Return to Transcripts main page

CNN News Central

Judge Rejects Trump's Newest Bid To Fight Hush Money Conviction In Federal Court; Axios Reports U.S. On Verge Of Massive Deal For Venezuela Oil Fields; Riders Rushed To Hospital After Braving Famous Six Flags Roller Coaster; Autopsy Shows National Guard Shot Man In The Back; General Mills Removes Artificial Colors From Cereal. Aired 1:30- 2p ET

Aired August 28, 2026 - 13:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:32:32]

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": We have Breaking News. A federal judge has just rejected President Trump's latest attempt to get his New York state hush money case moved to federal court. The judge ruling the president's grounds were neither new nor legally sufficient. Moving the case to federal court would have made it easier to reverse that conviction.

In 2024, the president was found guilty on 34 counts related to falsifying business records in connection to hush money payments made in 2016 to adult film actress and producer, Stormy Daniels. Boris?

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": Some new reporting from Axios says the Trump administration is close to striking a deal with Venezuela that would give the U.S. an ownership stake in that country's vast oil resources. According to Axios, which cited two U.S. officials, the historic deal would more than double U.S. oil reserves by drawing from a country that has the world's largest proven reserves.

Let's discuss with Marc Caputo. He's a Senior Politics Reporter for Axios and broke that exclusive report.

Marc, thanks for being with us. So after the U.S. operation to remove Nicolas Maduro, several oil executives voiced skepticism about how quickly the industry could be turned around in Venezuela for several reasons. Do we know which firms are now expected to be involved with this and how the administration perhaps swayed them?

MARC CAPUTO, SENIOR POLITICS REPORTER, AXIOS: We don't know who would be involved in this. There's basically two different types of oil companies you're talking in that case. There's your major oil companies, Chevron, Exxon, ConocoPhillips. Then there are what are called the wildcatters, your independent ones. The wildcatters are already starting to move in. So that's sort of a separate issue.

What we're looking at here, or better said, that's an issue that kind of travels with this. What you're looking at here is more than a dozen oil fields that the United States would like to have an interest in, more of a sovereign interest in, that has as many as 90 billion barrels of proven oil reserves.

Now, Venezuela has 300 billion barrels, the highest amount of proven reserves in the world, and this would double, as the Chyron there just showed -- screen grab just showed -- U.S. proven oil reserves essentially overnight. A lot of details to be worked out, a lot of controversy could be generated from this in Venezuela.

The idea of giving away the natural resource to the United States could be perceived as too much of a giveaway, and the United States is trying to find ways to work with the government there to make it look like a win-win deal.

SANCHEZ: To that point, you reported that the administration is sensitive to any appearance that this is sort of a colonial power grab, that the U.S. is extracting natural wealth from Venezuela.

[13:35:00]

Trump apparently intends to show this is going to benefit the people. How?

CAPUTO: Well, if you sell more oil -- if you lift more oil, you pump more oil, you develop more oil fields, and you sell more oil, you're going to get more in oil revenue. And that's the bottom line. Now, what those numbers look like, we don't know. I have just a limited number of details, just the ones I give you there.

The United States had been talking to the government or the interim government in Venezuela for quite some time, but it really started to cook last month. Emissaries from the U.S. State Department and the Defense Department or the Department of War, whatever you want to call it, they met with their counterparts in Venezuela.

It's notable that the War Department is also sort of involved here because this is being cast not just as securing an energy future for the United States, for Venezuela, for the Western Hemisphere, but it's also viewed as a way to increase security in the hemisphere and to further what has been called the Donroe Doctrine of President Trump to increase the United States footprint and dominance in the hemisphere.

SANCHEZ: Also last month, the U.S. brokered these talks in Caracas between the interim government and some opposition figures, though notably some of the most prominent opposition figures were not present. Would you say the administration views democratic reform as a real priority here? And have you seen any indication that there's a timeline being set for elections?

