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ChatGPT Lawsuit; Alleged D.C. Gunman in Federal Court; Iran Talks in Limbo; Hantavirus Quarantine. Aired 1-1:30p ET

Aired May 11, 2026 - 13:00   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: From cruise to quarantine. Eighteen people on that cruise ship hit by the hantavirus are now back in the U.S., most of them in Nebraska, but two are now being evaluated in Atlanta, Georgia.

And response rejected. Iran replying to a U.S. proposal to end the war, calling its own plan both reasonable and generous, but President Trump calls it stupid and says the cease-fire is on life support.

OMAR JIMENEZ, CNN HOST: And an explosive new lawsuit claims a school shooter carried out his attack using instructions and advice provided by ChatGPT.

We're following these major developing stories and many more all coming in right here to CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

KEILAR: We do have breaking news; 18 cruise passengers on that ship that was hit by the hantavirus are back in the U.S. now, all of them arriving just about 12 hours ago.

And initial evaluations are taking place at two medical centers, one in Omaha, Nebraska, the other in Atlanta, Georgia. And here's what we know. At least one American has tested positive for the deadly virus. That person is in a biocontainment unit in Omaha; 15 others who are all asymptomatic are in quarantine at that same facility.

One is a British dual national. Another person with mild symptoms was flown to Atlanta along with another passenger. We're told that couple is in a biocontainment unit there. Officials say case-by-case decisions will be made as far as the next steps.

Top U.S. health officials say the risk of spread at this point is very low.

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DR. BRENDAN JACKSON, CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION: There are no guarantees in life. We're putting as many measures in place as possible to ensure that people are safe and healthy and we keep the community safe and healthy as well.

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KEILAR: And, last hour, President Trump said this:

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DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I hope it's fine. All I can do is everything that a president can do, which is some -- which is actually somewhat limited. But it seems like it is not easy to spread.

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KEILAR: CNN's Rafael Romo is live in Atlanta, where two of these passengers are now.

Rafael, tell us what you have learned.

RAFAEL ROMO, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Hey, Brianna.

Well, Emory University Hospital here behind me was one of the main medical institutions here in Georgia health officials at the state and federal levels relied on during the COVID-19 pandemic, and its staff also dealt with the Ebola outbreak during the last decade.

That's why Georgia Governor Brian Kemp said earlier today that this medical institution is well-positioned to not only care for the two patients who have been transferred here, but also limit any possibility for the virus to spread.

What we know is that a total -- out of a total of 18 Americans that were flown back home to the United States overnight on a charter flight, 16 are at the University of Nebraska, including one who was placed in the biocontainment unit there after testing positive for hantavirus.

The other 15 are now in the quarantine unit, and all have received brief medical assessments. Two people were transferred here to Atlanta's Emory University Hospital for what officials called further assessment and care.

The couple have been placed in a biocontainment unit. This is what Governor Kemp said earlier today about Georgia's ability to monitor and take care of these people. Let's take a listen.

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GOV. BRIAN KEMP (R-GA): We're doing like we have done in the past with COVID-19. If you remember, we took patients and our fellow Georgians off of cruise ships at Dobbins Air Force Base, the Georgia National Guard.

We're as prepared as any state in the country to do this. And it's just the right thing to do. I mean, you think, if you were one of those passengers that was stranded, especially if you were from Georgia, you would want your state to come to your aid. And that's exactly what we're going to do.

And there's nobody better to handle that than the folks at Emory.

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ROMO: And just a few moments ago, Brianna, we got an update.

According to Emory University Hospital, one symptomatic individual is receiving care here at Emory's biocontainment unit. And one asymptomatic individual identified as a close contact is undergoing evaluation and monitoring. The two patients transferred to Emory here in the Atlanta area are being taken care of.

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And I also need to add that these two patients traveled together on the cruise, according to health officials, and one of the patients is, as I mentioned before, symptomatic -- now back to you.

KEILAR: Rafael Romo, live for us in Atlanta, thank you -- Omar.

JIMENEZ: Well, the man accused of trying to assassinate President Trump during last month's White House Correspondents' Dinner was arraigned in federal court today; 31-year-old Cole Tomas Allen pleaded not guilty to all four charges he's facing, including attempting to assassinate the president, discharging a firearm during a violent crime, transportation of a firearm and ammunition in interstate commerce, and assaulting a federal officer with a deadly weapon.

I want to bring in CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig to talk about this, because there's a few interesting dynamics here. One, prosecutors added the fourth charge last week, the assault on a federal official. How significant is that?

