG: Thank you. Appreciate it.

John, she was walking by. We wanted to make sure we got that new information. Obviously, this has been very painful for the people who live here. We've talked to so many people in this area who just are still shocked by this. But I want to read the victims' names because I think that's something we should highlight at this point.

Tiger Beck was 27, Reggie Hunter was 37, Kareem Bawadi are the victims' names that we have so far. Obviously, as this gets processed out and we try to figure out the next parts of the investigation, I can tell you that the we've seen National Guard members also join the police department behind us to add to the ranks of law enforcement that's going to swell into the city as we have the Sugar Bowl coming in the next few hours. John?

BERMAN: It is heartbreaking for that city and for the country. Ryan Young, thank you for being there. Sara?

SIDNER: Joining me now are Paul and Annica. They are eyewitnesses to that horrific New Orleans attack on Bourbon Street. Thank you both so much for taking the time to speak with us this morning after what you all have been through. I want to ask you first, Annica. You and Paul, I think, got back to your hotel about 30 minutes before the attack and went to bed. It was very early in the morning. But you were awakened by terrible noises. What did you hear and what did you see when you peered down onto Bourbon Street?

ANNICA, WITNESSED NEW ORLEANS ATTACK: Yes, it was about 1:30 a.m. and I was still tossing beads down from the balcony, just kind of taking in the last moments of the celebrating the new year before we wrapped up our evening and headed inside to go to bed. So it was winding down. It was probably about 2:30 a.m. when we laid down in bed. And 45 minutes later, you know, we had the curtains drawn, so it was pitch black in our room, and just heard a loud crash, explosion outside.

Yes, and it was just it was jarring. We didn't know what to what had happened. I had to find the light switch. We're in a foreign, you know, in a hotel room, so it's a foreign space. And, you know, just almost immediate trembling, like, how do we respond? I managed to get to the curtain really quickly, looked out the window and could see officers across the street with their guns drawn looking straight down to where the truck was, but didn't see the truck right away.

So I just I looked at Paul and just said, get back, get back, like, you know, we, number one, was to make sure that we didn't add to casualties ourselves. And so staying back was the first thing that we could do. So I managed to get a couple pictures at 3:18 a.m. And like, yes, it was immediate devastation looking out the window.

PAUL, WITNESSED NEW ORLEANS ATTACK: Yes. Both Annica is, she's done search and rescue in the past. I'm a former Eagle Scout, so we've both been trained in what to do in emergency preparedness. We came to the window. We looked out to see if there was anything we could do to help. But the street was flooded with cops. I mean, it was empty other than the devastation we saw and cops, so there was nothing that we could do, and it was absolutely horrific.

SIDNER: Paul, when you looked out the window, Annica said, look, I saw the officers, so she clearly saw the moment, or at least was looking at the moment when officers were able to take the suspect out in that vehicle. Were you all able to see the remnants of what happened on your street? What was directly under you? How did you see the scene when you finally sort of went back to that vantage point, because you're on the balcony above, correct?

PAUL: Correct, yes. Our balcony was just, just above where the crash happened. Yes, Annica saw -- well, I'll let her speak. Sorry.

ANNICA: Yes. As soon as I felt like it was safe enough to approach further onto the balcony, that's where I looked over and saw the truck crash.

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Officers had their guns drawn and were trying to assess the situation. At first it was super disorienting. When you walk out into a situation like this, you don't know what you're looking at. The fact that there was a police truck that looked similar right behind it, I was like, did a police officer get hurt, or was this something else? You know, I saw -- I didn't realize in the moment that I saw a wheelchair that was sitting there. At first I thought, like, is that a motorcycle? Like my eyes had to strain to understand what I was seeing. And then to see the man from the wheelchair laying in the gutter was heart-wrenching, you know? And there's nothing that we can do to help. We don't help the situation by entering into it. So all we could do was stand by and watch, and to see immediately dead

bodies laying in the street, both directions is something that nobody should have to see in the beginning of the new year. It's heart- wrenching.

PAUL: Yes, the triage process is, it's brutal. I mean, you've got to focus on the people who are alive but are on the verge. I mean, it was horrible to see. Absolutely horrible.

SIDNER: So you watched this horrific scene where someone in a wheelchair was clearly hit and there were bodies strewn everywhere, and you're watching emergency responders try and save lives. I'm curious what happened in the hotel where you were. What did you do? At some point, I think the hotel told you all to evacuate or to leave?

PAUL: Yes, it was about --

ANNICA: 3:54is when the first announcement was made asking the hotel to evacuate. There wasn't much for direction or explanation. Given the situation, completely warranted. And it was hard to watch people getting out of bed in their pajamas, tank tops and t-shirts, you know, wandering out onto the streets.

