Gun Law Debate; Trump Touts Meeting; Grand Jury to Consider Charging Gunman's Wife; Senate Democrats Filibuster on Gun Vote
ASHLEIGH BANFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, everyone. I'm Ashleigh Banfield. Welcome to LEGAL VIEW. Right now, President Obama is on his way to Orlando, where yet again for the 10th time he's going to convey grief and condolences of the nation to a community that has been racked by slaughter. He's due to land just within the hour, the same day several of the Pulse Nightclub victims are laid to rest, and authorities lay the groundwork for a potential indictment of the dead gunman's wife. Back in Washington, a 15 hour filibuster in support of tighter gun laws is now officially over. But the senator who led it says that he won at least some promise of the floor voting on legislation, long supported by Democrats, and now conceivably backed by some Republicans. And that is where we begin today, the Democratic wish list, consisting of closing the so-called gun show loophole for background checks, and barring gun sales to anybody on terrorism watch lists. The chief sponsor of that measure is Dianne Feinstein, who would like to bar sales to anybody who's been on a watch list any time in the past five years. That would have barred the Orlando shooter who was on the list for a while, but was removed from it in 2014. A competing measure by Republican John Cornyn would apply only to people on watch lists now and would only postpone gun buys for three days unless the feds could persuade a court to block the sale outright. CNN's Manu Raju is our man on Capitol Hill. We're also joined by senior Washington correspondent Jeff Zeleny. Manu, I want to begin with you. But before I get into all of that, the speaker of the House just spoke to reporters. Clearly this is on the minds of the press. He was questioned about that and a few other things as well. Take it away.</s>MANU RAJU, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL REPORTER: That's right, Ashleigh. Actually, Paul Ryan was asked about these gun measures and he really reiterated what Republicans are concerned about on Capitol Hill, that this measure, as you mentioned, from Dianne Feinstein would perhaps go too far in their view. They believe that it's drafted too broadly and that potentially it could sweep in folks who are not on that terror watch list. And if those folks are swept in, what is their recourse? That's a concern that Paul Ryan raised speaking to reports just a few minutes ago.</s>REP. PAUL RYAN (R), HOUSE SPEAKER: Is going after the Second Amendment how you stop terrorism? No. That's not how you stop terrorism. We have a bill that's being voted on right now to go after home grown jihadist. Let's not take our eye off the ball here. This is a person who was radicalized by Islamic radical terrorists, by -- he claimed it was by ISIS. So we need to make sure that we're focusing on the real issue here, which is terrorism.</s>RAJU: Now, there are discussions that have been taking place about how to move forward. You mentioned two possible votes on the Senate floor. We expect that to happen. But Republicans have been saying all along in the Senate that they're willing to have some votes, but don't expect any of those to actually pass. Now, one other thing on Paul Ryan. I had a chance to ask him about the man who is giving a lot of folks concerns here on Capitol Hill, on the Republican side, Donald Trump. I asked him specifically, would you consider rescinding your endorsement of Donald Trump if he says a lot of controversial things, continues to say those controversial things. Paul Ryan said, that is not my plan. And he'd rather see a Democrat be elected than -- I'm sorry, rather see a Republican be elected than a Democrat. So, sticking with Donald Trump for now also, Ashleigh.</s>BANFIELD: OK, Manu, stand by for a minute. Jeff Zeleny, if you could jump in as well. This sort of falls right in line with the concerns that Paul Ryan has daily (ph) about the presumptive nominee of his party, but does not want to address daily about the presumptive nominee of his party. The most recent one, Donald Trump telling GOP brass to keep quiet, be quiet, and that he might just go it alone. Curious what that means. But more to the point, Donald Trump has also said something that's not in lockstep with the GOP, and that is that he does think that guns should be kept out of the hands of terrorists, though he hasn't been specific. And today on Capitol Hill, it's all about the specifics of how to do that. So work with me here and help me navigate this issue.</s>JEFF ZELENY, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Right. Well, Ashleigh, there's no question that there is a big divide here and a growing divide between Donald Trump and the leadership of the Republican Party. You cannot even get them to say his name. Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, you know, when he's asked about these comments from Donald Trump says, I will not be talking about the presidential candidate today. So they do not even want to be seen talking about Donald Trump. And this is so -- really in stark contrast to the Democratic Party, which is coming together. The Clinton campaign is now officially taking over the reins of the DNC. It happened really within the last hour or so. So that's the difference. But, Ashleigh, look, Donald Trump has decided his supporters on his side, the -- in poll after poll after poll they show that, you know, party leadership, establishment leadership, you know, are not popular at all here. So I'm not sure that Donald Trump minds at all or cares at all what the leaders here think. But the difference here is going forward, Donald Trump said on the NRA, he tweeted yesterday that he wants to have a meeting with the NRA to, you know, talk more about the potential of banning people who are on these terrorism watch lists from buying guns. He has not yet had that meeting. We don't know any more specifics about his plan here, of course, but this is something to keep an eye on here because Donald Trump does not have a voting record. He does not have a long history on this. He could easily separate himself from the party on this and that is probably a more popular place to be here. But he will come under the full weight of the NRA, which has endorsed him, if he crosses them on this issue. We might hear from him later today when he speaks in Dallas this evening about this, but so far he has not been specific at all about what his gun plans would be.