

2 Oct 2026 · 48m · 20 chapters

The episode focuses on a new Trump-linked cryptocurrency “meme coin” contest that promises an “exclusive” dinner with President Donald Trump for top buyers, framed as a way to pump trading and boost Trump’s financial benefit. It describes the “Dollar Sign Trump” coin’s price drop from about $70 at launch to about $2, and repeats prior similar contests (April 2025; dinner in May 2025).
the dinner invitation is effectively access for large purchasers; Trump-affiliated crypto firms (Fight Fight LLC and Trump Organization affiliates) run the contest; Trump profits from buying/selling and reported over $600M from crypto since taking office; the scheme resembles a pump-and-dump/rug pull.
a Chinese-born billionaire reportedly bought over a million coins (~$18M) at the prior dinner; a 25-year-old invested $450,000 now worth ~$50,000.
New York Times investigative reporter Russ Buettner; Washington Sun’s Jeff Stein.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes.
The discussion covers the details of the Trump meme coin contest and its implications.
“If you think you've heard this before, you would be correct.”
The hosts examine how the meme coin has financially affected Trump's supporters.
“He's making that money because it's the right thing to do.”
Investigative reporters discuss the financial benefits Trump gains from the meme coin.
“I mean, it's the chance for access to the president, even though there are apparently no gifts accepted at the party.”
The segment explores criticism directed at Trump regarding his meme coin ventures.
“Russ, I mean, you've been reporting on the president's finances for more than a decade now.”
Details are shared on the financial commitment required to attend the gala dinner.
“Yeah, I mean, it's essentially a baseball card where you don't get the baseball card.”
The conversation touches on the timing and potential manipulation of the contest announcement.
“One thing I'll just add, you know, I talked to a 25-year-old who put$450 ,000 of his own money into this.”
John King discusses voter reactions and sentiments about Trump and his financial dealings.
“Yeah, it was kind of a weird thing because someone flagged to me, Zach Iverson of the Public Citizen, that this invite existed.”
Learn about the hidden nature of gambling addiction and its impacts.
“We have to share so other people can see that they can get through it too.”
Witnesses recount their harrowing experiences during a mid-flight attack.
“You're looking at new video just seconds after passengers stormed the cockpit of the Fly Dubai 737.”
A passenger shares his detailed account of the incident and its aftermath.
“My next guest was very close to the cockpit on that flight.”
Coverage of the latest developments in the Cornell University alleged rape case.
“Well, up next tonight, breaking news, a major development in the Cornell University alleged rape case.”
Discussion on the revelations from Jane Doe's case and the campus administration's response.
“Jane Doe saying, that's kind of when I came to the realization that I have been gang raped, gang assaulted, whatever you want to call it, that's what happened.”
Experts discuss the implications of a special prosecutor taking over the investigation.
“Joining me now is former federal prosecutor Barrett Berger and New York Times bestselling author Kirsten Powers.”
Kirsten Powers shares her personal experience and the psychological aspects of processing trauma.
“This is markedly different than what the district attorney has been saying in public statements over the last few days, which is, you know, her statement really shifted.”
A deep dive into Renee Good's tragic death and the family’s fight for justice.
“Up next, for the first time, we hear from the partner of Renee Good, the woman shot and killed by an ICE agent in Minnesota, plus a conversation with Renee Good's brother as her family announces it is suing the U.S.”
Exploring the accusations and their impact on individuals involved.
“I mean, obviously, Kristi Noem, Stephen Miller accused her of domestic terrorism.”
Introducing Charlamagne Tha God and discussing his new podcast episode.
“We talk about living with loss and how you can't outrun your grief.”
Charlamagne shares his experiences with loss and mental health.
“He's also a best-selling author and started a foundation that focuses on mental health called the Mental Wealth Alliance, which is the goal is to close the mental health gap in black communities.”
A deep dive into the nature of grief and the importance of acknowledging feelings.
“I don't know if grief is something you do or if it's just something you feel.”
Information on where to find the podcast and related resources for grief.
“So I would rather just feel it in this whole, you know, totality.”

Get the gist, explore an idea or ask about something said.
On Anderson Cooper 360, what are the key points of this episode?
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.
0:02Good evening from the newsroom. The president is campaigning tonight in Oklahoma, a state he won by 34 points just two years ago with near record low job approval numbers and midterms fast approaching. He was in Texas earlier today and will soon be heading to Alabama and other deep red states. Political concerns, however, have not stopped the money grab he and his family have been taking part in since he took office. We learned today that a few weeks after the elections, the president will attend a gala dinner for top buyers of his meme coin. cryptocurrency firms affiliated with the Trump Organization just launched a new contest designed to pump up the price of the meme coin and increase interest in it.
