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As Ceasefire Begins, 72-hour Window Opens For Hostage Release; Deadly Blast At Tennessee Military Explosives Company; Letitia James Indicted After Trump Pressure Campaign; Federal Deployment Of National Guard Troops Blocked In Illinois; Tesla Self-driving Feature Under Investigation Again; Judge Tosses Drake's Lawsuit Over Kendrick Lamar Diss Track. Aired 1:30-2p ET

Aired October 10, 2025 - 13:30   ET

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

[13:30:00]

CLARISSA WARD, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, there is palpable relief that this, you know, perpetual bombardment of the last two years is finally over, but there is also a sense that these people are broken and that to rebuild these lives, to deal with this desperate humanitarian crisis that continues to unfold in Gaza.

I think for the people of Gaza, this is less about closing a chapter and rather about opening a new one, which will be fraught with all sorts of challenges. And obviously, a lot of moving parts, Wolf, as we've been discussing in terms of what the next phases of this plan will look like after the crucial exchange, the hostages out, the Palestinian prisoners released and detainees as well. And that should take place in the next now 64 hours, Wolf.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "THE SITUATION ROOM": And even as this, these next few days are going to be so powerful, so dramatic, President Trump is expected to arrive here in Israel over the next few days. He's been invited to address the Knesset, Israel's parliament, to give a major speech there, which he has presumably accepted to do. So that's going to be another element in all of this, watching President Trump who's been so instrumental in bringing this deal together, show up here in Israel, meet with family members, meet with government officials, and have his moment.

WARD: And I don't know if you saw, Wolf, when you were driving in from the airport earlier today. There are actually billboards around Tel Aviv saying, "Thank you, President Trump," for really forcing this, for really bringing this about, the amount of pressure it has taken to get everybody to this point and even though there are still so many balls in the air, even though it is not clear what exactly the next step looks like in terms of what kind of a force will take over control of Gaza, what will the makeup of that force be?

What will the role of the 200 CENTCOM, Central Command U.S. troops who are deploying here, where will they be stationed? So many questions, but just to get everybody to this point, to agree, the war is over, the hostages are released. The guns fall silent. The rebuilding begins. The detainees are released. The Palestinian prisoners are released. That has already taken an inordinate amount of effort to get across the finish line. And so, I think you're seeing gratitude, frankly, in many corners of the world to President Trump and his team for that.

BLITZER: And those 200 U.S. troops that are being sent here to Israel, they're not going to Gaza, they're coming to Israel, part of the U.S. militaries, as you point out, Central Command, which oversees the entire Middle East region.

WARD: So they're going to be part, we understand of this sort of international stabilization force. They will be working very closely with Qataris, with Emiratis, with Turkish troops as well. And basically, their role, although it hasn't been clearly delineated yet, will be to do whatever is necessary to facilitate the implementation of the next stages of the plan. I spoke to a defense official who said that part of that will almost certainly be facilitating security to allow the free passage of aid, 170,000 metric tons of aid, Wolf, are currently poised --

BLITZER: Yeah.

WARD: -- on Gaza's various borders.

BLITZER: People in Gaza may get humanitarian --

WARD: -- ready to -- and they desperately needed to go in.

BLITZER: The food, the medicine, that's lifesaving.

WARD: Absolutely.

BLITZER: All right.

WARD: Life saving.

BLITZER: Clarissa is going to be with me for the next several days. Erica, in the meantime, back to you.

ERICA HILL, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": All right, Wolf, thank you. And thank you to Clarissa as well. Ahead here, back to this devastating news that we're following out of Tennessee. Multiple people we are learning are feared dead following a blast at a site that makes military explosives. We're going to be joined by a local official with the very latest after this quick break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:37:35]

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": We're back now to the Breaking News that we are monitoring out of Tennessee, where a deadly blast has gone off at a military and demolition explosives plant. Local officials telling us that several people remain unaccounted for at this time. Let's bring in Kerry Roberts. He's a state Senator representing this area just southwest of Nashville. Senator, thank you for being with us. Can you give us the latest? What have you heard? SEN. KERRY ROBERTS, (R) TENNESSEE STATE SENATE: Thank you, Erica. Well, certainly, this is a developing story. We know that, from the footage that we've seen, we know that the facility was completely leveled. Of course, we can see that there were cars in the parking lot. So, I think the determination right now is trying to figure out how many people were in the facility. Are there any survivors, the families that need to be contacted and so forth.

So, Tennessee Emergency Management Association, the local authorities have all refrained from giving any kind of estimate as far as, are there survivors or how many people may have perished. So, we're going to know a lot more in the upcoming hour as to what the status of that is.

KEILAR: Have you been able to go to the site?

