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FBI Charges 18-Year-Old in New Year's Eve Terror Attack Plot; CIA Assesses Ukraine Did Not Target Putin Home; Criminal Trial for Uvalde School Officer. Aired 2:30-3p ET

Aired January 02, 2026 - 14:30   ET

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

[14:30:00]

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: New today, the FBI says it stopped an ISIS- inspired terror attack on New Year's Eve near Charlotte, North Carolina. An 18-year-old man is now in custody after prosecutors say he plotted to use knives and hammers to attack people at a grocery store and a nearby fast food restaurant. Leading up to his arrest, the suspect allegedly communicated with someone that he thought was a member of the terrorist group, but that individual turned out to be an undercover NYPD officer.

The teen has been charged with attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization. Donell Harvin is with us now. He's formerly the head of Homeland Security and Intelligence for Washington, D.C. He's also a faculty member at Georgetown University's Emergency and Disaster Management Program.

All right, Donell, first off, what stands out to you about this alleged plot?

DONELL HARVIN, FORMER HEAD OF HOMELAND SECURITY AND INTELLIGENCE, WASHINGTON DC: Well, first of all, Happy New Year. We can actually say this because this time last year, Brianna, we were talking about an actual ISIS plot that had been committed. And so what stands out to me is that the infrastructure that the American public expects there to be to catch these would-be criminals and terrorists exist.

The other thing that I think is unique, and if you want to think back to October, is the youth of this potential offender, this person that they have in custody. This person is 18 years old. If you remember the October Halloween plot, there were multiple individuals that were teenagers.

And so what it speaks to is this consistent, persistent online radicalization that organizations like Daesh, or ISIS as we call them in the States, and Al Qaeda are doing to reach out to young people, radicalize them and mobilize them to violence.

KEILAR: And speaking of youth, I mean, according to the criminal complaint, the FBI actually encountered this individual, this suspect, Sturtevant, in 2022. He was only 14 there, apparently communicating with a purported member of ISIS in Europe, who encouraged him to commit violence. His grandfather allegedly stopped him, and that investigation was closed after the family said they got him mental health help and they got him off of social media.

How much would he have already been on law enforcement's radar from that past encounter?

[14:35:00]

HARVIN: And so the problem is that you can't just monitor people in continuum, right? And so people come in and go off the radar, as we put it, for multiple reasons. The fact that this was a youthful person, 14 years old, probably didn't mean anything, wasn't what we call operational, really didn't have a real high threat, which means that the law enforcement trusted their parents and their family to get them the help that they need.

What happened there after, obviously investigations will be done. But the fact of the matter is, I've heard from many investigators, FBI agents, as well as from my own practice, many people, Brianna, I think the American public would be very shocked to know, very young teenagers, 13, 14, as young as 12 years old, which are sharing and consuming this ISIS propaganda online.

It's very concerning and it's happening.

KEILAR: Yes, so young. Officials say the suspect initially reached out online to someone who he thought was a member of ISIS. It turned out that it was actually that undercover NYPD officer. Can you talk, you know, from your experience about how local law enforcement works with federal law enforcement and intel to foil an alleged plot like this one?

HARVIN: Yes. And the first thing I need to say is I was wrong, right? So I spent all of 2025 really talking about how the administration's done a lot of work to really degradate the infrastructure that we have had.

Now, this case shows that that dragnet, if you will, that virtual online dragnet is still there. And it's a layered approach between locals, like NYPD, state law enforcement and fusion centers -- fusion intelligence centers like I ran and the federal government.

What happens is that the state and locals will -- they have feelers out there. They have undercover agents. They have intelligence agents that are online looking for these type of individuals. And some of these individuals will find them.

And then they escalate those, depending on a triage system to the federal authorities to say, hey, we're really concerned about this individual. You have better tools and techniques to follow this. And they'll hand that case over.

And so it sounds like in this particular instance, everything happened as expressly as it scripted out to happen.