ELIE HONIG, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: Well, Omar, that tells me that prosecutors and the FBI have now sort of worked through the ballistics and were able to confirm that at least one of the shots fired by this individual did strike a Secret Service officer.

There was some question about that early on. Officials didn't seem to know the answer. There's nothing really abnormal about that. It does take several days or a week sometimes to get the ballistics, which firearm shot which bullet, which projectile hit where.

So they have now added that charge. That's one more in the case. It brings a total to four. The lead charge, though, remains the first charge, attempt to assassinate the president, which, of course, carries a life sentence upon conviction.

JIMENEZ: And we're showing some of their surveillance video that was released prior to this latest hearing.

You know, Allen's defense is trying to get top DOJ officials disqualified from the case, like U.S. attorney for D.C. Jeanine Pirro and acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, since they were actually at the dinner. Are there merits to that? What is the risk of them staying on the case?

HONIG: There are merits to that argument by the defense team here.

The easy call for Todd Blanche and Jeanine Pirro, the right call would be to recuse themselves, to pull themselves off the case. It's not punishment. Doesn't mean they did anything wrong. But the fact is, they were in the room. At a minimum, they heard gunshots outside.

That makes them at least potential witnesses. Now, the judge at today's hearing said, I'm not so sure they'd be witnesses because they didn't see anything. The shooter never made it into the ballroom, where they were.

That's a ridiculous analysis, Omar, because a person can be a witness even if they don't see anything. A person can be a witness if they hear something relevant. Imagine a scenario in an apartment building where someone hears a gunshot in the next apartment over. You wouldn't see anything, but you would certainly be at least a potential witness.

And the risk in Pirro and Blanche refusing to recuse themselves is that this could give this individual, this would-be assassin an argument on appeal, to say they should have recused themselves, they had a conflict of interest, and they failed to do that.

So it's a needless risk, I think, that DOJ is taking by not doing the right thing and recusing here.

JIMENEZ: So what defense does Allen potentially actually have in this case?

HONIG: Good question. Not clear.

Look, he definitely cannot claim, it wasn't me, they have the wrong person. He's caught at the scene. I don't think he's going to be able to viably argue that he lacked the intent. He wrote those e-mails that went out to numerous of his friends and family right before the incident where he said explicitly that his goal was to assassinate the president and others.

I think the fact that he has so little even makes it more inexcusable that they're failing to recuse, because you have this guy. The evidence is overwhelming. Why would you give him the potential to make an appeals argument down the line after -- if he gets convicted and say, well, they didn't recuse, as they should have?

Why wouldn't you just take that issue away and recuse yourself? Anyone else can oversee this case. There's hundreds, if not thousands of able prosecutors. But, again, I think why would you give a guy who's so obviously guilty of such a serious crime any thread to hang on to when his appeal comes?

JIMENEZ: That's why we always appreciate your analysis, Elie Honig, a dynamic we will watch for moving forward. Good to see you. Thanks for being here.

HONIG: Thanks, Omar. JIMENEZ: All right, still to come: U.S. peace talks with Iran hit

another setback, as President Trump says the cease-fire is -- quote -- "on massive life support." We're following the latest there.

Plus: suing OpenAI. The family of a victim killed in a mass shooting at Florida State alleges ChatGPT helped the shooter plan the attack. We're digging into that case.

And then later: a deadly runway collision after a trespasser jumps the fence at Denver Airport. How did this happen?

That and much more coming up on CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

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KEILAR: The monthlong cease-fire between the U.S. and Iran is barely intact. That is what President Trump suggested today while slamming the latest Iranian counterproposal to end the war.

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TRUMP: In Iran, they have the moderates. They're dying to make a deal. And then you have the lunatics. And I guess they're a little bit afraid of the lunatics.

After reading that piece of garbage they sent us -- I didn't even finish reading it. I said, I'm going to waste my time reading it. I would say the cease-fire is on massive life support.

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KEILAR: Iranian officials say they sent a reasonable and generous response to the U.S. Iran state media says demands included sovereignty over the blockaded Strait of Hormuz and the unfreezing of Iranian assets. In response, President Trump said that deal would be totally unacceptable.

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So, nowhere close to agreement here, Omar.

JIMENEZ: Yes.

And the question is, where are things right now? Because it's a cease- fire. It's not. There's some shots going back and forth.

And that's why we have got the one and only CNN military analyst retired Air Force Colonel Cedric Leighton.