0:39We're talking about the dollar sign Trump coin, which when it launched was being sold for around$70 and today its value has fallen to just$2. If you think you've heard this before, you would be correct. There was a similar contest announced in April of 2025 and a similar dinner that May for the biggest buyers. In the new announcement, there is an AI skinny Trump, and the webpage reads, The most exclusive dinner in the world, an evening with three legends and President Donald J. Trump, plus a private meet and greet with a legend to be announced. Now, the unnamed legends are described as the world's power players.
1:17The pitch continues, three legends, superstars will be added. Check back, there will be no private meetings with the president, no gifts will be accepted. But keep it honest, the big meme coin purchases are the gifts. Any increase in trading on the coin benefits the president and he makes money on buying and selling of it. At the last alleged exclusive dinner, a Chinese-born billionaire was the top buyer. According to CNN reporting at the time, he bought more than a million coins valued at the time at$18 million. Here's video obtained by the New York Times of the president at the dinner.
2:03Looks very glamorous. The right thing to do, he said. The president has, according to financial disclosures, raked in more than a billion dollars from his crypto venture since taking office, but he says he's not doing it for himself. He's making that money because it's the right thing to do. For a lot of buyers of the coin, however, it hasn't worked out so well, and many of them are likely the president's supporters. Here's the headline from July. Nearly a million investors lost a total of$3.8 billion on Trump crypto coin. The White House back in July said, quote, all actions by President Trump and his administration are taken in the best interests of the American people.
2:41This time around, they referred us to the
2:48Fight Fight LLC, both affiliates of the Trump Organization, which did not respond to our request for comment. Joining us right now is New York Times investigative reporter Russ Buettner, also The Washington Sun's Jeff Stein, who broke the news on this latest meme coin gala. So Jeff, let me start off with you. This is one of the things that is exactly what it looks like. I mean, it's the chance for access to the president, even though there are apparently no gifts accepted at the party. I mean, I think you could say the only thing that isn't what it looks like is the photo from that invitation that you saw.
3:25Yeah, there's really no doubt here that this is the president benefiting personally, financially. This is one of the few crypto ventures that he does not personally own. World Liberty Financial, he is, my understanding, the majority owner of that company. This, he has a partnership agreement, which might give him some legal insulation from the conflict of interest concerns, but he is benefiting. This is his most lucrative crypto venture. He reported over$600 million from this one alone as part of$1.4 billion in crypto income as president. So yeah, I mean, you laid it out perfectly. Russ, I mean, you've been reporting on the president's finances for more than a decade now.
4:09What stands out to you about this? It's interesting that this is the well they chose to go back to. I mean, overall, this past year of crypto wealth and Donald Trump's life, I think, has been more income, pure profit than anything else. Probably the sum total of his entire life in business. More than he's ever done. Absolutely. More than his inheritance and the money from the apprentice and his best business deals all combined. And I think it's interesting they went back to this one because this is one they were so roundly criticized for the first go round. because they offered these coins as he was entering office.
4:4558 people bought them. We can't tell who bought a lot of them, sold them immediately. The period when they owned it raised the price a lot. Those people made all more than$10 million each. Almost everybody else who bought it after that lost a ton of money, I think to the tune of$700 million. Which is just incredible when you think about it. I mean, people kind of in the know or who had some brilliance to know when to buy and when to sell it. But people who are probably the president's supporters, I mean, I would think the people who are kind of buying this in large quantities and small amounts are president supporters.
5:20Yeah, I mean, it's essentially a baseball card where you don't get the baseball card. It's just a piece of electronic ephemeral. And it doesn't have any value unless somebody else wants to pay you more for it. You can't use it typically to buy other things. And they were really roundly criticized, even by the crypto industry, for doing what's called a rug pull, which is the equivalent of like a pump and dump scheme. And Jeff, I mean, do you have a sense of how much someone would have to spend on the meme coin to get an invitation to this party? Yeah, it's we have a pretty good sense of like how much each person holds who will qualify.
5:56But we don't, as as was being said, we don't know exactly their identities or who they are. But the top accounts have something like, you know, in the hundreds of millions of dollars and the smaller accounts that are sort of, you know, this contest that they're running, it's for the biggest purchasers up to the, you know, 185th, I think it was, number. So that threshold is hundreds of thousands of dollars. So you have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on this meme coin to be able to qualify for this private dinner. and they're trying to make it like a contest. So the value of the currency will be artificially inflated for this period of the contest.
6:32Maybe the president will sell more of his holdings at that point. One thing I'll just add, you know, I talked to a 25-year-old who put$450 ,000 of his own money into this. And the value of that investment is now down to 50 grand. And he went to the first dinner and didn't like the food and didn't have a good time and didn't get the photo of him with Trump that he so desperately wanted. And I asked him, you know, despite all your for all your criticisms, how do you feel about this? He said, you know, I would still vote for the president again if I had the chance and I'm going to the next dinner.
