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CNN News Central

Senate Passes Bill to Overhaul College Sports Rules; Future of A.I. Discussion at the White House; Jack Smith Testifies Before Senate Panel on Trump Investigations; Caleb Flynn Murder Case Goes to Jury; New York Attorney General to Review Cornell's Response to Alleged Gang Rape; U.S. Ban on $800 Million Worth of Canadian Alcohol Starts Today. Aired 2-2:30p ET

Aired September 29, 2026 - 14:00   ET

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

[14:00:00]

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": Yeah, the Wild, Wild West, as you say. Don, thank you so much for that.

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

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": President Trump hosting top tech executives for talks on A.I., addressing questions on whether the technology is outpacing its safeguards. Latest from the White House.

Plus, a defiant Jack Smith defending his prosecutions of President Trump. Today on Capitol Hill, Republican Senators accusing him of a political fishing expedition. Smith says threats will not silence him.

And the U.S. turning up its trade war with Canada and posing an outright ban on some imports of Canadian alcohol. What the deepening rift means for your shopping list, businesses, and the alliance.

We're following these major developing stories and many more, all coming in right here to "CNN News Central."

This hour, President Trump is scheduled to be meeting with the nation's top tech leaders at the White House. Our teams have just seen several A.I. executives arriving as a national debate over safety and regulation ramps up just weeks before the midterm elections.

Hours before this gathering, two companies raising new alarm. In a leaked IPO filing, Anthropic is warning of the catastrophic risks its technology could pose to humanity. Also, OpenAI just halted the release of its latest A.I. model. The company saying the new version, quote, "didn't quite meet the bar."

Let's go live at the White House with CNN's Alayna Treene. And Alayna, is it clear if all the president's guests have now arrived?

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Not completely clear. I do believe the meeting, if it hasn't already gotten underway, Boris, it will be shortly. As you mentioned, we've seen our great photographers here at the White House, have seen many of these top executives arriving. And you mentioned the warning signs that have been coming from both Anthropic and OpenAI just in recent days, talking about these rogue A.I. models, particularly with OpenAI, saying that this idea that they're kind of moving without human authorization, raising new alarm bells for them.

Well, we're going to see the leaders of both OpenAI and Anthropic at this meeting today with the president. President Trump actually posted this seating chart of who is going to be here. Just to walk you through some of the big names around this table.

You're going to have Anthropic CEO, Dario Amodei. He was actually here at the White House for a private dinner meeting with Trump personally on Sunday. You also have another Anthropic leader, Tom Brown. Also on here, though, is Elon Musk. You're going to have Meta's Mark Zuckerberg, NVIDIA's Jensen Huang, Palantir's Alex Karp. We know OpenAI's Greg Brockman is going to be here. So a number of people in this space, leaders in the A.I. industry.

And look, from the conversations, Boris, we've been having with people in the Trump administration and here at the White House, they argue that this meeting is unlikely to really solve the problems and the big gap that stands between some of these A.I. leaders and this administration. Trump, for his part, has argued in recent weeks specifically, but has been very public in his arguments, that he believes the priority for artificial intelligence is about, one, outpacing China, and two, not stifling the economic output that you're seeing, the driver of the economy that you're really seeing with A.I.

But then you have some of these leaders, like Sam Altman, like Dario Amodei, who have been saying there are a lot of dangers that come to artificial intelligence. And if we don't slow it down or don't put regulations on it, we could see a lot of these risks come to light in the near term. And so this meeting, I'm told, is really supposed to be a starting point to get all of these people in the same room together and to have a dialogue about where to go and what role the government should play in potential regulation of the industry.

So it's going to be very interesting. A lot of big people who are sitting around that table, but we'll see what actually comes of it once it wraps.

SANCHEZ: Alayna Treene, thank you so much. Brianna?

KEILAR: On Capitol Hill, former Special Counsel, Jack Smith has just wrapped up his testimony before Senators on the Judiciary Committee. And during the hearing, Republicans on the panel repeatedly attempted to portray Smith's criminal prosecutions of Donald Trump as political. And one Senator, Missouri's Eric Schmitt, sparked all kinds of confusion during what appeared to be an odd line of questioning.

CNN's Evan Perez is on the Hill for us. Evan, this is one of the weirder moments in a hearing that I have ever seen in decades. Explain what happened here.

EVAN PEREZ, CNN SENIOR JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, you know, you don't often see members of the Senate just essentially go walk around stepping on rakes as they're trying to draw out a conspiracy that they've come up with. And that's what we had here today. Now, look, this is -- the focus of this hearing was oversight of Jack Smith's investigations of President Trump.

