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Questions Grow Over Musk's Role as WH Says He's Not an Employee, Doesn't Work for DOGE, Has No Authority to Make Decisions for Agencies; FDA Food Chief Quits Over Disagreements with Trump Admin; Head of Justice Department's Washington, D.C. Criminal Division Quits; 1,000 Plus Veterans Affairs Workers Terminated in DOGE Purge. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired February 18, 2025 - 15:00   ET

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

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BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: The heads of two key government agencies quit as President Trump and Elon Musk's DOGE team continue slashing the federal government. We have details on the decisions that these two leaders just couldn't accept.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: And U.S. and Russian diplomats holding the first major talks on ending the war in Ukraine. We're going to look at the four principles they agreed on with Europe and Ukraine on the outside looking in.

Plus, new footage showing the moment a Delta jet crash lands and then flips at Toronto Pearson International Airport. We're following these major developing stories and many more all coming in right here to CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

KEILAR: Hello, I'm Brianna Keilar with Boris Sanchez here in Washington.

And top officials from all corners of Washington are turning in their resignation letters as President Trump and Elon Musk drastically overhaul the government. The latest high-ranking departure comes from the Social Security Administration which cites serious concerns with how Musk's DOGE team is operating. In the meantime, court filings from the Trump administration raising some new questions about Musk's role in the White House.

The documents say Musk does not work for DOGE and has no authority to make decisions for federal agencies.

SANCHEZ: And DOGE has played a big part in gutting the federal government, has tried to gain access to sensitive information. And now, a defense official confirms DOGE staffers are sitting in on Pentagon meetings. CNN's Rene Marsh is following all of these threads.

Rene, let's start with the resignations. These are some senior folks. Who's quitting and why? RENE MARSH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I mean, these are two agencies that impact many Americans, millions of Americans' lives, from food safety to Social Security benefits. So, first at the Social Security Administration, Michelle King. She'd been at the agency for more than 30 years and she walks away from her decades worth of service after clashing with DOGE.

DOGE wanted to get access to sensitive systems within the agency that contained Social Security recipients, personal information from medical information, financial information. It's worth noting some 72.5 million Americans get Social Security benefits from the disabled to children to retirees. And so, it really raised some concerns with her as far as the access they were looking for and what they planned on doing with that information.

Of course, Musk and his DOGE has said that this is all about identifying waste and fraud and rooting it out. The White House, in reference to her resignation, said in a statement that the president is committed to appointing the best and most qualified individuals who are dedicated to working on behalf of the American people.

But then there's also the FDA. That agency's food chief has also resigned. He actually, his name is Jim Jones, he started at the agency in 2023. He was actually in line with RFK Jr.'s vision for food safety, but he left because he said that his staff was cut. You remember last week, we talked about thousands of employees being fired. Well, his staff, he lost 89 of them and he said this quote, he says, "I happen to agree with the priorities of Kennedy, but we won't have the staff to do it," so we saw his resignation.

SANCHEZ: Rene Marsh, thank you so much for the update.

We have plenty to discuss now. We're joined by Martin O'Malley. He's a former Social Security Administration commissioner under President Biden.

Sir, thanks so much for being with us.

First, let's get your reaction to King's resignation. What did you think when you saw the news?

MARTIN O'MALLEY, FORMER SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION COMMISSIONER: I was very - I was sad for the agency. I'm sad for the American people. I had the honor to work with Michelle King and a lot of other really dedicated senior executive service people at an agency that's actually facing the largest number of employees. I mean, I'm sorry, largest number of customers they've ever served with fewer employees than they've had in 50 years.

So, Michelle is a - King was a - is an outstanding public servant, totally beyond reproach, never partisan, always professional.

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And I think it says a lot about the disregard of the law and disregard of people's personal identifying information that this new DOGE crowd has that Michelle would have the integrity to say, look, I'm out of here. I'm not going to be an accomplice in committing these crimes.

SANCHEZ: Elon Musk has claimed that SSA is rife with fraud, suggesting that benefits are being paid to dead people, that millions and millions of dollars are going to waste. You're laughing, but that is a concern that a lot of Americans have, is it not? Is it a laughing matter?

O'MALLEY: Well, yes. He has no idea what he's talking about. There is not like a zombie apocalypse of people, you know, cadavers running around with Social Security checks coming out of their pockets. On the contrary, what's more common that happens is - I mean, it's a big agency, so yes, there are outliers. It's 72.5 million people, sometimes really desperate people will try to hide the fact that grandma died, so they get a couple more checks.

