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Slender Man Attacker Captured After Escaping Group Home; Judge Dismisses DOJ Cases Against James Comey and Letitia James, White House Postpones Unveiling of Trump's Health Care Plan; New FEMA Chief Dubbed "the Terminator," Led Effort to Slash Agency Spending. Aired 2-2:30p ET

Aired November 24, 2025 - 14:00   ET

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

[14:00:00]

JEAN CASAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: -- hearing, the defense put on a lot of mental health testimony and the judge determined in sentencing, she'd be committed to 40 years in a state mental hospital.

Well, this video that you've just been showing is from this January, and that's because a judge made the decision after her being in the state mental hospital for about seven years, there she is right there in January. He made the decision she would be downgraded to a group home and just have a monitor. And that takes us to Saturday where authorities say she cut it off and she fled. So now, the question is more charges? Because now she's 23-years-old. It appears as though she intended to do what she did. Her attorney wanted her to turn herself in. She did not. She was found. And so now is a next legal battle, I'm sure with her defense attorney and prosecutors.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": Google me is quite a thing to say when you've pled guilty to what she had been accused of. Jean Casarez, thank you so much for that reporting.

CASAREZ: Thank you.

SANCHEZ: A new hour of "CNN News Central" starts right now.

ERICA HILL, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": Case dismissed, a judge throws out indictments against two of President Trump's perceived enemies. We're going to have reaction from the White House to the cases against James Comey, Letitia James collapsing.

SANCHEZ: And they call her the Terminator, why officials at FEMA are concerned about the agency's new chief and worry about her choices when it comes to distributing money to communities in need after natural disasters. And an idyllic life off the grid, or was it? Italy captivated by the plight of children media are calling the kids in the woods. Did a court do the right thing by taking them from their parents? We're following these major developing stories and many more, all coming in right here to "CNN News Central."

HILL: And we do begin this two o'clock hour with breaking news as the Justice Department has hit a major roadblock in its prosecution of President Trump's perceived political enemies. A judge has dismissed the cases against former FBI Director, James Comey and New York Attorney General, Letitia James because the judge says, the U.S. attorney who brought the cases, Lindsey Halligan, was unlawfully appointed.

SANCHEZ: Attorneys for Comey and James had argued that Halligan was put in office after the 120-day period allowed for an interim appointee was served by another person. The judge though, did leave open the possibility that charges could be re-filed. Let's get reaction from the White House with CNN's Kristen Holmes, who's on the North Lawn for us. So Kristen, what's the White House response to these dismissals?

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, Boris and Jessica, actually surprisingly we have not heard yet. We have asked. We have been waiting on Truth Social to see if President Trump himself responds. I mean, you have to keep in mind just how involved the White House and the president himself has been in all of this. The U.S. attorney that was in that office, Erik Siebert, had essentially found with other prosecutors in the office that they did not have enough evidence to bring cases against James Comey and Letitia James.

Then you saw a political campaign, a pressure campaign against Erik Siebert, who then ultimately left office. And that's when you saw President Trump publicly suggesting to Attorney General Pam Bondi that she put Lindsay Halligan, his old personal attorney or his former personal attorney who was working at the White House at the time, into that office. Now, Halligan had never presented in front of a grand jury, but it was clear her mission was, from President Trump, to bring these charges against his political foes or enemies, James Comey and Letitia James.

So we're waiting for comment from the White House specifically, but we have gotten comment from New York Attorney General, Letitia James. This is what she said. She said, I am heartened by today's victory and grateful for the prayers and support I have received from around the country. I remain fearless in the face of these baseless charges as I continue fighting for New Yorkers every single day. Of course, there are a lot of questions as to what exactly is going to happen next. One, is the Department of Justice going to appeal this?

Two, if they don't appeal this, are they going to bring charges? Because that's what the judge ruled, essentially saying they could have charges brought against them without prejudice, is what that means. But, charges brought against them in the future. But in this case, because that attorney general, that interim attorney general, they did not find that she was valid in office, then they were thrown out. So again, watching closely to see how the White House reacts to this.

SANCHEZ: Kristen Holmes life for us at the White House. Thank you so much. Let's dig deeper on this with Dave Aronberg. He's a former State Attorney for Palm Beach County, Florida. Dave, thanks so much for being with us. What do you think the administration might use as grounds for an appeal? Because they already tried to argue that Pam Bondi had the authority to install Halligan the way that she did. The judge refuted that. So, where do they go from here? DAVE ARONBERG, FORMER STATE ATTORNEY, PALM BEACH COUNTY, FLORIDA: It's a weak argument, Boris, but they'll try to make it on appeal, hopefully to get it to the Supreme Court, which they think is a better venue for them. And generally, the Supreme Court has deferred to executive power.