PAUL: It was about 45 degrees out. I mean, it was very cold.

ANNICA: Yes, it was cold. You know, young kids, like, not understanding what's going on. Yes, it was just a lot of confusion, and nobody, like, so few people realized what had happened on Bourbon Street. And so there was just, yes, a lack of direction, confusion. And we tried to help, you know, comfort some people who did see the same thing that we saw. But it was just shock. Nobody is prepared for something like this.

SIDNER: You can never unsee what you saw, the images that you witnessed. What are you all going to do, I know you're still in New Orleans, to try to help yourselves through this?

PAUL: Well, at the moment, we're coming up with a plan of what to do next. We still have a few more days here in New Orleans. The hope is to get out into nature, see something green, something beautiful. Get out of town. So that's our plan for the day. When we get back home, we'll have to take it day by day. But there's no doubt we're going to have to go find some counseling for this. This is, I mean, we haven't really had a moment of not thinking about this since it happened. It has been top of mind in every conversation we've had, in every thought we've had. Going to sleep last night was almost impossible.

SIDNER: It is a normal trauma response, Paul, and I think it's really smart and lovely, the idea of going out to nature where you can see something beautiful after you've seen something so horrific. It's good advice to anyone who witnessed that. Paul and Annica, thank you so much. I know going back through it is hard, but we do appreciate you explaining what happened there and what you saw in New Orleans. Try to have a decent day today.

PAUL: Thank you for having us. SIDNER: All right. Ahead, a Tesla cyber truck filled with fireworks

and fuel exploded outside a Trump hotel in Las Vegas. Could that blast be tied to the terror attack in New Orleans? We will discuss.

Plus, President-elect Donald Trump is planning a rally in Washington, D.C. one day before he returns to the White House.

And a new year celebration in Hawaii turns deadly after a massive explosion of illegal fireworks.

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BERMAN: All right, we have new video just in of a Tesla cybertruck that police say was intentionally detonated outside of the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas. This is, as of this morning, being investigated as a possible act of terrorism.

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JEREMY SCHWARTZ, FBI ACTING SPECIAL AGENT IN CHARGE, LAS VEGAS: As of right now, our number one goal is to ensure that we have the proper identification of the subject involved in this incident. Following that, our second objective is to determine whether this was an act of terrorism or not.

I know everybody is interested in that word, and trying to see if we can say, hey, this is a terrorist attack. That is our goal, and that's what we're trying to do.

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BERMAN: All right, CNN chief law enforcement and intelligence analyst, John Miller is with us; CNN law enforcement analyst and former Secret Service agent, Jonathan Wackrow is with us.

We're going to dig into a lot of different things right now. John, first, just what's the latest on the Las Vegas investigation?

JOHN MILLER, CNN CHIEF LAW ENFORCEMENT AND INTELLIGENCE ANALYST: Well, the Las Vegas investigation is taking an interesting turn as they get deeper into the profile of the individual who rented the vehicle.

Now, let's go full stop here for a second. They believe they know who rented the vehicle, but they are not a hundred percent certain that that is the person who is in the vehicle, because that body, because it is badly burned, has not been identified.

But the renter, like in New Orleans suspect is military background, but not former military. He is active-duty military with 19 years plus of service, and he's part of Special Forces command. He is highly trained in communications, electronic measures for bomb detections, intelligence operations. He would be one of the most sophisticated in terms of training people in the Green Beret.

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BERMAN: Okay, just so we're talking about these two different things. The similarities are both rental electric vehicles from this Turo place, both military backgrounds, explosives in both trucks. Both attacks happened on New Year's Eve in tourist locations.

MILLER: That's right and that is why they say we can't eliminate the possibility that they're connected.

And yet, if you look at New Orleans, where he does five recordings, apparently in the dark as he's driving, you know, towards Louisiana from Texas, he's talking about family problems, financial problems, his life coming apart at the seams and that he's joined ISIS and that's why he's doing this.

If you look at Las Vegas, so far, it appears that they don't have communications or a clear motive from the individual who's in that truck.

BERMAN: All right, so, Jonathan Wackrow, right now we have warrants being executed in New Orleans, in Airbnbs; in Houston at the home of the New Orleans attacker. I guess in Colorado, at the home of the person tied to the rental vehicle in the Las Vegas attack. We're 24 hours in, what's taking so long here in this search process?

JONATHAN WACKROW, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Well, the search process needs to, you know, operate in different phases. One, you have to actually go to the court to get those warrants themselves. You have to swear out in front of a magistrate and make sure that the legal process and the legal justification for going into these locations is validated.