But more often because of the checks we have in place, where we interrupt payments of people over a certain age, especially if they stop receiving Medicare benefits, were more commonly in a more usual is that we have to restore benefits when we erroneously cut them off when somebody moves out of country or something.

But no, Elon Musk, I mean, the co-presidents keep throwing stuff out on Twitter that's - and that they can never back up. I mean, ask Elon Musk. Show me the 12 people that are 150 years old. He can't. Show me the 200 million that are still receiving checks. He can't. These 19- year-old nitwits from DOGE that are violating the law and plucking people's, you know, personal identifying information, they don't know what they're looking at because, you know, the IT system that those dedicated employees have kept cranking out the checks, even during COVID - even during COVID are very old and they have an expertise.

But now, Donald Trump - you know what the biggest threat is to Social Security is that the co-presidents are going to drive out another 10,000 people from an agency that's already buckling under 50 year low in staffing.

SANCHEZ: Sure.

O'MALLEY: And all time high in customers.

SANCHEZ: I just want to be clear ...

O'MALLEY: For three years, they had the worst (INAUDIBLE) of government.

SANCHEZ: I just want to be as precise as possible on something. Do you have any evidence that these folks working at DOGE have plucked, as you say, Americans' personal information or are you speculating on that?

O'MALLEY: I'm not speculating on. I mean, I've talked to a number of people inside the agency and I have no doubt that the recent retirements were because of people wanting to do something improper with personal identifying information. You have to - I mean, I came to understand as President Biden's commissioner of Social Security that they dedicated employees at Social Security consider it their sacred duty to protect people's personal identifying information. It is a fireable offense if an employee goes through and browses to see what their brother-in-law might have made in the course of his life for those things. It's a fireable offense and oftentimes it's something that is referable to the inspector general for criminal prosecution.

But now, we can't do that because the co-presidents whacked all of the inspector generals whose job it is to police against waste, fraud and abuse. So, there is abuse going on and it's all been committed by the 19-year-old nitwits at DOGE who are empowered by the co-presidents Elon Musk and Donald Trump.

SANCHEZ: Martin O'Malley, we have to leave the conversation there.

O'MALLEY: Yes.

SANCHEZ: Appreciate you joining us and sharing your point of view.

O'MALLEY: Sure. Thank you.

SANCHEZ: Meantime, there's another major departure. This one happening at the Department of Justice. The head of the criminal division within the D.C. U.S. Attorney's Office has now left her post.

KEILAR: CNN's Katelyn Polantz is following this story.

Do we know why she quit, Katelyn?

KATELYN POLANTZ, CNN CRIME AND JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: We do. And we've obtained the resignation letter that this prosecutor wrote to her boss, a political appointee, Ed Martin, in the D.C. U.S. Attorney's Office, saying she was done. And it was because Martin and others at Main Justice, other people installed by Donald Trump to lead that department, she just didn't think that there was enough to open a criminal investigation and to take steps to freeze bank accounts related to climate and environment spending that the department wanted her to do. She said she was not going to be opening a grand jury investigation.

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She just didn't see that there was enough to say to a bank that they needed to freeze funds at that bank related to this federal spending because of a criminal predicate, even though the U.S. attorney had ordered her to do that. So, all of this taken together, this prosecutor, her name is Denise Cheung, she's just another person in the Justice Department who has been there a very long time, very well respected, who is saying, no, I'm not going to do what Trump appointed legal officials are asking me to do because I think those things are unethical or just not founded under the law.

The Justice Department spokespeople then said, though, in this situation, she's not making an act of heroism. She's just not following the commands.

KEILAR: All right. Katelyn Polantz, thank you so much for the report. The DOGE-led effort to drastically shrink the government workforce is really impacting Veterans Affairs employees. Just last week, more than a thousand workers there who did not take the deferred resignation package were fired. Many were probationary employees who had served less than one to two years in the department. They had fewer job protections. They didn't have the right to appeal. Workers who were allegedly underperforming also targeted.

The Trump administration, claiming the move would save the department more than $98 million a year. Andrew Lennox is a Marine veteran who spent 10 years serving. He was fired from a supervisor training program at the VA Medical Center in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Andrew, thank you so much for being with us.

First off, I just want to understand something, because the grounds for termination in your case and so many others is basically a question of whether your continued employment was in the, quote, "public interest." What is your reaction to that?