7:04I just I hope the food will be better this time. It's interesting, though. I mean, Jeff, if given that the president and the people around him would know the timing of when they're going to announce this dinner and stuff. I mean, they could, if they were so inclined, time everything and buy the meme coin and sell the meme coin according on their own schedule, which they control and have inside knowledge of and profit from that. I mean, they would know when they're going to stop this contest and the prices will crater once again. Yeah, it was kind of a weird thing because someone flagged to me, Zach Iverson of the Public Citizen, that this invite existed.
7:48And I went to comment. I asked the organization and the business for comment last night. And originally, the contest was supposed to start in a few weeks or a few days. And once I contacted them, we woke up this morning and the timing of of the contest had been changed to begin yesterday, which suggests that they were maybe caught off guard by the timing of this and are trying to get, get sort of like, they want the press to sort of escalate in time for this, for potentially sales. And I don't have proof of that, but that's suggestive of what they might be trying to do. Russ, I mean, do you expect this, I mean, this crypto venture will go as long as he's in office, I assume?
8:34Clearly, this is something that they intend to maximize every possible way they can. They've done this, this meme coin. They've sold another kind of coin named after World Liberty. They have a stable coin, which is meant to sort of be a replacement for currency in the banking system. They've started businesses the Suns have to try to mine different kinds of tokens. So this is the area where they see the greatest potential. It doesn't really take much work, and it's been enormously profitable. It's remarkable. Russ Bietner, appreciate all the reporting. Jeff Stein as well, thank you so much. Again, this is happening with the president on the campaign trail.
9:12He's got dismal poll numbers on how he's handling the job and the economy. You can see them there. Compounding it, he is still flatly denying what voters are seeing with their own eyes every time they go to the store or fill up at the gas station. Cots are way down, and they're coming down first. We have inflation totally in control, and we've done a great job. And the thing I haven't done a good job with is explaining it to people. Well, Keith Ben-Ramanos costs are not down. They're up. They're rising faster than they were when he took office. And as his job approval numbers suggest, a growing number of voters simply are not buying what he is selling the way they did at the start of his second term.
9:50Joining us now from North Carolina, CNN chief national correspondent John King, who's been speaking to voters around the country ahead of the midterms as part of his All Over the Map series. John, as we said, according to the latest financial filings, cryptocurrency ventures are putting over a billion dollars a year in the president's pocket. When you travel around the country, are voters paying attention to how much he's enriching himself while in office? Every last detail, Anderson, I would say no. But when you talk to Democrats, grift is a word that comes up often and they are highly motivated by it.
10:23Don't get me wrong. Affordability is the biggest issue in this election. but Democrats who already didn't like Trump think he is using his office to enrich himself. And they are highly motivated. And they say that's the reason they will run through a brick wall to vote on Election Day. Among the most loyal Trump voters, I was texting a bunch of them today. Remember, a lot of them don't see these stories. They watch and live and breathe in the mega media ecosystem that doesn't tell them bad things or questionable things or ethical things about the president of the United States. I texted our story, our CNN story, to several today.
10:50One said, this guy's out of his mind. But then five minutes later texted me back, are you sure this is legitimate? bit. So they asked the fake news question, if you will. The most important group, Anderson, are those Republicans who voted for Trump maybe twice if they didn't like him or when Trump, Biden, and then back to Trump because they thought it would fix the economy. Trust me, in our voter groups, we've been texting them and they just think the president is not focused on what they care about most. They think he's just lost, that he's doing all about him and not about them. And that's a huge issue in this election.
11:18You're hearing that people think he's more concerned about the ballroom or, you know, the Kennedy Center or redecorating the White House things like that. Take where I am right now. I'm standing in North Carolina, District 11, been held by Republicans for a dozen years. This is Marshall, North Carolina. Anderson, the spot I'm standing on was under 27 feet of water two years and a couple of weeks ago when Helene, the hurricane hit and the river that's right over there flooded and came up to here. Democrats think they have a chance to flip this seat for that very reason. They think Washington and the president in particular are not delivering on what he promised.
11:51Remember, this is Trump country. We were in Georgia last week. I met with an independent voter in Georgia who was going to vote for Trump if it was just Biden versus Trump. In the end, she went to Vice President Harris, but she said she's invested in two of these crypto funds and lost about$20 ,000. She blames the president for that. And she's mad at the Republicans. She's planning to vote Democrat for Senate in a very big race there in Georgia. Here, they're trying to recover. And the Democrats think here because of that, in a place with a lot of Trump voters, Do they say so publicly? Not as much.