We never got to see President Trump on trial, but what we had Republicans here today trying to do is put Jack Smith on trial.

[14:05:00]

And what Eric Schmitt, the Senator from Missouri, was trying to do was to try to tie what Smith was doing in his investigation, portraying him as partisan, with Fani Willis, the Democrat D.A. down in Atlanta, who also had a separate case against Donald Trump. And what he was trying to do was to say that Jack Smith went down to Atlanta and was hanging out with Fani Willis.

Listen to this exchange and we'll explain a little bit more on the other end.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. ERIC SCHMITT, (R-MO): What would you say if I had a series of text messages from your team that said you were in Atlanta at a Warrior Hawks game on February 3rd, 2024, the day after Willis and Wade announced their affair?

I don't think you know that we have this stuff. So I'll give you a second to process it so you don't, you know, perjure yourself.

JACK SMITH, FORMER SPECIAL COUNSEL WHO INVESTIGATED DONALD TRUMP: You just took it down really quick. If I could look at that again. I recall going to a University of Maryland basketball game where Caitlin Clark was playing. Was Maryland playing Iowa, I think, February of 2024.

But again, that's -- you can check that out if that's what we're talking about.

SEN. SENATOR AMY KLOBUCHAR, (D-MN): University of Iowa. Is it the Hawkeyes?

SCHMITT: Yes.

KLOBUCHAR: Could it then be that University of Iowa is the Hawkeyes? Could that be it?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PEREZ: So there you go. It was a confusion about the Atlanta Hawks versus the Iowa Hawkeyes, a college basketball team. It turns out Jack Smith, as he testified today, never went down to Atlanta to meet with Fani Willis.

That was one of the things when we were covering this investigation, we knew that the Smith prosecutors were doing their very best to separate themselves from what the Democratic D.A. down in Atlanta was trying to do, in part because of exactly this, right? Brianna, this is one of the examples of the type of questioning we had in this hearing today.

And I'll point out one last thing. I mean, you know, again, this was not so much about getting information from Smith as about trying to portray this investigation as partisan. And so, at the end of this, Eric Schmitt was on "The Charlie Kirk Show," sort of like on the MAGA universe there. And he was asked about this, and it was almost celebrated that he had this moment. Left unsaid if, of course, that none of this was actually true, that there was no actual connection between Jack Smith and Fani Willis, at least not at this basketball game.

KEILAR: Yeah. Hawkeyes. Evan, thank you so much for the report.

PEREZ: Yeah.

KEILAR: Still to come, new details in a lawsuit alleging a gang rape at Cornell University, what the district attorney says about the initial decision not to file charges and why the case is now being reopened.

And jury deliberations beginning in the murder trial of Caleb Flynn. Prosecutors say the evidence points to the former "American Idol" contestant in his wife's killing. The defense says an affair is not proof of murder.

And then later, is the Senate race in Texas turning into a money pit for Republicans? A look at why the GOP is spending hundreds of millions to boost Ken Paxton. That and much more coming up on "CNN News Central."

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[14:13:00]

SANCHEZ: Today, the New York Attorney General's office says it is reviewing Cornell University's response to an alleged gang rape at a fraternity house in 2024. This comes just hours after the Tompkins County District Attorney's office announced it is reopening the case.

Now, earlier this month, a former student who claims she was sexually assaulted by several members of the Chi Phi fraternity filed a lawsuit accusing the school of not doing enough to protect her. CNN's Gloria Pazmino joins us now.

So, Gloria, what do we know about this review by the New York A.G.?

GLORIA PAZMINO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, we should mention, Boris, that the Attorney General's office tells me that they are very much in the initial stages of looking into this. And the context in here that matters is that the office of the state attorney general has previously investigated universities for how they respond to allegations of sexual misconduct on campus. The most recent example of that was a case out of Columbia University where the attorney general investigated how the institution responded to the allegations. So that's what the attorney general, now we can confirm and report, is beginning to look into. Aside from that, we have also heard from New York Governor, Kathy Hochul, today who is calling on the university to conduct an independent investigation into how they responded to this incident. And I think that highlights just how much Cornell University is in the spotlight here, in addition to the district attorney.

That is where a lot of the reaction is being directed at. People asking questions about why the district attorney didn't bring charges back in 2024 and why the university didn't handle this in some other way. Now, we have been talking with the district attorney, trying to ask those questions.