ANDREW LENNOX, 10-YEAR MARINE VETERAN; TERMINATED FROM VA MEDICAL CENTER: So, yes, that's the exact language that was on the termination notification. It's - my reaction at first was surprised, you know, disbelief and - I mean, this morning, as I packed up my office, it's anger, you know, because it's - you know, my - you know, I was terminated for my performance. I haven't even had a performance review. Nobody consulted any, you know, any supervisors or the director of our hospital before making these terminations.

KEILAR: So, tell me about your job and why you wanted to work at the VA.

LENNOX: Yes, so I spent 10 years in the Marine Corps. I loved it. Greatest job I ever had. And I made the decision to transition into the civilian world. And for a little bit, I worked in civilian jobs. I was at a pharmaceutical company for a little bit, and they sent me to a military friendly employers' conference. And I ended up sharing a table with some Veterans Affairs social workers.

There's a Marine Corps vet, and he was telling me about the work he does. And like, looking at that group of people and the organizations to get back to, you know, Veterans, I made the decision that is what I want to do. I want to continue serving my country. And I thought there'd be no better way than helping, you know, Veterans, you know, my family, the people, you know, that, you know, gave me so much I'd like to get back.

And my role there is administrative officer for our primary care department of the hospital. So, it's a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff. It's kind of eliminating the red tape and friction that just comes into healthcare as far as like scheduling doctors, the patients, making sure wait times are short. They - you know, scheduling vacation, pay, ordering equipment, all these things that we try and take the administrative burden off of the doctors, and the nurses and the care providers to get veterans treated, you know, as quickly and effectively as possible. KEILAR: Yes. So, you have the VA Secretary Doug Collins saying that these firings will not negatively impact VA healthcare. What's your reaction to that?

LENNOX: He didn't ask my supervisor that. He didn't give me time to do a proper transition of duties to people that would be covering down on what I was supposed to. We didn't get to pass my access to different, you know, networks and databases. I had no time to make sure that I left the job, you know, with a proper transition.

So, there wasn't a gap in treatment or service. I had to come in after I was fired to make sure that my team had all of the information until they cut my access to my government email and phone at 5 PM Friday evening.

KEILAR: Do you get - you know, I think a lot of people don't realize that almost a third of the federal workforce is veterans. Do you get the impression as you hear, you know, just people, Americans talking about federal workers, politicians talking about federal workers, that there's an understanding of who federal workers are?

LENNOX: Yes, I think it's something that's kind of - it's grown as far as like the evil bureaucracy, you know?

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The words that are being thrown around are, you know, parasitic, lazy, unproductive. And like, you're - we're hearing these words, but again, I had limited experience with the VA before I worked there. And then, seeing the men and women that are dedicating their lives, they're not making the most money doing this. They're doing it for, you know, different reasons, especially our doctors, our administrators, these highly trained, highly skilled people had made this decision to serve.

Like these are the parasites. These are the lazy, unproductive, you know, employees that you're hearing, you know, politicians and other media outlets say. There's, you know, there's combat veterans. There's survivors, you know, whose family members passed away, you know, in service to this country. It's your neighbors.

These are not the evil bureaucrats you think that are just coming up to system and living off the system. We want to work hard. We want to help people. And it's for, you know, it's across the board for all federal agencies, but it's just - it's easy to paint them as an enemy in this situation.

KEILAR: Andrew, thank you so much for your service in the Marine Corps. Thank you for your service at the VA. We really appreciate your time today.

LENNOX: Yes, I appreciate it, too. And I, you know, I just like to say a lot of the times the word layoff is being thrown around for what's happening. I want to be clear that these are terminations. We've been denied the protections that most people get during reductions in force, and we were terminated due to a technicality that they found a loophole. And it's, you know, my belief that it's a matter of time until they find more loopholes to deny more people their benefits and, you know, the services that we enjoy from the federal government.

KEILAR: That is a concern broadly held by people even still who are employed in the federal workforce. I've been hearing it. Andrew, again, thank you so much. We really do appreciate it.

And still to come, officials in Canada, giving an update on the Delta jet that crashed and flipped over as newly obtained footage shows the very moment.

SANCHEZ: Plus covert drone missions over Mexico. What we're learning about the CIA's efforts to spy on drug cartels.

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SANCHEZ: We have some new developments to share with your surrounding that terrifying plane crash at Toronto international airport. Today, officials acknowledging the extreme weather conditions in the days leading up to the crash and now we're getting a closer look at what actually happened. In this video obtained by CNN watch as Delta Flight 4819 descends on the runway, making a hard landing right there. You see flames shoot up as it skids down the runway, flipping onto its roof as bad as this looks all 80 people on board survived, 21 were injured, two remain hospitalized. CNN's Brian Todd joins us now live from Toronto Pearson International Airport.