CAPUTO: Well, I'm going to play some parsing games to find real, right? Is it the highest priority of the United States? No. And the reason we know it's not the highest priority is the United States isn't really talking about it.

There is a recognition in the Trump government, the Trump administration, that there are going to have to be democratic reforms. There are going to have to be elections at a certain point, but they haven't even agreed on the U.S. side, let alone on the Venezuelan side, exactly when those elections would be, how they would be called, how they would be administered. That's in the developmental stages currently.

SANCHEZ: Marc Caputo, always great to hear from you, my friend. Thanks for joining us.

CAPUTO: Thanks, appreciate it.

SANCHEZ: Of course. Still to come, new reporting on a story we brought you yesterday involving a popular roller coaster linked to more than a dozen reports of serious injuries, hospitalizations, even deaths.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:41:55]

KEILAR: A new CNN Investigation reveals an alarming trail of severe brain injuries and even deaths tied to a roller coaster at Six Flags Magic Mountain in Southern California. CNN's Kyung Lah has more on the investigation.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KYUNG LAH, CNN SENIOR INVESTIGATIVE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Six Flags calls this their cutting-edge break-all-the-rules roller coaster. But these two riders never imagined minutes after getting off the ride this summer, they would end up in the same hospital the very same week with similar brain hemorrhages and they're not the only riders who say they've been hurt.

A CNN Investigation finds more than a dozen people who rode the X2 roller coaster at California's Six Flags Magic Mountain suffered serious injuries and hospitalizations over nearly two decades, including a 22-year-old who died and the latest cases happened just weeks ago.

PAMELA GUILLEN, INJURED ROLLER COASTER RIDER: It was seconds. You go in as yourself and then when you come back, you're a medical emergency.

LAH: This was from a roller coaster?

GUILLEN: Exactly.

LAH (voice-over): Pam Guillen was at Magic Mountain with her daughter, Camille, celebrating her 16th birthday on July 5th. They boarded X2.

CAMILLE MARQUEZ, PAMELA GUILLEN'S DAUGHTER: We got off the cart and we saw my mom. She looked lifeless, not a thought behind her eyes, nothing. I was talking to her. Mom, mommy, please wake up. Mommy, mommy, it's OK. We're here. She had a brain bleed. My mom had a really bad brain bleed. LAH (voice-over): An ambulance rushed Pam from Six Flags to the hospital where surgeons discovered what's called an acute subdural hematoma with brain compression. Surgeons cut her skull open to relieve the pressure on her brain.

MARQUEZ: I was shocked. I was just, this is not OK. It wasn't OK for me to see my mom like that. It's like -- it's my mom.

LAH: How large is the incision?

GUILLEN: It's pretty long.

LAH (voice-over): While Pam Guillen fought in this hospital bed, X2 kept running. 25-year-old Naomi Greer Wilkinson had no idea what had just happened. Six days after Pam's injury, Naomi got on the X2 roller coaster. She collapsed after she got off the ride.

LAH: What had happened to her brain?

JOSHUA WILKINSON, FATHER OF HOSPITALIZED RIDER: The jarring had damaged part of her brain and it had begun to bleed.

LAH (voice-over): She was rushed to the same hospital. Joshua Wilkinson and Artemis Greer are Naomi's parents.

ARTEMIS GREER, MOTHER OF HOSPITALIZED RIDER: I do remember one of the surgeons storming through the ER and yelling how many is it this month? They've got to shut that ride down. He was furious.

LAH (voice-over): This Is Naomi. And Just like Pam Guillen, she had emergency brain surgery.

[13:45:00]

GREER: They sat us down and said she is at the end of life and I just -- I didn't have any thoughts. I was totally blank. We leaned over her and said, Naomi, and she fluttered her eyelid.

WILKINSON: We looked at each other, like she's in there, like she's there.