[14:05:00]

But here, you had an improper appointment and although there was a vacancy, the previous Acting U.S. Attorney, Erik Siebert, had overstayed his 120 days. Then the local judges then kept him in. That's allowed. But what you can't do is piggyback upon that with another acting U.S. attorney or else to eviscerate the entire appointments clause of the Constitution, which requires a Senate to advise and consent.

HILL: And Dave, the judge tossed these cases out without prejudice. Comey's attorney previously argued that Comey could not be re-indicted now because of the statute of limitations. That's specific to the Comey case there. How do you see that?

ARONBERG: It gets complicated here, Jessica, because there's something called the savings clause, which says that if you get it in under the gun, you get another six months if the case is thrown out. But here, the reason why they indicted was because they wanted to do President Trump's bidding. And you had someone who was not qualified to be a U.S. attorney, never been a prosecutor before. And this was something that judge, Judge Currie made a mention of. It may have been a bit gratuitous, but I think Judge Currie said this with an eye towards not re-filing this case, not being allowed to prosecute this case any further because it was being prosecuted in bad faith.

So, should we allow this raise to the courthouse, which got in right before the statute of limitations, to be rewarded by now allowing the case to be brought within the next six months? I think there's a good argument that this case will be gone forever. And especially if the judges are allowed to appoint the Acting U.S. Attorney, then that person will probably be someone who has experience as a prosecutor and would never let this case see the light of day. This case is weak sauce.

SANCHEZ: Would it then be easier for DOJ potentially, to just replace Halligan?

ARONBERG: Well, they could, but then -- and they'll work for the Letitia James case. But with -- in the case of Comey, the statute of limitations has expired. So it gets complicated whether that case can be brought. I think there's a good argument that that case has gone forever. Perhaps the better move would've been for the Department of Justice to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate these guys. Then, you wouldn't necessarily need the approval of the Senate.

I think you could have gotten away with it there, but that's not what happened here. They appointed an acting U.S. attorney to piggyback on the previous acting U.S. attorney, who had already overstayed his 120 days. So the whole thing was improper. I mean, I think this was an obvious one. I would've been shocked if the judge allowed this case to continue. So, I think these two cases are doomed, whether procedurally or substantively.

HILL: And what does this mean for Lindsay Halligan?

ARONBERG: It's embarrassing. And she will probably not be allowed to be an acting U.S. attorney anywhere. Because what happened is, if you look to see the other acting U.S. attorneys, they were thrown out, they were disqualified and then it goes on appeal. So this will go on appeal and then if the courts rule against her, then she's done. The reason why she was appointed here was because she was loyal to President Trump. And so, she's not going to be appointed in another district because this is the district where Trump's enemies were located and that's why she was given this job.

So, I think for Lindsay Halligan, she perhaps goes back to being an insurance lawyer, makes money in the private sector, writes a book, does some Fox News and has a good life. Oh, by the way --

HILL: Yes.

ARONBERG: By the way, she could face sanctions from the floor, from the bar too. That's another thing. She has to worry about that.

HILL: Well, that's a big thing.

ARONBERG: She could be sanctioned by the bar for filing these frivolous cases, yeah.

HILL: Right. So there could be more to come there. All right, Dave Aronberg, good to see you. Thanks for that.

And still to come, significant movement on efforts to end the war in Ukraine as top U.S. and Ukrainian officials make progress on a peace plan. We're going to look at what the Kremlin is saying.

SANCHEZ: Plus, the president could soon unveil his long-awaited replacement to Obamacare. Could it help those millions of Americans seeing their premiums soar? And later, the granddaughter of JFK making a heartbreaking announcement about her terminal illness, taking aim at her cousin, Health Secretary, RFK Jr., in an emotional essay. We'll bring it to you live on "CNN News Central." Stay with us.