</s>BANFIELD: All right, somebody we heard from at length, and when I say that I really mean it, up to 15 hours --</s>ZELENY: Right.</s>BANFIELD: Just a little shy of 15 hours, was Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, who effectively did what he said was a successful filibuster. It's weird, guys, because typically a filibuster is to stop some kind of a vote, but this one is to actually push a vote.</s>ZELENY: Right.</s>BANFIELD: Here he is standing beside -- in his final comments, one of the victims of the Sandy Hook shooting. It was -- it was very poignant and very, very powerful, his comments. Seems to have worked. I just want to play, if I can, a moment of what Chris Murphy had to say about this.</s>SEN. CHRIS MURPHY (D), CONNECTICUT: Members behind me were there on the floor, 40 Democratic senators, joining together to make this passionate case. Senator Blumenthal and Senator Booker there with me for the duration of the 15 hours. My legs are a little bit rubbery, but my heart is strong this morning because I know that we made a difference yesterday.</s>BANFIELD: All right, Manu Raju, he made a difference in that they will actually have a vote. So that's a success. But a successful vote, isn't that really what we need to talk about?</s>RAJU: Well, it's very unlikely that there's going to be a vote that the Democrats would consider successful, which is passing the bill that they are pushing. They're -- clearly, universal background checks would be one of the issues that they hope that they get a vote on. What they're probably going to get a vote on is an amendment. But even if it does, remember, this is a bill that came up in the aftermath of that Sandy Hook shooting, that massacre that happened at Sandy Hook Elementary School, and Democrats controlled the Senate back then and they did not pass it then. Republicans control the Senate now and they're not going to pass it now. And we were talking about the issue of that so-called terror watch list, that terror gap as Democrats want to call it, there is a division between Republicans and Democrats about how to move forward on this. They are not yet in agreement. There's already been a vote last December on these issues and they both failed. And if they come forward now, they're going to fail again. Ashleigh.</s>BANFIELD: All right, Manu Raju and Jeff Zeleny, thank you for that. I just want to tell our audience a bit of a detail that we didn't realize until now, and it is pretty fascinating. As the president is actually in the air right now on route to Orlando, Florida, to meet with victims, survivors and family members, as well as hospital workers and those who were involved in the deadly shooting in Orlando, on board Air Force One with the president is Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, a Republican from Florida, riding with the president to his state. We'll continue to follow this and we're watching the clock for when the flight lands as well. You're going to see all of it live right here on CNN. In the meantime, in that city, the investigators there appear to be assembling some pretty serious facts for a felony case against Noor Salman. Noor Salman is the second wife, now widow, of the man who murdered 49 people early Sunday morning. CNN's senior investigative reporter, Drew Griffin, is following that angle. There is so much happening that we know and we don't know about Noor Salman. But walk me through what she originally told the police, how it changed and now how they've changed their attack on her.</s>DREW GRIFFIN, CNN SENIOR INVESTIGATIVE REPORTER: Yes. And this is what has a grand jury now apparently preparing to look at evidence against her. Initially she told police a lot. She told police that her husband had behavior that she said was increasingly violent, was speaking about jihadist attack, which she says she tried dissuade him. Says that she accompanied him apparently to go buy ammunition at one point and said she was concerned about him and about his potential for attack. But she said she didn't know anything about this attack at the Pulse Nightclub. What has changed and what is making this much more serious for this woman is that she now says that she apparently had a suspicion that when he -- she left -- he left their home here Saturday, he might be headed towards an attack. A suspicion now. That is a change of wording that quite frankly has investigators going, what did she really, really know about what was about to happen. Ashleigh.</s>BANFIELD: All right, I have a series of staccato questions I'm going to fire at you and, if I can, I want to do rapid fire. I have a lot of ground to cover, Drew. We're getting more information about a gun store that was worried about him when he came in asking for heavy armor. What do we know?</s>GRIFFIN: We know that four or five weeks ago he went to a gun store about 15 miles from this house. He went in asking for type 3A body armor, said he was a security guard. They didn't think it was suspicious until he asked for hardened armor, which is a military style, and then got on his cell phone and was speaking in a -- what they felt, although they don't know for sure -- was an Arabic kind of language. They say at that time the store says they alerted authorities, law enforcement. Would not specific which law enforcement, but they alerted them.