KEILAR: Is online radicalization, which we hear law enforcement here alleging, this is something that this individual has consistently done over the years. Is that different today than it is from five, 10 years ago? Are there new challenges to confront?

HARVIN: It certainly is. And we heard the previous FBI director, Christopher Wray, talk about this multiple times in public and on the Hill about this new threat environment. And what you have is young people specifically being targeted.

There's a whole host of ways through websites, through chat groups, through video games. And they know that these people can be manipulated. They know that they can manipulate what we call a grievance.

That's what you need to have to become radicalized. You need to have some type of grievance, some type of, you know, sense of someone doing something wrong to you or other people. And what these older people do is they manipulate them online and they bring them up the radicalization column until they're ready to mobilize into violence.

And at any point, someone should be able to say, hey, we heard this for individual making threats or really getting radicalized, but they've gone really deep and they should alert law enforcement. So to this day, our best and most potent counterterrorism tool in the United States is the American public, whether it be online or offline. But clearly the threat environment has changed and they're targeting young people.

KEILAR: Donell Harvin, always great to talk with you. And like you said, Happy New Year. It certainly is good that this appears to have been thwarted.

And still to come, a dispute growing over an alleged attack at one of Vladimir Putin's homes. Well, Russia's saying that it happened and they say they have proof despite denials of Ukraine and also a CIA assessment that his home was not targeted. How this though could impact peace talks.

[14:40:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KEILAR: Russia continues to allege that Ukraine targeted one of Vladimir Putin's homes during a drone attack outside Moscow. On Thursday, Russia handed over part of what it says is a Ukrainian drone containing data that it says proves Ukraine targeted the home.

Ukraine strongly denies the accusation and U.S. officials say the CIA has assessed that Putin's home was not targeted. Some European officials say Russia is just trying to derail U.S. peace efforts here.

In Ukraine, large parts of the country rang in the new year in darkness as Russian strikes on the country's energy grid continue to cause widespread power outages. Residents of Kyiv spent 40 percent of the month of December without power.

We have retired Air Force Colonel Cedric Leighton, who is a CNN military analyst joining us on this. And first off, Cedric, this CIA assessment is that Ukraine was not targeting a Putin residence in this drone attack. Russia has now handed over this evidence that they say shows that. How are you seeing all of this?

COL. CEDRIC LEIGHTON (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Well, Brianna, there are a lot of things that can be true at once in a case like this. And the stuff that the, I think it was a motor or some part of a drone that the Russians handed over to the defense and military attaches over in Russia, that could be from any drone. And it could be something that, you know, is used as like a motherboard that they use for this.

[14:45:00]

And that guidance system does not prove that that particular drone was on its way to Putin's residence in the Novgorod region. So what that means is the Russians can provide all kinds of things, but it still does not conclusively prove that that drone was on its way to hit Putin's residence.

KEILAR: You can't verify it, ultimately, right?

LEIGHTON: Right.

KEILAR: OK. So what do you see Putin doing right here in the context of these ceasefire negotiations? You have Europeans saying he's just trying to muck up the works.

LEIGHTON: Well, and that's basically what Putin has been doing, actually. And one of the things that you look at is there's a lot of, you know, delay. There's a promise and there's more delay.

And what you're seeing with Putin is every effort that he makes from a diplomatic standpoint is then redoubled by a military effort. For example, he's working hard in the Zaporizhzhia region of Ukraine to move his military forces forward. He's trying to do the same thing in the Donbass region in the eastern part of Ukraine, but he's not being as successful there.

So he's got military issues that he has, and he's got a diplomatic offensive, but he still believes he has the advantage. And so he's going to do everything he can to gain the advantage, both diplomatically and militarily. And in essence, what he believes is that if he has the military advantage, then he's going to have the diplomatic advantage and achieve his goals, which really is at least the control of the Donbass region and ultimately probably the control of Ukraine.

KEILAR: How are things on the battlefield right now? Because we know that in the South, Ukrainian forces are really being stressed. They are less well-equipped and they're vastly outnumbered by Russian forces there.