12:21But in private conversations, in some of our voter groups, people just say, look, he said he wasn't going to start a war. He started a war. This is rural America. Diesel prices are way up. He said he would bring prices down fast like that. That hasn't happened. And so it's not what they signed up for. And when you see the arch, the ballroom, or he's making a billion dollars when I can't buy a new car or take my kids on vacation, cumulatively, it all adds up to a lot of voters saying this is not what we voted for. John King, thanks so much. All over the map. Appreciate it. Coming up next, new video from inside the Fly Dubai 737 as the passengers took back control from the co-pilot who allegedly just stabbed the captain.
12:57We'll talk to a passenger who was there. And later, what the woman known as Jane Doe said about the night she was allegedly gang raped at Cornell University and why a seemingly damning part of her account never made it into the report that the district attorney saw.
13:15Hey, I'm Anderson Cooper. On my podcast, All There Is, we explore grief and loss in all its complexities. My guest is Lil Jon. He's a rapper, DJ, and producer known for hits like Get Low and Turn Down For What. In February 2026, his 27-year-old son Nathan went missing near Nathan's home in Georgia. Three days later, his body was found in a pond nearby. Lil Jon has a memoir that just came out called I Only Shout So You Can Hear Me. It takes time to heal. And I kept myself busy that I didn't let myself mourn. I needed to laugh again. I needed to be silly and interact with people and feel other people's energy and make people happy too.
14:00We have to share so other people can see that they can get through it too. Talking grief, building community. That's what the podcast is all about. This is all there is. Listen and follow wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Dr. Sanjay Gupta, host of the Chasing Life podcast. You may have noticed gambling doesn't require a casino anymore. You can just open up your phone. It's designed to keep us coming back or maybe never even leaving in the first place. We're going to talk to Dr. Timothy Fong, co-director of UCLA's Gambling Studies program. You're going to learn what your brain is really chasing when you place a bet.
14:37And also importantly, how to keep the game from playing you. Gambling addiction, gambling disorder is the hidden addiction. You can't smell it. You can't taste it. You can't see it. You can't have a urine drug test. Who are we talking about here, Professor? Who's the most likely demographic to be affected by this? Literally any single human on Earth. Listen to Chasing Life, streaming now, wherever you get your podcasts.
15:08You're looking at new video just seconds after passengers stormed the cockpit of the Fly Dubai 737. They discovered a badly wounded captain and co-pilot who had allegedly stabbed him repeatedly with the plane diving straight at the ground. Now the survivors, many of them Israeli, are now telling their stories. CNN's Jeremy Diamond has more. It's hard to imagine, but this family just survived a dramatic brush with death. 24 hours ago, they were aboard that harrowing Fly Dubai flight. Tali was taking her six-year-old daughter to the bathroom. She says she suddenly heard strange noises coming from the cockpit.
15:48I mainly heard banging on the door, something you're not supposed to hear coming from the cockpit. Noises, a man's raised voice. Suddenly, she says, the cockpit door flung open, and she saw one of the pilots stabbing the other. At that moment, I realized that was it. It was over. I couldn't imagine any way we were going to get out of there. I just screamed, they're stabbing the pilot, they're stabbing the pilot, help. I screamed and screamed. That's when Tzvika, seen here in a bloodied white shirt, jumped into action, grabbing his daughter from the bathroom before rushing to subdue the attacker.
16:52You do whatever you can to help them. And that's the trigger that pushed me. Do you describe it as instinct? It's absolutely instinct. We were like jumping on him, three guys, and with hands, we were struggling with him. And I mean, this must have all been happening so fast. It's so fast and the adrenaline is so high and I didn't know where I was covered with blood from fighting with him. I don't know, maybe he was injured. I don't know how. It was his blood. It was his blood, yeah. I was covered with blood. You know, I have some bruises here that only today I just noticed that this is the adrenaline, you know.
17:43When you are in this moment, you don't feel anything. You act like actually a machine, trying to solve, trying to control, trying to be efficient as much as you can. Zvika is one of three passengers who rushed toward the cockpit and took down the co-pilot before he could crash the plane. But they only managed to get in thanks to the quick thinking of the plane's captain, Smeet Mutscher, who managed to open the cockpit door. He is absolutely a hero. He is absolutely a hero. And due to his act, we are sitting here today. Have you ever been in a situation like this before? Never. Never. Never. There were moments we thought this is the end of our life.
18:30And I'm glad that we succeeded making the change. Tvika's daughters are still processing their ordeal, but Millie's opinion is set on her father. He's a hero, she says, and I love him. Jeremy Diamond, CNN, Tel Aviv. My next guest was very close to the cockpit on that flight. His name is Daniel Schlichter. I spoke to him earlier. Daniel, can you describe the moment when you first realized something was wrong on the plane? Sure. I was sitting on the second row, actually. So the whole situation was very close to where it happened. A mother and her daughter was sitting just behind me, went to the toilet, which is just attached to the pilot, the cockpit door.