</s>BANFIELD: Next question, it's about the FaceBook postings that apparently this murderer was not only doing before the attack but also during the attack?</s>GRIFFIN: Yes. A month before he was searching for various things that seemed suspicious at the time. But, again, this is a month before, trying to look up Baghdadi speeches. But during the attack he was posting actually on FaceBook, talking about this is the vengeance of Islam and other Islamic ISIS related pledges. He was actually posting and making phone calls, Ashleigh, during the attack, during the time he was inside, and so searching to see what kind of news was breaking on him and his attack.</s>BANFIELD: And as if we didn't, you know, need any more information, apparently his behavior, his odd behaviors go back a long time. We're now learning about an elementary school classmate who's told CNN that he was making terroristic threats even back then. What else do we know about that?</s>GRIFFIN: If -- if you look through the body of investigative work that all of my colleagues have been in, we've had warning signs since this guy was a kid. We know that he was investigated in 2013 and 2014 for ISIS -- radical Islam related things. We know that he was kicked out of a law enforcement academy in 2007. We don't have the specific details. But at the same time, he was fired from the Florida Department of Correction. We are told by classmates it was over some kind of a potential threat that he made back then. And now we're learning that just last year, Ashleigh, he reapplied to that same law enforcement academy. This was in October of last year. And according to the Federal Department of Law Enforcement, he was denied and called the Florida Department of Law Enforcement complaining he felt he was not accepted because he was a Muslim. So, October of last year he was complaining that he wasn't readmitted because he felt discrimination because he was a Muslim. Ashleigh.</s>BANFIELD: All right, Drew, excellent work on behalf you and our team compiling these details about this mass murder. Thank you for that. I want to go back to Noor Salman, the wife, and more about the potential federal prosecution of her. Mark O'Mara is a defense attorney and CNN legal analyst. He's based in the same community where this happened. Mark, quick question for you, varying stories to authorities, prior knowledge about jihadist tendencies. Why has this woman not already been arrested?</s>MARK O'MARA, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Well, first of all, let's remember, FBI is one of the best or the best law enforcement agency in the world because they do it methodically and they take their time. We know, as an example, that there's a lot of problems with them getting all the information off the phone forensically. So why would they rush to arresting her or rush to indicting her when they have a lot more information to understand. We would love them to rush to judgment. We would love to have that information available to us. They're going to take their time and do it methodically because they're going to have to have a lot of the forensic information, a lot of the turshiary (ph) information, or circumstantial evidence, in order to support the fact of what they may want to charger her with. And what that is potentially --</s>BANFIELD: So --</s>O'MARA: Go ahead.</s>BANFIELD: Yes, I'm sorry to interrupt, but I'm still sort of thinking that they want to put this before a grand jury. They're intending to put it before a grand jury. Presumably a grand jury is already seated. How on earth are you going to get a fair grand jury? Everyone in the world knows about this. Most significantly the people who live in that community most affected will be sitting in judgment of her based on these one sided facts?</s>O'MARA: Well, absolutely true. But, don't forget, a grand jury, in and of itself, is one sense (ph) an arm of the prosecution. But it's an arm of the prosecution that still brings the community into the decision-making process. So the 18 or 20 people that are sitting on this grand jury certainly they've heard about it, but they're also trained and they know the rules that they have to act under in order to look at this case as dispassionately as they could, much more so than an individual prosecutor might. So we do have to give them their due that a grand jury, by definition, would do a -- as good a job, a better job than an individual prosecutor. All I'm saying is that FBI is going to take their time because, in effect, the one shot that they have to go to the grand jury, they can always go back, the one shot that they're going to take to the grand jury is only after they have all of the information available. They're not going to move and charge her with a lesser offense because they only have a certain amount of information. They're going to wait. Potentially, if they find enough information to charge her with conspiracy to commit first degree murder, 49 counts of it, it's going to come from the fact that she knew about the event coming up and she did something in furtherance of it. Well, that something in furtherance of it may come from that forensic evidence that they have yet to disclose or even to discover.</s>BANFIELD: Or at least that misprision (ph) charge if it's not conspiracy in some way. I have to leave it there. Mark O'Mara, thank you for that. Do appreciate it.</s>O'MARA: Sure, Ashleigh.</s>BANFIELD: Coming up next, one of the senators who joined in that gun filibuster overnight, stood on the floor for those 15 hours in lockstep with that senator. Joining me to talk about where we go from here, the other senator who was part of the speaking group, Corey booker of New Jersey. How confident is he that the time is finally here for new gun control legislation. He's with us next.