From there, it's not like what you see on television where the police just rush in and look for items of evidentiary value. What they actually have to do is because we have explosives that are involved here, you have to first make sure and focus on officer safety and scene safety.

So, what's going on is explosive technicians are going into these sites first, not looking for items of evidentiary value, but ensuring that there's no primary explosives, that there are no booby traps, that it is safe for the investigators to go in and then conduct a very methodical search for everything that's on that warrant and anything that's within plain sight that is of evidentiary value that can be used to then piece together, you know, to really find a motive and the intent for these different attacks.

BERMAN: And again, one of the things John Miller pointed out right there, in New Orleans, you do have this trail of radicalization. In Las Vegas, we don't even have a name yet. So, we don't have anything like that just yet.

WACKROW: We don't have a name and we also -- like the targeting locations of both are different, right, because one, you had a known event, you had -- you know, it is a target of opportunity. It's a soft target where you knew from a targeting standpoint that if I launch an attack there, the likelihood of high casualties was going to be there.

The second, Las Vegas is a different construct, 8:40-ish on New Year's morning in Las Vegas, not a lot of people there, so you're not really launching an attack. While it is an iconic site, it is a site like -- because it is the former and you know, you know, the --

BERMAN: It's the Trump hotel.

WACKROW: -- the Trump hotel, you know, that there is significance there. But in terms of causing damage, and then the second part of that, and John and I were talking beforehand, is the -- what we know potentially of the driver of the cybertruck with the military background using low-order explosives, basically gasoline and black powder pyrotechnics is not going to give you the blast radius that you need and the over pressurization to cause damage to the building or damage to others nearby.

BERMAN: Also, something about the behavior of the truck beforehand, John, you were talking about.

MILLER: Well, he gets into town and, you know, there's a combination of things -- license plate readers that track him through Las Vegas from the moment he enters town, but also from Tesla, every place he stopped driving from where he started in Colorado Springs to charge that vehicle until he gets to Las Vegas. So, they've got a good timeline.

He spends about an hour driving around the Strip. He stops at a motel along the way for a period of time. But an hour before the explosion, he enters that driveway with his vehicle and does a slow pass around, past the valet, people, and everything -- and you have to ask yourself, what's he doing?

To Jonathan's point, is he saying its seven something in the morning and there's not a lot of people here, I'm going to come back in an hour and see if there's a bigger crowd, or is he just doing his reconnaissance as a military operator would, which is who stops you where? Where am I going to place this? So, it's going to be -- so, the Elon Musk vehicle is going to be right under the Trump sign. We don't know what the symbolism that they were going for in this attack was.

But I mean they're looking at all of that. The idea that he drove through an hour beforehand is suggestive.

BERMAN: So, we are 24 hours into this, I mean, almost literally in the Las Vegas, a little bit more in New Orleans. What do you think the next big piece of information will be? What's reasonable to expect that we could learn soon?

WACKROW: Well, we're going to start getting information from the search warrants, right? And were going to start understanding from the localities of both attackers, their residences in Houston and other locations.

What can we garner from that, right? And I think we have more information, more direction with the New Orleans attacker as opposed to Las Vegas right now.

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But that will change once we identify the body, once we get these items of evidentiary value, we start piecing together, you know, and trying to figure out what is the motive here. What is driving both of these attacks, and are they connected?

You know, we have some threads here of connectivity. But again, the way that these attacks were launched to me signals some sort of differentiator.

BERMAN: I mean, how long could it take in Las Vegas to get some kind of confirmation one way or the other of ISIS ties, which I think would be hugely significant?

MILLER: Well, if ISIS is going by its own playbook, they would have -- if they recruited these people online, they would have obtained martyrdom videos from one or both of them.

We've got clues from the self-made videos from the New Orleans attacker, which tells us a lot, but nothing yet from the Las Vegas piece. But ISIS could come out with their own communique if they're connected that way or we could see something completely different.

I mean, as Jonathan points out, there's two critical factors here, which is who are they working for, if anybody? How were they recruited? The second factor is who else might have been involved? We're seeing signs of that in New Orleans. We're not seeing signs of that yet in Las Vegas.

BERMAN: I've got to say, this was a great discussion. I have -- leaving it with more questions in some ways than answers and perhaps bigger unknowns than I anticipated. We'll check back in with you throughout the day. Obviously, a lot more to learn here.

John Miller and Jonathan Wackrow, I'm John Berman, a lot of Johns here.

All right, this morning, police in New York are searching for multiple suspects and a motive after ten people were injured in a drive-by shooting.

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