LEIGHTON: Well, one of the indicators is when they start evacuating civilians from the border areas and the areas where the front lines are or near those front lines, and the Ukrainian authorities have evacuated about 3,000 children from the Zaporizhzhia region. So that's an indicator that they know that the Russians are really pressuring that part of the front. Militarily, it's a mixed result. In essence, the Russians over the past year gained about 0.8 percent of more territory in Ukraine, of Ukrainian territory. And that gives them a degree of forward momentum, but it's not really sufficient to sustain a forward push. What they're doing is it's a kind of a very attritive offensive.

It's an offensive that has very little steam behind it, a lot of manpower, but they're not really using that manpower to the full advantage.

KEILAR: What are you watching from Putin here in the weeks ahead during negotiations? Other than, I mean, he must be enjoying watching people talk about this drone and providing the data, which is not actually conclusive, but gets people talking about it. This must really play to his kind of like play out the clock strategy.

LEIGHTON: Yes, exactly. So that's exactly what he's going to do. He's going to play out the clock.

He's going to make every single maneuver that he can conceive of. They'll probably be things like military moves in certain parts, areas where they think they can gain an advantage over the Ukrainians in a tactical sense. The Ukrainians will probably hold most of the territory that they have.

They'll continue to do that, but they have to be very careful because one mistake could result in the Russians encircling certain units, and that could then spell disaster not only for those units, but it could potentially put at risk larger areas of Ukraine. I don't think that will happen. The Ukrainians are pretty wise to the Russian tactics.

Then on the diplomatic front, what Putin's going to do is he's going to really use incidents like the supposed drone strike, and he's going to use that as a way to delay, obfuscate, sow confusion, and he wants to divide the U.S. from the other NATO nations and to kind of move us away from supporting Ukraine. The key will be for us to stay with the Europeans and with the Ukrainians in order to get more out of Russia once there's some kind of a peace settlement or a ceasefire or whatever happens in the next few months.

KEILAR: How's he looking at the last year, do you think? That he's done pretty well at achieving that.

LEIGHTON: He is probably looking at this as somewhat of a degree of success, even though if we were evaluating it --

KEILAR: By our own measure.

LEIGHTON: -- by our own measure, we would say this is an abject failure. He lost at least 400,000 men in terms of, you know, service personnel there, and at least that number. If that's the case, you know, you're continuing to, in essence, throw people into a war effort that is not winning by any stretch of the imagination.

And when you think about the relative disparity between the Ukrainians and the Russians in terms of population strength and military strength, basically Ukraine's about a fourth the size of Russia in terms of population, and basically the same for the military. The Russians haven't been able to move forward in places like Pokrovsk and other parts of the Donbass region, and they've had to, in essence, really use time and drone efforts to get what they've been able to get so far.

[14:50:00]

They haven't really succeeded, and the Ukrainians have done a magnificent job from a technical standpoint, and they're going even more into areas like drone warfare using AI. That is something that will basically be a new frontier in warfare, and when that becomes a reality, that may also serve to change the equation on the battlefield.

KEILAR: Really interesting. If they make it, right? If they can last.

Cedric Leighton, thank you so much. Really appreciate it.

LEIGHTON: You bet, Brianna.

KEILAR: Now to some of the other headlines that we're watching this hour. An investigation is underway in Columbus, Ohio, after a dentist and his wife were found dead inside their home earlier this week. On Tuesday, police performed a welfare check, and they found that Spencer Tepe and his wife Monique had been shot to death.

Their two young children were inside unharmed. Officers say there was no obvious sign of forced entry or a firearm found inside. At this time, no suspects or persons of interest have been named.

Also, actress Angelina Jolie visited Egypt's Rafah border crossing, got a firsthand look at Gaza humanitarian crisis. The Rafah border is the primary crossing point between Egypt and Gaza. Israel has kept the border closed to humanitarian aid during the current ceasefire.