ROBERTS: No, I've not gone to the site. I'll accompany the governor, I guess when he goes, but I'm about an hour and a half away from the site. I immediately reached out to our local sheriffs and said, I will do whatever you need. Generally speaking, in something like this, they don't need someone like me to be in the way. So, I'm trying to work the phones at my end to make sure that they have all the support they need.

And our Tennessee Emergency Management Association was already -- agency was already involved by the time I called them and they were aware of what happened and were sending all of their resources there to be of help. So it's really been just a very rapid response to the situation. People recognize the gravity of the situation, how serious it is, and the response has just been very tremendous thus far.

KEILAR: So give us a sense here. We've learned that this plant, it handled military-grade TNT and C4.

[13:40:00]

We just heard from a local mayor that we're talking about the kind of explosives that are also used in civilian projects. For instance, if you were, you know, clearing an area to build a road. Can you tell us a little bit more about what exploded here?

ROBERTS: I don't know what exploded, so Accurate has multiple buildings there. They're in a large campus of about 1,300 acres and they separate their buildings, which I assume is for safety concerns. And so, they make a wide range of products. Some will go to Department of Defense and then industrial use, so road builders, for example, that do blasting or quarries, things like that.

So they have a full range of products that they sell for both military and industrial application. What was in this particular building? I don't know. I'm sorry.

KEILAR: No, that's all right. I just wanted to see if you could shed any light on that. Can you give us a sense of how families are being notified? How are they being kept in the loop? Are they able to gather somewhere? Do you know about that? ROBERTS: Accurate immediately put together a Family Assistance Center, so that family members, could reach out to them and get up to date information. Also, our local healthcare facilities or TriStar Hospitals in the area set up an incident command center. So there are several places that people can call in, but I would say the starting point for a family member would be Accurate itself and the Family Assistance Center that they have set up.

KEILAR: Senator, can you give us a sense of how integrated this company is into the community? I mean, with how many people -- I know there were 80 people we've learned who were in this particular building. But as you said, it's a very large campus. Just in terms of employment and how much this touches the community, can you give us a sense of that?

ROBERTS: It's hard to go any place in this rural community and not run into someone who has some kind of connection with this business. It is a good employer in the area. A lot of people have been proud to work there. You'll see baseball caps and things like that with their name on it. Community events, chamber of commerce events, you'll see people from, from the company.

So, it is a well-loved company in the area and a good employer in the area, so this is going to have a devastating impact on quite a few families.

KEILAR: Yeah. Listen, we are very sorry for your community, and we are looking at these pictures and we are getting a sense of the devastation.

ROBERTS: It's heartbreaking. Yeah, it is just --

KEILAR: It is heartbreaking.

ROBERTS: It's heartbreaking, yes.

KEILAR: Senator Kerry Roberts, thanks for being with us and giving us the latest there. We appreciate it.

ROBERTS: Thank you, Erica.

KEILAR: And we do have some brand new details about what led to the indictment against New York Attorney General, Letitia James. The charges coming just weeks after President Trump very publicly told his DOJ to take action.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:47:38]

HILL: There are new details on the indictment of New York Attorney General, Leticia James. Sources telling CNN, the U.S. attorney who secured that indictment did not inform the Attorney General Pam Bondi or other DOJ leadership before presenting the case to a grand jury. In fact, the move apparently caught Bondi off-guard. KEILAR: Yeah, the five-page indictment accuses James of two felony charges, bank fraud and making false statements to a financial institution. It all relates to a mortgage that she took out on a home in Norfolk, Virginia back in 2020. And these are charges that were brought by the interim U.S. attorney Lindsey Halligan, a former personal attorney for Trump. She stepped into the role about two weeks ago after her predecessor resigned amid pressure to charge James.

We've also learned, a post by President Trump on social media that seemed to set all of this in motion was meant to be a private message to the attorney general. Let's talk about this now with former Republican U.S. Congressman, Adam Kinzinger and former U.S. Attorney, Harry Litman.

Harry, this reporting, first just that the attorney general was caught off-guard on Thursday when the U.S. Attorney, Lindsey Halligan secured the indictment against James. What do you think about that?

HARRY LITMAN, FORMER U.S. ATTORNEY: Yeah, stranger and stranger for them to have been arm's length. Now, I can't believe that really, all the evidence seems very strong that it was directed or it was in order to satisfy Trump's urge for reprisal prosecution. Lindsey Halligan is his private attorney. Did she just completely bypass DOJ leadership and go directly to the top? That would be very anomalous and improper. Any way you slice it, something really weird happened here.

Possibly she wants Bondi to have deniability, but we're going to have a focus here as we did in Comey about the reasons for doing this prosecution, what it reprisal or not? And that's going to engage the leadership of DOJ. If she somehow did this on her own, remember, she has zero experience. She doesn't know where the door is. That's going to be funky would be the legal term, just really nuts.