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[14:14:07]

HILL: We're learning President Trump is planning to unveil a new healthcare proposal and at this point, we're still waiting to know exactly what's in it. But we're told it could include a temporary extension of the enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies, which are due to expire at the end of the year. They were at the center of the government shutdown. However, the subsidies could come with some fresh guardrails that could include new income limits and a requirement that everyone pay some form of a premium. Now, we should note that if the subsidies do expire, millions of Americans are expected to see their premiums more than double next year. Zack Cooper is joining us now. He's a Professor of Health Policy at Yale University. Zack, thanks for being here. As I noted, we are very much still waiting for specifics here. But -- and I'm sorry, this has actually been -- sorry Zack, we're getting Breaking News while I'm talking to you.

I have learned that the White House has postponed its expected unveiling of this new health care proposal.

[14:15:00]

It was expected to be unveiled today. We'll learn more hopefully about that in the coming moments. But again, this is postponed, but we can talk about the ideas here. Zack, we just outlined some of the things that could be in there. It could also likely include an option for some people who choose these lower-tier plans to receive some federal aid as well to help pay for that plan. So just what are your thoughts initially on some of these ideas?

ZACK COOPER, PROFESSOR OF HEALTH POLICY, YALE UNIVERSITY: Yeah, I was just happy that President Trump entered the chat, right? Healthcare costs are crushing folks who are out there across the country. If we don't see these subsidies come into play, what we're going to be seeing is a couple who is 60-years-old, earning $80,000 a year, paying $30,000 for their insurance premiums. So I'm just glad we're starting to talk about it. I think it's pretty concerning that we're going to see this pushed again and again. I think it shows that, frankly, we haven't been engaging with this on a really serious basis. Like what we haven't been talking about is, why are costs in this country so high and what we can do about them?

HILL: Why are they so high?

COOPER: It's the prices. And I think that's been this sort of real backdrop to the subsidy debate. What we've really been talking about is how you subsidize health insurance. It's like saying, if a hamburger was $300, how do we subsidize it? What we're not talking about is why the hamburger is $300 in the first place. So, we've really never had bipartisan serious conversations about the cost of healthcare. And one of the challenges is another way to talk about healthcare spending is to say it's a dollar of somebody's income that's out there and we're not good at doing government interventions, introducing policies that make a whole lot of folks better, but might take away income from other folks who are out there in the country.

HILL: Yeah. And so in terms of trying to actually put into place policies that would make things better for people out there, Americans that would (ph) drive down their cost, what might some of those be?

COOPER: So we need more competition in healthcare. One of the things that's happening nationwide is hospitals buying up other hospitals and that's raising the price of care. We see hospitals buying up physicians, it's raising the price of care. We see a lot of stuff happening with pharmacy benefits managers. It doesn't bring benefits to patients, but it makes care more expensive. Those are the types of conversations we need to have.

We need to be subsidizing insurance. I think that's going to get folks coverage. It's going to allow us to have those bigger conversations about healthcare spending, but we really need to be talking about the root causes of rising costs right now.

HILL: So it sounds like from what you're saying, as someone who studies this whole system, that first you essentially have to continue to subsidize because the price is what it is at this point and it's too high for many Americans out there. And then after you've done that, then you can -- then you need to really get in there if you're Congress and the president and actually make some real changes to the system to include more competition and ways to bring down the prices?

COOPER: That's exactly right, Jessica. And I think that's why folks are so frustrated out there. I think folks know the price of healthcare is too high. What we're talking about with the subsidies is the insurance for 20 million people. There are 150 million people out there who get health insurance from their employer and they're feeling all sorts of trouble. And in a sense, what we want to say is, look, let's have these bipartisan conversations. Let's talk about the cost of healthcare.

Let's make sure that people aren't priced out of health insurance and see if we can get us on a glide path that's more sustainable going forward. So I think it's great that President Trump leaned in. It's a little worrying that the Republican Congress pushed back so much that they basically delayed this proposal and they're just kicking the can down the road one more time.

HILL: Yeah. And there's also this idea that the president has talked about several, several times publicly, unclear if it would be a piece of this, but where he essentially says, let's just give -- let's give people federal income to help them purchase some of this insurance or give them money, some of these lower-tier plans. But essentially, oftentimes people who get those lower-tier plans are the really healthy individuals that maybe don't need as much insurance or don't think they need as much insurance. What's kind of the balance of those healthier people being in the pool with the people who might need to use the healthcare system more?

COOPER: Yeah, I mean I think there've been a lot of conversations out there, different policies and I think what you're seeing is, remember when he was talking about in debate, the frameworks of a plan. I think we need a real plan and we need a real plan that says, insurance is really expensive, let's subsidize it for the people who can't afford it. And let's have a real conversation about how you lower healthcare costs in this country. We spent months with the government shutdown debating subsidies. What we weren't talking about is what are meaningful bipartisan reforms that can make healthcare more affordable.