Jolie, who is a former special envoy to the United Nations Refugee Agency, was seen speaking with aid workers and visiting with Gazan patients at the hospital.

And Chinese electric vehicle maker BYD overtakes Tesla as the world's largest seller of EVs. According to newly released 2025 data, BYD sold 2.3 million EVs in 2025, a 28 percent increase from 2024. Meanwhile, Tesla reported declining sales for a second straight year. Tesla sales took a huge dip after facing more competition from other automakers and also Elon Musk's political activities that prompted backlash protests.

Still to come is 2026, the year that we will put an end to the doomscrolling. Can we at least slow it down, people? Come on. Ahead in the next hour, the key to a successful digital detox.

[14:55:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) KEILAR: More than three years after the deadly mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, the first criminal trial is about to begin. Jury selection will start Monday for the trial of the former school resource officer Adrian Gonzalez, who is facing more than two dozen counts of abandoning and endangering a child. Nineteen children and two teachers were killed that day.

Gonzalez was one of the first officers to respond to the massacre, but according to his indictment, he failed to follow his active shooter training. Gonzalez's attorney says his client feels he's innocent and argues the scene was chaotic and confusing.

We have former federal prosecutor Brendan Ballou joining us here. And Brendan, I want to read a little bit of what this indictment actually alleges. I think it's really important for people to understand.

It says, "After hearing gunshots and after being advised of the general location of the shooter, having time to respond to the shooter, Gonzalez failed to engage, distract or delay the shooter, failed to otherwise act in a way to impede the shooter until after the shooter had entered those two rooms at Robb Elementary and shot at children in those rooms."

It also actually says that Gonzalez failed to follow and attempt to follow his active shooter training in his response. What do you think about that and what kind of legal precedent could this set about how officers must respond in situations like this?

BRENDAN BALLOU, FORMER FEDERAL PROSECUTOR: Well, I think you've hit exactly the core dispute that's going to happen in this trial, which is whether or not the officers were following the active shooter training and bluntly whether that training would have made a difference. So the statute prohibits acts or omissions that can endanger a child, put them in imminent risk of bodily injury or death. I think there's really going to be two disputes here.

The first one and probably the less contentious is whether the officers in actions actually endangered the children. You know, bluntly, I think some of the defense counsel may be arguing here that it was too late for the officers to do anything. But I think the deeper question -- and it goes to what you were just quoting -- is whether the officers were acting with what lawyers call the requisite "mens rea" or mental state.

Were they acting recklessly or with criminal negligence here? And in determining that the core question is going to be whether the officers were following the instructions that they had for how to handle school shooter drills.

KEILAR: Yes. And I mean, Gonzalez is defense here that the scene was chaotic and confusing. I think some really anyone looks at that and says, of course, it was. Is any situation that relies on the training and composure of a school resource officer in a serious emergency ever going to be orderly?

What kind of defense is that in your view? BALLOU: Yes, yes, you know, you're exactly right. Any of these sorts of scenes are going to be chaotic. And Uvalde was sort of the worst of them all that there were over 400 officers on the scene that day. And yet it took over 70 minutes for them to breach the room where the shooter was.

So, you know, you do have to wonder how much is chaos going to be an excuse here. One of the things that I think Defense Counsel will probably raise is that given the chaos, you know, the other officer that's being indicted here was one of the leads of the Uvalde School District Police Force.

It was his responsibility nominally to establish some sort of command and control procedure on the ground that day, which allegedly did not happen. So if you're Officer Gonzalez, one of the subordinate officers here, one of the arguments that you're going to make is that there really wasn't any direction and that at some level you were simply following orders by not going into the school.

KEILAR: I also wonder, you know, police officers have a very tough job. And when you speak to people who have actually been shot at by someone who is, you know, trying to do them harm, they'll tell you you don't really know how you're going to react, right, until you're actually in that situation. And we see that time and again, some people, they kind of really step up in like this superhuman way and some don't.

How does the law see that on the individual actions of an officer ...

END