19:33And after a few seconds, she pushed her daughter back and she was shouting, getting back to the passenger area, shouting, somebody's stabbing the pilot, somebody's stabbing the pilot. Did she see that or did she just hear that through the pilot, the door? No, no. She saw that. She saw the captain getting stabbed. Wow. She didn't know who the other guy was yet. After a few seconds, I heard, I would describe it as a violent fight, noises coming from the cockpit area. The three guys, the first guy, actually, the Israeli guy that came first jumped in and went to the door of the cockpit area. And he saw the pilot bleeding and stabbed, trying to push the terrorist out of the cockpit area.
20:40The door was open. I mean, the pilot, I know the pilot was able to open the door a little. That was already open. Exactly, exactly, exactly. Even though he was stabbed, he managed somehow to open a little bit the door and started to try to push the terrorists out of the cockpit area. Whenever the first Israeli guy came in, he helped him to push him out of the cockpit area. and he managed to push the pilot as well out to the exit left side of this area. I was trying to think quickly what I can do. So I took three or four sets of earphones so they can tie up the terrorist legs and hands before they find maybe something better to how to tie them.
21:34and the plane at that stage was going rapidly. It was going down and there were a lot of children behind me so I could hear the screaming of the children. The mothers were trying to calm them. There were things flying from one side to the other and the plane was really with the nose down going very, very fast. And at that stage, this is a few, one minute or so or two minutes, I was absolutely sure that this is the end. As soon as they managed to stabilize the plane, we had no connection with them. And we actually had some, from the very beginning, we had some doubts about the crew, the two guys from the crew, the stewards that were on that flight.
22:30We didn't know what to think, if they were cooperating with the terrorists or not. Is that the flight attendants you're talking about? The flight attendants. Absolutely. So you had other passengers had concerns about the actual flight attendants, if they maybe had any connections. So for safety, you put them in the back. Yes. We had some doubts about them. We were suspicious about them. So we put them in the like a sterile area, not not in the cockpit area. How do you feel now? I mean, this is a really traumatic thing to have been part of, to witness. How do you feel now? Well, we're still trying to, you know, to collect all the pictures of the how fast everything happened.
23:23clearly it was a pure miracle and it's not only one miracle because if you think about it then if only the Indian pilot captain would not be able to open the door, that would be it I mean that would be the end of the case, the plane would go down and that's it the second miracle was that the three Israelis managed to take out the terrorists out of the cockpit and take him out together with the pilot, stop the pilot so he will be able to get the care of the doctor. The third miracle was that not like a normal case, there were two more pilots and the fourth miracle of course that we are alive. It's incredible.
24:13I really appreciate you taking the time to talk to us and try to kind of give us all a sense of what that was like. it's just extraordinary what happened. Daniel Schlichter, thank you so much. I'm happy to share. Thank you very much. Well, up next tonight, breaking news, a major development in the Cornell University alleged rape case. New York's governor has just stepped in in a big way. We'll explain ahead. And later, nearly nine months after Renee Good was shot and killed by an ICE officer in Minneapolis, her family files two federal lawsuits. I'll speak to Renee Good's brother, an attorney, about that.
24:53There's breaking news in the Cornell gang rape allegations, this time from the governor of New York who just posted on social media, Tonight I signed an executive order appointing Attorney General Letitia James as special prosecutor in the Cornell sexual assault case. New information has raised serious questions about how this case was handled, and I've lost faith in the Tompkins County DA's ability to fairly oversee it. The young woman at the center of this case deserves to know that every fact will be examined and justice pursued. Seniorist Jason Carroll is at Cornell University tonight with additional developments in the fast-moving story.
25:27We as a campus community stand with victims of sexual violence. Tonight, a public hearing at Cornell University where students reacted to the alleged sexual assault at the Chi-5 fraternity house. I'm also speaking as a college of a girl. I was sexually assaulted almost two years ago. Jane Wang, a sophomore, shared her own experience. Hearing any story from another student here on campus that they've experienced something similar is so heartbreaking. Cornell continues to face scrutiny following a New York Times report that a crucial part of the school's internal investigation omitted Jane Doe's statement.
26:13I can say with 100 % confidence I was raped. That allegation not included in what the university handed over to the district attorney. The common sentiment is that there's like a moral failing. People are just like really frustrated that it's taking a whole lawsuit for these people to be held accountable and that for the survivor to get the justice that she deserves. Students reacting to a New York Times report which revealed the school gathered more than 1 ,000 pages of materials from an internal investigation in 2024, which included a transcript of campus police interviews with Jane Doe, interviews with Chi-Fi fraternity members accused of sexually assaulting her, along with emails and text messages.