LAH (voice-over): Naomi, a healthy, vibrant young woman who loves cats and the arts, remains in the hospital with an uncertain future.

GREER: Naomi should have never --

WILKINSON: No.

GREER: -- ever in a million years even had the option to get on that ride. It's absolutely insane.

LAH: Why did they leave it open?

WILKINSON: Revenue. There's no other explanation.

LAH (voice-over): Six Flags says what makes X2 different from other roller coasters is this. The seats spin 360 degrees forwards and backwards independently around the track. Riders plummet 200 feet at speeds up to 76 miles per hour with two so-called raven turns, or half loops that turn into sheer drops.

Doctors who treated both Naomi and Pam say the severe brain injuries were the result of a traumatic, rapid acceleration-deceleration event experienced while on the X2 ride. Court cases alleging serious brain injuries from X2 date back years.

Christopher Hawley died after riding the X2 four years ago. A coroner's report found he died of blunt head trauma during a park ride accident. Six Flags didn't answer CNN's questions, but the company's court filings have stated the ride went through daily inspections, and a normal rider using the ride as instructed would not have traumatic brain injury.

CHRISTOPHER BULONE, ATTORNEY FOR INJURED RIDERS: It's greed that keeps this thing going.

LAH (voice-over): Lawyer Christopher Bulone represents both Naomi and Pam's families.

BULONE: No ride should ever be dangerous enough for anyone that they're coming off of it with severe intracranial bleeding.

LAH (voice-over): More than three million people visit Magic Mountain each year. But on this day, we find X2 is temporarily closed. Six Flags tells us it hasn't run since shortly after Naomi Greer Wilkinson was hurt.

LAH: You're looking at a very long road.

GREER: It could be six months. It could be two years. It could be five years. I don't know. This is the hardest thing a human being could go through.

GUILLEN: I remember everyone so excited that I could walk. I have headaches every day, fatigue after doing simple things. I won't be 100 percent because it's brain damage. Sometimes I just feel really down because I'm not me anymore.

LAH: Multiple lawsuits we've reviewed have settled before going to trial, and that includes the wrongful death suit of 22-year-old Christopher Hawley. California's Occupational Safety and Health Division oversees amusement park ride operations but did not respond to our questions about X2's history and did not say how it was allowed to reopen.

Kyung Lah, CNN, Los Angeles.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KEILAR: Now to some of the other headlines that we're watching this hour. An autopsy report obtained by the Associated Press finds that a 20-year-old shot by members of the Tennessee National Guard was shot in the back in the early morning hours after July 4th. That report contradicting police accounts that Tyrin Johnson was facing the soldiers when they shot him in the chest.

Authorities have said Johnson turned toward Guard members with a gun while running from them. The soldiers were assigned to a federal anti- crime task force in Memphis. No charges have been filed.

Also, California Governor, Gavin Newsom announcing today that he's heading south, and we're not talking about Southern California, you all. He's going on a tour of southern states next week, including South Carolina, which holds the first Democratic presidential primary, and that is fueling speculation about whether he's running for the White House. Newsom is calling the trip a take-it-back tour and framing the visit as part of his ongoing efforts to oppose the Trump administration as he travels across the country in the final months of his term.

Trix are for kids, but artificial colors aren't, at least in most General Mills cereals sold in this country. The company, also behind Lucky Charms and Cheerios, says all of its cereals sold in the U.S. are now made without artificial food dyes. General Mills says 90 percent of its U.S. retail portfolio has completed the transition away from artificial coloring.

The company says it's on track to remove all of them by the end of next year. This follows new regulations enacted by the FDA aimed at phasing out petroleum-based food dyes.

[13:50:00]

And next, federal prosecutors say he was a fake player with a very real scheme. Hear how an accused fraudster allegedly convinced dozens of women that he was an NFL star and swindled them out of more than $1 million.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:55:00]

SANCHEZ: Looking for love maybe in all the wrong places. A man accused of posing as a San Francisco 49ers player has been charged with swindling at least 26 women out of $1.3 million. Federal prosecutors say that Dajon Love used this public Instagram profile to lure in and then convince women they could get wealthy by trusting him with their money.