That I think is what's going to take some of the pressure off the American public out there who's saying, look, healthcare is making it harder for me to live a life of dignity and purpose. That's why folks I think are so frustrated out there in this country right now. HILL: Yes. And there are a lot of very frustrated people. And now the question is, can the government do something about this in a bipartisan manner?

[14:20:00]

Again, the Breaking News that the White House has postponed an expected unveiling of its new healthcare cost proposal. Zack Cooper, thanks for being with us, as the news broke. We really appreciate it.

COOPER: Thanks, Jessica.

HILL: Still to come, CNN Exclusive reporting on the new FEMA chief and why she's been nicknamed "The Terminator."

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SANCHEZ: Now to a CNN Exclusive about the person picked to be the new Head of FEMA.

[14:25:00]

Sources say that Karen Evans is known as the Final Gatekeeper. She's also been dubbed The Terminator, a name that she earned from terminating grants, contracts and people at the agency.

HILL: Evans is expected to begin in her new role December 1st, and we've got CNN's Gabe Cohen here with us with more on the incoming chief. So as we now learn that she's going to be taking over, what are you hearing from current and former FEMA insiders?

GABE COHEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yeah. So Karen Evans came into FEMA back in the spring. She was a senior adviser at that point. And based on my conversations with more than a dozen officials inside FEMA, she was really there to be an enforcer for the Department of Homeland Security and for Kristi Noem. At that time, they were really pushing this narrative that FEMA is bloated and that it's partisan, and that it needed to be drastically overhauled, if not eliminated altogether. And a big piece of that was going to be immediately reigning in spending.

And that is where Karen Evans has really taken the lead. She has cut a lot of these grants, cut a lot of contracts. It has caused a block in the funnel as states, communities have been complaining about money getting out the door or not getting out the door in a lot of cases. And it's created a lot of frustration among senior officials who feel like their operations have been stifled because Evans had come in and said, this is wasteful spending and we need to start reviewing this on a more drastic, bigger level.

But obviously, DHS has been quite happy with what they have seen because she quickly went to chief of staff back in the fall, a promotion, and now she's gotten the top job at FEMA. And the timing here, guys, is critical. I mean, this is why it matters. In the next couple weeks, we are expecting the FEMA Review Council, which was put together by Trump, Co-Chaired by Noem. They're going to be putting out this long-awaited report where they're going to essentially give a blueprint, a list of recommendations of how this administration needs to reform FEMA in order to make it a fit, more efficient and better for the American people.

There's this power struggle at play though, because there are a lot of folks, including people on this council, who think one of the ways you can make it more efficient and non-partisan is pulling it out of the Department of Homeland Security. Kristi Noem does not want that. If you lose that agency, you lose tens of billions of dollars that are part of its budget. And so, if there is any -- and we know there has been some conversation on the council with Noem about how this will play out. We don't know what it'll be yet.

We haven't seen those recommendations, but we know that you can probably learn some things by Evans now getting this position because she has proven herself a loyalist to Noem and to Corey Lewandowski, who is working alongside Noem at DHS, that she is going to carry out their vision for this agency.

SANCHEZ: And there were concerns about her from people that you spoke to even before she joined the agency, right?

COHEN: Yeah, that's correct. So, there was this episode that we reported on last month. We broke this story, where DHS was really pushing to strip funding away from a lot of Muslim non-profit security funding that they get through FEMA. This dated back to the spring with some calls from DHS officials to FEMA leaders where they first proposed, according to these sources, disqualifying all Muslim groups from getting this funding. What we have now learned is that Evans was really at the center of this discussion, that on at least one of the calls, she was the first one to bring up this idea that perhaps all of these groups could be disqualified.

I do want to note DHS has denied that there was ever a discussion of disqualifying all Muslim groups from getting this funding. But in the months that followed, individual groups had that funding stripped away for alleged terror ties. And I'm told by sources that Evans was a big part of that conversation, really pushing for more background checks and eventually some were disqualified.

HILL: All right, great reporting. Gabe Cohen, good to see you. Thanks so much for that.

COHEN: Thank you.

HILL: Still to come, President Trump praising the progress in talks that could end the war in Ukraine. But Ukraine says the U.S. plan leaves the country vulnerable and Russia is rejecting a new counter proposal from Europe. We're going to have a closer look at where things stand when we come back.

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