[14:15:00]

And one of the central parts of his defense for why he didn't bring charges back in 2024 was that the alleged victim in this case, Jane Doe, did not allege that she had been sexually assaulted or drugged. And I want you to take a listen to what he is saying now about the new allegations in Jane Doe's civil lawsuit.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MATTHEW VAN HOUTEN, TOMPKINS COUNTY DISTRICT ATTORNEY: We knew all of the information that the police collected from Jane Doe through her very detailed, very comprehensive statement that she provided. And we start out with the foundation that we believe that we keep that until there is some objective evidence to believe to the contrary. And we always believed it. We still believe Jane Doe's statement.

So when you know that that very detailed, comprehensive account does not establish a crime, it's not ethical for a prosecutor or for the police to go out and look for or cross-examine her to find evidence of a crime.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PAZMINO: Boris, that last reference that he made to Jane Doe's statement, he's referring to the fact that Jane Doe provided a sworn statement back in 2024 about what allegedly went on here, where in part she said that she had willingly, consensually engaged in some of the activity, including consumptions of drugs and alcohol during the night of the incident.

We have also heard from Chi Phi fraternity today. They have issued a statement condemning the actions, but also saying that they are aware of the lawsuit. They also said, quote, "concerning the alleged incident in 2024, while we cannot discuss the specific allegations during pending litigation, we take this matter seriously. Our responsibility is to approach this with care for those affected and respect for the fair and legal process."

The fraternity also went on to say that everything that's been alleged in this lawsuit goes against their principles to create better men. And they call on every brother of this fraternity to demonstrate character through their actions. So again, I think the spotlight really on Cornell University, the district attorney, how he's going to handle this investigation going forward and just how soon perhaps we might hear that this grand jury is being convened. Boris?

SANCHEZ: Gloria Pazmino, thank you so much for that update.

Still to come, a ban on Canadian alcohol now in effect. How soon could those products disappear from your shelves?

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[14:22:18]

KEILAR: Right now, the U.S. is making an unprecedented move against one of its closest allies, Canada. $800 million worth of Canadian alcohol is now banned. It's the latest battle in the president's trade war with its northern neighbor, and the U.S. is reacting to Canadian provinces banning U.S. alcohol, which is a response to the U.S. threatening tariffs on Canada.

Here's how one trade analyst puts it, quote, "In playground parlance, the United States started it." CNN's Matt Egan is here to explain how this booze ban will impact you.

Matt, tell us what you're learning. Hope you're not a Canadian club drinker.

(LAUGH)

MATT EGAN, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: Well, Brianna, look, this trade war, it's intensifying and it's broadening out beyond just tariffs. So just after midnight, the Trump administration banned imported Canadian beer, wine and spirits. This is a big deal because last year alone, the United States imported $800 million of Canadian alcohol.

Now, the U.S. has done import bans before, but typically for national security reasons against adversaries like Russia and Iran. This, of course, is unprecedented because this ban is against a major U.S. ally. So what does it mean for consumers? Well, as always, the devil is in the details. And experts say that at least initially, consumers may not notice that this ban has even taken place.

That's because the ban, it really -- it was announced three weeks ago. So that gave companies time to rush imports across the border before it took effect. Also, it's aimed at retail-ready packaged booze. So think bottles, cans, kegs. Bulk imports that are going to be bottled here in the United States, those are still allowed. And that is a significant loophole here. For example, whiskey above four liters, that is not banned.

And notably, Crown Royal and other brands, they have already had a practice where they bottle their alcohol here in the U.S. So those brands, they should be pretty well positioned to get around this ban. On the beer front, it's a little bit more mixed, right? So Molson Coors and Labatt, two of the best known Canadian beer brands, they have U.S. breweries. So those beers that are sold here in the U.S., they're not really imported. They should be just fine. However, Moosehead -- Moosehead, all of their breweries and bottling operations, they're in Canada. So this is an example of a brand that could become hard to find here in the U.S. once the supplies that they rushed over the border run out.

So bottom line here, when it comes to the impact for consumers, it's kind of mixed.

[14:25:00]

It depends on the brand and it depends on what workarounds exist. What is clear, however, is that this trade war, it continues to escalate. And now, we wait for the next shoe to drop and to see what, if anything, is able to end this trade war. Brianna, back to you.

KEILAR: All right, Matt Egan, thank you so much.

We are standing by as a high-stakes meeting with high tech leaders is happening at the White House. The media is waiting just outside the doors of that summit. We're going to stay on that and bring it to you as they head in.

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