Good to see you.

And that is where I want to start this here, because, look, we just heard the president saying that the cease-fire is on massive life support. We have seen these shots sort of fired in the Strait of Hormuz. So what exactly are we seeing right now?

COL. CEDRIC LEIGHTON (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: So, Omar, let's take a look right here at the whole region.

So we have got the region. And let's go right straight to the strait right here, because one of the things that we have noticed is that there has been some activity where there have been actually firing on ships in the strait itself and also on some of the islands.

So, this is a critical component of the area that we're dealing with right now. And, of course, everything that -- any traffic that's stopped right here is going to affect the flow of navigation, because, as you can take a look at this screenshot right here of marine traffic, there's very little, in fact, nothing going on right here in terms of sea traffic.

And if you have things like this happening, then there will be absolutely no traffic going through.

JIMENEZ: And, to this point, we have heard in large part from U.S. officials that, even if there have been flare-ups, it hasn't been enough to sort of break that overall cease-fire agreement to this point.

If the United States were to restart offensive military actions, what would that actually look like here? What would the scale and potentially scope of that be?

LEIGHTON: So this is the way things look up to this point. These are the strikes that have happened on both sides, the strikes against Iran, the strikes that Iran has conducted against Israel and the other Gulf states right in this area.

So you can see this area basically intensifying. But what would happen, Omar, is that a lot of the targets that were struck during this period, the first phase, let's call it, of Operation Epic Fury, they would be restruck.

In many cases, there would be a lot of things that would happen. For example, you would end up having the nuclear sites would be one area that would be struck. So you have got the enrichment facilities, as well as the research facilities, and, of course, the civilian power plant that they have at Bushehr.

Those could be restruck. And that would potentially also elevate the type of activity that we have there. And then you also have the situation where you could potentially -- and these are potential strikes -- hit areas like Tehran, Isfahan, Shiraz, all of those areas right here.

And then, of course, the other thing would be to hit areas like Kharg Island, like the areas around the Strait of Hormuz to keep the Iranian navy boxed up. Even if they have decimated a lot of the naval ships that were part of the standard Iranian navy, we also have to remember that they have a lot of fast boats and they have a lot of mind-laying capabilities that are still part of the Iranian arsenal. And then, of course, the other thing that they would do is hit missile

sites, and those would be the kinds of things that they would do. They'd have to do a lot of striking of underground facilities, as well as facilities that start to show life during activity, offensive activity, by the Iranians.

JIMENEZ: And part of the tension here, or maybe the tension here is obviously the United States' concern with Iran's ability to enrich uranium for nuclear activity.

And Trump specifically said Iran went back on a deal to allow the U.S. to remove Iran's enriched uranium. That's from the president. But he says Iran claims only the U.S. and China are capable of retrieving it. How are you reading that?

LEIGHTON: So, that could be a form of flattery. That could also be something where it is true that the Chinese have a capability to dig into systems and underground facilities, that -- and the U.S. does as well.

The problem is, is that we think the Iranians have that capability as well. So what the Iranians could be doing is, let's say things are buried in a place like Isfahan, which is right in this area. If they're buried here, the Iranians, of course, have control over it.

And what they'd be able to do is potentially extract it without us even paying any attention to or being able to detect what they're doing. So that's going to be one of the things to watch out for. Are the Iranians moving things in spite of any agreements that might be reached, or are they moving things now in anticipation of a future agreement?

JIMENEZ: Well, and as part of the Iranian counterproposal, they have demanded sovereignty over the strait itself. And while these are two sort of separate things, they do coincide, obviously, because that's the leverage that Iran has at the moment.

If this is a bargaining chip in negotiations, for example, what would Iran want in exchange for essentially giving up their leverage here?

LEIGHTON: Yes, so that's actually a really good question, because, right now, they have leverage. They control this area.

Now, one of the things that the Iranians are conveniently ignoring is that the other half of the Strait of Hormuz is controlled by Oman...

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JIMENEZ: Yes.

LEIGHTON: ... which has a piece of land right here.

But what the Iranians want to do is, they want to continue to have leverage. Now, one of the things that is really an amazing part of this is the whole idea of freedom of navigation, because what the Iranians want to do is, they want to control navigation into and out of the Persian Gulf and extract tolls.

They also want to have their proxies, like the Houthis in Yemen, control things like the Bab-el-Mandeb, which is another choke point right here. And if you look at the map of choke points, you see that, with the Suez Canal, the Bab-el-Mandeb and the Strait of Hormuz, all of those are in the Middle East right there, and two of them can be controlled by either Iran or its proxies.