26:59The Times report says Jane Doe spoke for hours to a Cornell police investigator, as well as an investigator for the school's Title IX office. According to the Times, the transcript of their conversation stretches about 120 pages. The DA telling CNN Wednesday, we never received it and still don't have it. It was not part of what Cornell provided to us. We got the six-page statement and nothing more except the Snapchat video. The Snapchat was allegedly sent from KIFI members asking others to join in on the alleged assault. Cornell's investigation also revealed Jane Doe documented her injuries. Two weeks after the 2024 incident, she went to an emergency room for a pelvic exam.
27:43She also went to the school's health clinic for treatment of a urinary tract infection, telling a doctor she had contracted the infection in a traumatic way. The material reviewed by the Times showing Jane Doe went to police after she saw online comments about what happened to her that night at the Chi-Fi house, saying members were gangbanging. Jane Doe saying, that's kind of when I came to the realization that I have been gang raped, gang assaulted, whatever you want to call it, that's what happened. Cornell's investigation revealed Jane Doe planned to go back to the Chi-Fi house the following week after the alleged assault for a Halloween party.
28:21Her attorney telling CNN it was all part of processing what had happened. She was still in the denial stage. She could not accept what happened to her. Cornell declined to comment about the Times report. No one from the administration spoke at tonight's student assembly. Jane Wang still has a message for them. Future cases of sexual violence or sexual harassment on campus cannot only be treated with urgency when it's something that reaches national headlines or national news. So Anderson, so many people, so many students that we spoke to, critical of the administration, critical of campus police, and also critical of the district attorney's office.
29:08And now with this latest news that Governor Hochul has appointed Letitia Jaynes to now take over the case, Well, we've reached out to Cornell University about Hochul's move just within the past two minutes, Anderson. We've gotten a response from Cornell University, which simply said Cornell supports Governor Hochul's decision to assign this case to New York Attorney General's office. Anderson. Jason Carroll, appreciate the reporting. Thank you. Joining me now is former federal prosecutor Barrett Berger and New York Times bestselling author Kirsten Powers. Kirsten has written about her own experience being sexually assaulted as a teenager.
29:43She has a new essay on her substack titled, I didn't know it was sexual assault either. Berta, I want to start with you. Just on the legal front, Governor Hochul appointing a special prosecutor to investigate. How is that going to be different than the district attorney? I mean, this is really the only way that this case can proceed with an effort to rebuild the public's confidence in the investigation. I mean, the district attorney's office made the, in my mind, inexcusable decision to rely on a six-page summary after this very extensive investigation had been taken on by the Cornell police, not trying to get all of the underlying files, not trying to get any of the digital evidence.
30:23There's no reason any sort of a sophisticated district attorney's office would do that in this kind of an investigation of this magnitude. So quite frankly, they've lost the public's trust. And so the public needs to have an independent prosecutor looking over this not only to see what happened in this case, but to see what happened in the breakdown between the investigation that the Cornell police did and what the district attorney's office failed to do. Kirsten, are you satisfied with a step by the governor? Would you want to see additional action taken? I mean, I think this is great news because that's right.
30:57I think all trust has been lost. You know, the Cornell administration has shown that they did not protect this girl and And they're not protecting the other young women on the campus either by the way that they handled this. I mean, the idea that she said in the statement, according to The New York Times, that she had been raped and that this was somehow admitted. How does that happen? You know, it certainly looks like we don't know because we can never say for sure what people's intentions are. But it looks like they were protecting the boys, the young men who did this. And so I don't think that anything that they have done has caused anyone to feel that they are keeping women safe on their campus, that there's accountability for what happened and that they appreciate the magnitude of and the seriousness of what occurred here.
31:48And in terms of Barrett, in terms of a statute of limitations, that's still very much open. This is all still in play. We're well within the statute here. So this is really ripe for a comprehensive, thorough investigation. I have no doubt that Letitia James and her staff will do that. I think they will use this base material that the Cornell police gathered, including this really revelatory statement that the victim herself said that she believed she had been raped right from the get go. This is markedly different than what the district attorney has been saying in public statements over the last few days, which is, you know, her statement really shifted.
32:26I will just say everything that we've seen out of Jane Doe has been very consistent with the way that victims of sexual assault take time to process what had happened to them, take time to, you know, sometimes come to terms with the fact that it was a crime, that it wasn't something that they consented to. Kirsten, in your essay, you described not remembering the assault on you until hearing classmates actually talking about it at school and even then needing some time to kind of wrap your head around that. You write, I didn't report it. It didn't even occur to me to do so. I didn't tell anyone about it because I was so ashamed.
33:01In fact, I insisted to my friend that this had not happened, even as the picture clicked into place for me. Can you talk about that, particularly as what also went through your mind when you read the Jane Doe report? Yeah, you know, I was in high school. This was the mid-80s. And so it was a very different time. I mean, we didn't, I don't honestly even know if I had reported it, if they would have considered it an assault because there was no penetration. But this person was bragging to other boys in the locker room about things he had done to me while I was passed out. though he didn't say I was passed out.