HILL: Funky, a new legal term that I'm learning today. Republican Congressman, Don Bacon earlier today told Pamela Brown that he sees in all of this, in his words, a little bit of the weaponization here. But he also noted it's not limited to just one party. Take a listen.

[13:50:00]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. DON BACON, (R-NE): So, what bothers me the most is his demands and then she ran on prosecuting Trump. And I don't think that was -- neither one was right for doing that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HILL: So Congressman, the fact that he's calling it out for everyone here, what is that change moving forward if this in fact becomes sort of the way things are done?

ADAM KINZINGER, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR AND FORMER U.S. REPRESENTATIVE: Yeah, I mean, this can't be the way things that are done -- are done. And here's where people get everything mixed up, is they pretend like this is just a response to what the DOJ did to Donald Trump. It's not at all the case. First off, you had a January 6th which really happened by the way. And then you had the DO -- or the government consistently asking Donald Trump for these classified documents. And for a year, he stonewalled -- a year. And then they finally had to go get them.

So to compare and say, as many do on the right, that this is just retribution, it's not. This is a unilateral attack now. And so, the hope is that we don't get into a position where we have this back and forth. Don Bacon is right in saying that Letitia James probably should not have run on, you know, that as part of her platform but she is a politician. It's not necessarily illegal for her to have done that. It's just improper.

But I'm going to tell you what's going to be -- what's way more chilling than that is the president of the United States sending accidentally, maybe God had something to do with this that it came out in the open, "accidentally sending a direct message out to the public" where he is telling his attorney general who to prosecute. There is no way that is anything but political targeting. And there's not a single Republican on CIA truth juice that would tell you otherwise.

KEILAR: Yeah. Harry, what does that mean for Letitia James or James Comey or someone who is trying to point out that they believe their indictment to be political? What does that do for them in court?

LITMAN: It means this is the really rare case in which they have a very strong selective prosecution claim, which by the way doesn't turn on whether the evidence is solid or not. Under the law, it's a constitutional violation, violation of everything DOJ stands for, to target someone for political reasons. We are -- people at DOJ are told again and again that you can't do it. And it's really hammered home. So we know that Fitzgerald is going to do it for Comey. I'm sure Abbe Lowell is going to do it for James.

And what they'll have to show, in 99 out of hundred cases, you can't even get it out the box. But here we have those statements from Trump that seem to give kind of overwhelming proof that this is what's going on there. That will mean they'll bring a motion, this is the real reason, and they'll seek discovery.

They'll want to get Halligan, maybe Bondi, maybe Trump on the stand to be able to prove to the judge this is why it happened. And again, if this is why it happened, doesn't matter, these charges are really picayune, wouldn't be brought in any U.S. attorney's office, but whether -- it doesn't matter if they're bonafide. If you do it for that reason, you violated the constitution, the case will be dismissed.

HILL: Congressman, you've said in the past, you wouldn't be shocked if you were targeted in some way. Of course, President Biden did issue a preemptive pardon for you, which I know you didn't ask for. But you said, you appreciated him looking out for you. Do you think you're going to need that at this point?

KINZINGER: No. I mean, look, ultimately, they're going to have to just literally make something up because I was doing not just my job, I was actually doing my constitutional duty. And if they want to make something up and come after me, fine. I mean, then I'll fight him and I'll be 78 times more effective than I am now. But no, I don't think so. I mean, it's -- Donald Trump is focused on people he can control, which were those that were in the administration. It would be a pretty -- crossing a pretty big line to go after people in the legislative branch because there is a clear separation of powers in the government, even if he doesn't recognize them, and even if Congress won't defend its own power this term.

KEILAR: Adam Kinzinger, Harry Litman, thank you so much to both of you for being with us. And we are following this breaking news out Tennessee, where there has been a huge and deadly blast at a military explosives plant. We'll talk about what we know just ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:58:55]

KEILAR: Now to some of the other headlines that we are watching this hour. A federal judge has blocked the Trump administration's use of National Guard troops in Chicago for two weeks. In a scathing ruling, the judge said she saw no credible evidence of rebellion in Illinois. A separate judge has also temporarily blocked federal agents in Illinois from using certain types of force and crowd control measures against protesters after this video of a pastor being repeatedly shot by pepper balls drew widespread outcry.

Also, the NTSB is looking into 58 incidents involving Teslas reportedly running red lights or driving on the wrong side of the road and getting into accidents while drivers are using the self-driving feature. The new investigation covers all Teslas equipped with the full self-driving technology, which is nearly three million vehicles. The probe could upend Elon Musk plans to turn millions of his cars into completely driverless vehicles.

And a federal judge dismissed Drake's defamation lawsuit against Universal Music Group over Kendrick Lamar's diss track "Not Like Us." The judge ruling that Lamar's lyrics that painted Drake as a "certified pedophile" was opinion and not an expression of fact.