One image on Love's profile shows him donning a 49ers headband while sitting in a seat with a Lamborghini logo. Another shows him sitting in a different luxury car wearing an expensive watch with a Amex Black Card propped on his lap. Prosecutors say that many of Love's victims believe they were in a romantic relationship with him.

They say he would then ask them for money for fake investments and then block them if they ran out or -- ran out of money or started asking too many questions. Officials say Love had help from another man who posed as an investment adviser to make the scheme look legitimate, though none of the victims ever received any money. Both men are now being charged with wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud.

Joining us now is Eric O'Neill, a former FBI Counterintelligence Operative, also the author of the book "Spies, Lies and Cybercrime."

Eric, thanks so much for being with us. So Love allegedly met these women through dating apps and then used other apps to make realistic- looking fake accounts that these women were convinced to invest in, while portraying this lavish lifestyle for himself on social media. How common is a plot like this?

ERIC O'NEILL, FORMER FBI COUNTERINTELLIGENCE OPERATIVE: It's very common, but what makes this really interesting is it's a hybrid scam that uses the traditional romance fraud, which was his entry point into meeting these women and then, what we call in cybersecurity, pig butchering, which is a investment fraud where you're fattening up the account as big as you can and then ghost the target and steal their money.

And what's pretty incredible here is he didn't impersonate someone. He created from whole cloth a San Francisco 49ers wide receiver profile, or what we used to call in the FBI a legend, a completely fake identity, also posing, as you said, as a wealthy businessman and successful investor, and then presented himself on dating apps.

And when he hooked someone who thought that they were getting into a relationship with a handsome NFL player with celebrity status who had a lot of money, he would have his co-conspirator, his friend, jump in, allegedly, and they would trick the person into this financial fraud scheme.

And this includes, and this is where pig butchering really can get insidious. They have these fake websites that actually show your account growing over time, and that induces you to invest more and more because you think you're making a ton of money when really it's all smoke and mirrors.

SANCHEZ: Yeah, it's tragic and kind of heart-wrenching in a way because of these 26 victims that have been identified, you imagine that these people were looking for romance, they thought they had found a good financial opportunity perhaps. But apparently, when he was apprehended at the Boise Airport with his alleged co-conspirator, they were on the way to meet new victims.

What does it tell you that they preyed on more than 25 people, and perhaps even more are out there?

O'NEILL: Well, it suggests a few things to me. One, they're here in the U.S. So it's not like this was some Russians using an A.I. deepfake avatar to fool people here in the U.S. And at the end of the day, once we learn where they are, we can't touch them. That suggests to me that some of these women, at least early on, because this was a four-year scheme, were not making complaints, or no one followed up.

Two, you know, they were very bold in as soon as someone said, hey, I want to pull my money out or started to question the legitimacy of this con, they just ghosted the individual, disappeared and moved on to the next victim. And they were brave enough to actually meet with the victims in person.

Typically, with romance fraud, you don't see the cyber criminal actually meeting physically with the victim. It's all online, so they can just disappear and maintain that veil of anonymity. Here, they were they were so bold as to actually meet with the people and that helps --

SANCHEZ: Yeah.

O'NEILL: -- that helps generate the con and give it a little bit more believability.

SANCHEZ: Before we go, Eric, we only have a few seconds left. If there was one thing you would tell people to be on the lookout for to avoid a scam like this, what would it be?

O'NEILL: Two really important things. One, if it seems too good to be true, it's probably too good to be true. Make sure you verify, and that can just be having a friend come in and look over your shoulder and say, hey, there's no way that guy is reaching out to you. Two, if there is urgency, if someone pushes you with urgency to invest, to give them your money, always take a breath.