33:35I knew I was passed out. And a friend of mine came to me quite shaken and told me about it. And my first reaction was very similar to what you read when you look at the texts that Jane Doe is sending. Shame, right? Feeling that I had done something wrong, that I was going to be thought badly of, that my reputation was going to be harmed. These are all things that she's saying. And it's not until she sees in this, wherever she is online, where she sees it referred to as a gang rape, that it starts to click into place for her, that she starts to realize, wait, you know, I probably don't remember everything that I said that happened.
34:13She actually says in the text the next day, it's very hazy to me. She knows that there were a lot of boys, young men, I don't know what to call them, because it's hard to think of this behavior, you know, as how a man is treating somebody. But the, and I think that I can relate very much to the idea that you wouldn't necessarily remember everything, that it would start to come back to you, that you would hear somebody bragging about it or talking about it, and then you would realize something horrible had happened, but you didn't want people to think less of you for it. I mean, that's what's so horrible about this is so often the victim feels the shame, and we see the boys bragging and gleeful about it on a text chain.
34:56They don't even think they're doing anything wrong. Especially, I mean, you were in high school. It's such a fraught time. Well, yes, I was so young, but I can also relate, you know, this, Jane Doe's very young as well, and you can tell she's looking up. She sees these boys as her friends. I saw this boy as my friend. He was somebody that I looked up to. He was a senior. I idolized him. You don't think that your friend is going to do this to you. You know, I certainly did not occur to me. Now, by the time I got to college, I think perhaps this had happened to me. I started to realize that actually these kinds of things could happen.
35:32But I can see how someone who hasn't been exposed to this would naturally think my friends are not going to harm me. You know, young women should be able to believe that, I think, about their friends. And I think we have to have higher standards for what we expect from young men on campuses. Yeah. As we said, Kirsten has written about this on her substack. Kirsten Parrish, thank you so much. Barrett Berger as well. Up next, for the first time, we hear from the partner of Renee Good, the woman shot and killed by an ICE agent in Minnesota, plus a conversation with Renee Good's brother as her family announces it is suing the U.S.
36:07government and members of the Trump administration over her death.
36:16The family of Renee Good, the American woman shot and killed by an ICE agent earlier this year in Minneapolis, has filed two civil lawsuits against the federal government, one alleging wrongful death and seeking unspecified compensatory damages for a good partner who witnessed the shooting. The second one names Jonathan Ross, the ICE agent involved in the shooting, as well as 10 unnamed agents and a number of top administration officials. The second suit alleges that the federal officials engage in a conspiracy to, quote, interfere with the civil rights of Somali and Hispanic people in Minnesota.
36:47A White House spokesperson said today the administration plans to, quote, vigorously defend these baseless civil lawsuits. Now in a moment you'll see the video taken by ICE agent Ross's cell phone showing the fatal encounter with Renee Good and we want to warn you it's obviously disturbing. I also want to point out you'll also see Good's partner Becca outside the car talking to Ross.
37:12That's fine dude, I'm not mad at you. Show your face. It's okay we don't change our plates every morning just so you know. It'll be the same plate when you come talk to us later. That's fine. U.S. citizen, former f***ing president. You want to come at us? You want to come at us? I say go get yourself some lunch, big boy. Out of the car. Get out of the f***ing car. Get out of the car. All right, baby, go on. Go on. Oh!
37:41F***.
37:46Well, that was in January. Today at the press conference announcing the two lawsuits, Good's partner, who you just saw briefly in the video, spoke out for the first time publicly since the fatal shooting. I don't hate the people who took Renee from us. But what I want them to understand, every single day they get to look at their children and their wives and their sisters and know what they took from our family. They took a mother away from her children. They know that, and they will carry it forever. Earlier I spoke with Brent, the brother of Renee Goode, and the family attorney Antonio Ramanucci.
38:34Brent, thank you so much for joining us. I'm so sorry for your loss, your family's loss. It's been almost nine months. First of all, how is your family doing? It's been a tough nine months. It's felt like much longer than that and somehow like it happened yesterday. I think we are holding together as a unit as best we can, but it's definitely been a long and tumultuous nine months. And Brent, Renee's partner, Becca, spoke publicly today for the first time. I can only imagine what she must be going through still. I think it's a complicated answer. There's a lot of putting the pieces back together still going on and I'm sure all of us will be going through some level of that for a very long time as we've lost an incredible human being but also just a beloved member of our family.