Other two areas include the Strait of Malacca and the South China Sea. And who can control that? China has the capability of controlling those areas if it wanted to. Certainly, the South China Sea would be an easy area for them to control, as well as the Strait of Malacca.

So, when the U.S. wants to go back into this particular area, they want to ensure freedom of navigation here so that they can ensure freedom of navigation everywhere else. And that is a core principle of U.S. naval strategy. It's been that way for basically over a century.

And that is something that would have to be maintained and that's the reason why President Trump rejected the Iranian proposal.

JIMENEZ: Yes, well, a timely meeting for the Chinese leader and the U.S. president happening later this week, especially over some of the other areas you mentioned as well.

Cedric Leighton, good to see you, as always.

LEIGHTON: You too, Omar. Thanks so much.

JIMENEZ: Of course.

All right, coming up: Tech giant OpenAI faces a new lawsuit which claims that ChatGPT helped and alleged gunmen carry out a deadly mass shooting at Florida State University last year. We will have the details ahead.

Plus, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth calls on Senator Mark Kelly to be investigated again. We will tell you why coming up on CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

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KEILAR: A new lawsuit accuses ChatGPT of helping a shooter commit a mass attack at Florida State University last year.

The suit comes from the family of 45-year-old father of two Tiru Chabba. The Aramark regional vice president was visiting campus when he was gunned down. He was one of two killed. Six others were wounded in this attack.

Today, attorneys for Chabba's widow said the suspect, who is headed to trial, had some 16,000 chats with ChatGPT that aided him in planning the rampage. And they say OpenAI, which owns ChatGPT, needs to be held accountable. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JIM BANNISTER, ATTORNEY FOR TIRU CHABBA ESTATE: If she can prevent any other mother from having to go through what she's had to go through and what she will have to deal with for the rest of her life, then losing some of her anonymity will be worth it.

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KEILAR: CNN A.I. correspondent Hadas Gold is with us now.

Hadas, this feels a bit like the future of a number of lawsuits. Tell us about what is in this one and where this is headed.

HADAS GOLD, CNN A.I. CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Brianna, this case comes to a heart of an issue that a lot of A.I. companies and the courts are dealing with.

When you have a product that is this persuasive and generative and intimate, at what point does it stop becoming a tool and where does the liability begin?

And this case is -- which is brought by the family of one of the victims, it builds on the criminal investigation, the unprecedented criminal investigation that the Florida attorney general started actually just last month into OpenAI, because they said they need to see whether the company bears any responsibility for this mass shooting attack that happened last year in April at Florida State University because of those thousands of messages that Ikner, Phoenix Ikner, the suspect in this case, exchanged with ChatGPT.

And these weren't just missives. These were plans. He was asking ChatGPT, according to this lawsuit, according to the Florida attorney general, what -- how many people would need to be killed for the national mass media to pay attention? When is going to be the busiest time at Florida State University, and, even in the minutes before he allegedly undertook this attack, specific questions and instructions on how to use the guns, the weapons that he used in this attack.

So now we have this lawsuit from the family. And they are alleging things like wrongful death, negligence and product liability. They say that ChatGPT didn't just help with the logistics. They say that ChatGPT encouraged and inflamed Ikner.

Take a listen to their attorney.

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AMY WILLBANKS, PLAINTIFF'S ATTORNEY: If Phoenix Ikner had been speaking to a human about all of these plans that he had and the things that he was interested in and his mental state, a human would have escalated it to another human to make sure that somebody was checking on him and seeing if he was OK and checking to see if something dangerous might be about to happen.

And that did not happen here because of the nature of this product. (END VIDEO CLIP)

GOLD: OpenAI is now facing at least 10 lawsuits from people who say that, after conversations with ChatGPT, either somebody harmed themselves or harmed others as a result of those conversations.

Now, OpenAI has said that they have changed their safety features. They said in a blog post last month that they're trying to train ChatGPT to understand when a conversation is just theoretical and when it could lead to real-world harm and when they need to notify the authorities.

They said in a statement specifically to this lawsuit brought by the family: "Last year's mass shooting at Florida State University was a tragedy, but ChatGPT is not responsible for this terrible crime. In this case, ChatGPT provided factual responses to questions with information that could be found broadly across public sources on the Internet and it did not encourage or promote illegal or harmful activity."

But, obviously, the family disagrees with this.