Brian, what have you been seeing this hour?

BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Boris, that Delta jet remains at the spot where it came to a stop yesterday, upside down on that place on the tarmac there. And officials say it will probably remain there at least for another 48 hours while they continue their onsite investigation. A couple of things that we learned from the news conference today earlier was that when first responders first got to the site, it only took them a couple of minutes to get there because they had a whole team of first responders already at the airport. It only took them a couple of minutes to get there.

When they got there first, they had to put out spot fires, according to some of the first responding officials who spoke today. Also, Todd Aitken, the Toronto airport fire chief, said after they put out those fires, he was asked, you know, what did you do then to try to get the passengers off? And he said, actually, the passengers, almost all of them were able to self-evacuate and then they were escorted away, so that was a pretty pertinent development in the accounts of what happened there right after the crash.

The passengers, according to Todd Aitken, actually most of them self- evacuated from the plane when it came to a stop. Deborah Flint, the president and CEO of the Toronto Pearson International Airport, in this news conference yesterday - I mean, this morning - officials would not say whether the weather actually played a role in the crash, but here's what she had to say about the snow systems that came in - through this airport through the Toronto area a couple of days before the crash. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DEBORAH FLINT, PRESIDENT & CEO, TORONTO PEARSON INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT: From last Thursday to Sunday, Toronto Pearson saw extreme conditions, two separate snow storms. On Thursday and Sunday, we got more than 20 inches, 50 centimeters of accumulated snow. That is actually not typical. In fact, it is more snow within that time window than we received in all of last winter. There were many delays and cancellations across this part of Canada and the U.S. Northeast during this time, creating numerous flight delays and backlogs.

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TODD: Now, you heard Deborah Flint talk about the delays and disruptions. Now, on that front, Boris, while that plane remains on the tarmac, two runways at this airport are going to remain closed at least for the next couple of days, so there will continue to be a lot of disruptions and delays, cancellations here in Toronto. Boris.

SANCHEZ: Brian Todd reporting live in Toronto, thank you so much. Brianna.

KEILAR: And for more on this investigation, I want to bring in CNN Aviation Analyst and former NTSB managing director Peter Goelz. Your biggest takeaways, Peter, from the new video of this crash that we are seeing today.

PETER GOELZ, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Well, that video was very revealing, Brianna.

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I mean, it showed that the RJ typically just before it lands at about 35 feet above the runway, flares upwards just a little bit to allow it to come down at a gentle rate. In this case, you can see the nose never pitches up. It comes down hard. The right undercarriage, the landing gear collapses, and the right wing apparently catches in the grass off the runway and tears off. That is a very revealing video and it's going to play a major role in the investigation.

KEILAR: So talk about the possibilities here for - I mean, it seems pretty obvious that it's either some kind of pilot error or it's some kind of mechanical failure or maybe some kind of combination, and then weather could factor in as well as to what would have caused such a hard landing.

GOELZ: Well, the voice recorder, when that is downloaded by the Transportation Safety Board, that will tell us what's going on in the cockpit and whether the crew was on top of this landing, whether they were getting ready to stick it as they should have or whether there was - whether were confusion, whether they were behind the aircraft as the term goes. The voice recorder will spell that out.

In addition, the data recorder will give us indications of what was happening to the plane, what its sink rate was, did it encounter a wind shear at the last moment that drove it into the ground. These are all things that will come out in the coming weeks, and I think it's going to be a combination starting with the weather and they - a very heavy gust that drove that plane down into the runway.

KEILAR: And, you know, how important is it and how much will it tell you when you get - investigators get, statements from the crew, from, of course, the pilots, and from the passengers?

GOELZ: Well, the pilot interviews will be critical, as will the videotape, and they - the passengers, they'll all be interviewed just primarily for egress issues. How did they get out of the aircraft? What was the evacuation like? But the flight crew will be interviewed separately to determine what they thought was going on and what their responses were. They'll be asked to explain how they were set up for this landing and what happened.

KEILAR: All right, Peter, great to have your insights. Thank you so much for being with us.

GOELZ: Thanks, Brianna.

KEILAR: Top diplomats from the U.S. and Russia wrapping up the first real talks on ending the war in Ukraine. Details on what was accomplished and what might happen next when we come back.

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