39:27And Becca is just one of us. She is trying to see what life looks like without Renee, and it's especially difficult for her because she was with her every day, and they were raising their son together. So, you know, we all miss her very much, and we'll never be able to get her back, so we're just trying to do our best to move forward, and, you know, in addition to that, help other people through this lawsuit to make sure that this doesn't happen to innocent people anymore. And Brent, what else do you want people to know about Renee? That's a very long list of things, and it's hard to keep track of all the things that we've tried to put out there about Renee, but she was just this lovely person that was infinitely positive, absolutely caring about everybody that she came in contact with, but especially her family.
40:24My siblings and my parents and I like to remember her laugh because it was ridiculous and loud, and it made the rest of us laugh just hearing her laugh. So we miss that very much. And, yeah, just an endless amount of things that I could really just go on forever about. But I just wish I could give her a hug and call her right now. Antonio, can you just briefly talk about the crux of your arguments in these two separate civil suits? Because one is against the United States as an entity. The other is against individuals in the Trump administration who are involved in this policy and officers on the ground.
41:04Yes, I can. And you stated that correctly. We have one lawsuit where we name a number of individuals. That lawsuit, Anderson, is the lawsuit that really describes the conspiracy that our government, people inside and outside the administration designed to deny people here in Minneapolis their equal protection of the law or denying them their constitutional rights. The other lawsuit is the one which specifically takes aim at the shooter, Jonathan Ross, and we sue the United States government as his employer for that death. So they speak to the same thing, but they are two separate lawsuits. And Brent, to be clear, has the federal government, has anyone ever reached out to you since your sister was killed to express regret or condolences or retract any of the attacks on her character?
42:03I mean, obviously, Kristi Noem, Stephen Miller accused her of domestic terrorism. Yeah, absolutely not. We've heard nothing from this administration. and the lack of remorse is definitely something that has been equally difficult to understand, but also predictable. So the labels that she unrightfully had laid upon her really just add salt to the wound and are completely untrue. Well, Brent, again, I'm so sorry for what you have been through in your entire family. And Antonio and Brent, thank you so much for talking to us. Thank you, Anderson. Thanks, Anderson. So that was Rene Good's brother, Brent Ganger, and Antonio Romanucci.
42:51Up next, my conversation with Charlamagne Tha God from my podcast, All There Is. We talk about living with loss and how you can't outrun your grief.
43:05New episode of my podcast, All There Is, has just been released. My guest this week is Charlamagne Tha God, co-host of the hugely influential radio show and podcast, The Breakfast Club. He's also a best-selling author and started a foundation that focuses on mental health called the Mental Wealth Alliance, which is the goal is to close the mental health gap in black communities. Charlamagne lost a cousin and two close friends to suicide. He's talked very publicly about his own experiences with anxiety and panic attacks. This is just part of our conversation. I don't know if grief is something you do or if it's just something you feel.
43:37A lot of times when people pass away or you lose a friend, People always say things to you like, oh, you got to give yourself time to grieve. I would say that grief comes in time. You don't pick and choose when it's going to happen. Like I can be driving through Monks Corner, South Carolina, and all of a sudden all of these different memories flood my mind. Now you, you grieving. I go to my grandmother's house whenever I'm home in Monks Corner, South Carolina, and I sit on the porch just to pray. And sometimes I'm overwhelmed with grief. Sometimes I'm not. Do you allow yourself to grieve? I don't think you really have a choice.
44:14You can't run from it. So even when you say— You can run from it for a long time, but it'll still catch up to you. You think so, but it's on you. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Like, it's on you. It's like being in 110-degree heat. That sun is beating down on you. You can even stand in the shade for a second. You're still going to feel that heat. So I wonder, like, can you really run from it? I don't think so. I think that people either choose to stop and feel it, or they try to distract themselves from what it is they're still feeling anyway. Feelings are the hardest thing for us to acknowledge.
44:45And you know why they're the hardest things for us to acknowledge? Because there's just some things that we simply don't want to feel. But you're going to feel it anyway. So I would rather just feel it in this whole, you know, totality. That's Charlie May and the God. The podcast is available now wherever you get your podcasts or you can watch the full conversation online at cnn.com forward slash all there is online. That's my grief community page. The news continues. Thanks for watching. See you tomorrow. The Source with Caitlin Collins starts now. Let's have I got news for your ears. The podcast.
45:20I am your host, Michael Ian Black. We are talking about the final polls going into the midterms, the hot races getting the most attention. Trump's final argument. Have I got news for your ears? Check us out on Apple, Amazon Music, wherever you get your podcasts. Even better, you can watch the podcast on Spotify.
The family of Renee Good, an American woman shot and killed during an ICE operation in Minneapolis in January, has filed two civil lawsuits against the Trump administration, alleging she posed no threat to federal agents when she was shot. The lawsuits seek damages for wrongful death, battery, assault, and other charges. The White House calls the suits “baseless.” Good’s brother, Brent Ganger, spoke with Anderson about the new legal action.
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