this is cnn breaking news. good morning. welcome to your "new day". alisyn is on assignment. erica hill joins me. we have breaking news in serious variety. the serial bomber who terrorized the city of austin for three weeks is believed dead by austin police. they confirmed the suspect killed himself using an explosive device in his car. authorities using surveillance video to identify the 24-year-old man and track him down to the location where this all ended. we want to get straight to cnn's ed lavandara in texas with more on the breaking details. ed? >> reporter: good morning, erica. well, it's quite a scene here in the town of round rock, a suburb on the northern edge of austin.

you can see behind us here the flurry of activity where investigators say this is where the search for the serial bomber has ended here in the overnight hours. authorities say that over the course of the last few days they have been able to put together information leading them to a suspect. when they set out teams to begin surveillance it brought them to a hotel just up the road from the scene. you see is a small number of hotels off 35 on the north side of austin here. the authorities say that they were waiting for tactical teams to arrive here at the scene to be able to begin the process of approaching the suspect. but before that could happen, the suspect started leaving the parking lot, driving along the service road of the interstate. that is where the engagement came. the chief of police here in austin picks up the story from from here. he describes how it all unfolded when the takedown ended.

>> as members of the austin police department s.w.a.t. team approached the vehicle, the suspect detonated a bomb inside the vehicle, knocking one of our s.w.a.t. officers back and one of our s.w.a.t. officers fired at the suspect as well. the suspect is deceased and has significant injuries from a blast that occurred from detonating a bomb from inside his vehicle. >> reporter: chris, one of the members of the austin s.w.a.t. team suffered minor injuries in that altercation with the serial -- the suspect, serial bomber in this case. he's expected to be okay. it's amazing how things started to build and change things here. one of the key pieces of evidence, the video from fedex drop-off location.

the serial bomber is described as a 24-year-old white male. that he was appearing in the surveillance video wearing a wig and gloves, someone looking very suspicious at that time. they are urging people to still be cautious. there could be other explosives around. >> joining us on the phone is an investigative reporter for the "austin american-statesman". he broke the story of the bomber being killed. thank you very much for bringing this reporting. very important for the community and beyond. first, what tko we know about the key pieces of proof and clues that led them to this man and this hotel? >> well, i'm told that it is really a number of things that happened break this case wide open within the last 24 hours. but the collection of the critical evidence of this case goes back a week if not more, i'm told.

after the first blasts, common household materials that could be easily purchased were being used to manufacture these devices. so then what we know occurred is that agent fanned out the city of austin, going to big box retail stores as well as locally owned stores trying to determine whether or not there were suspicious purchases. going through receipts and going through sales records from those stores. i'm told that effort did prove successful to law enforcement and did in fact, provide critical evidence that they also used to bolster their case. i'm told they also were able to acquire federal search warrants for this person's ip address and then use that google information indicated that this person had been conducting suspicious

searches. so authorities, again, used that. law enforcement also confirming that they have relied also upon witness interviews to help them get a sketch of this possible suspect. but, again, the main piece of evidence that really seems to have broken this case wide open is that the fact that the suspect went to the fedex store in the southern part of the city where he was captured on security video. and police say they used that as the final piece to put all of this together again really within the past 24 hours. >> there was some try an hraeugz about the description of the vehicle that helped them find their way to the hotel parking lot. what are you hearing about motive, tony? >> police are still trying to understand the motive. as it has been described to me by law enforcement officers who had been okayiworking on this c literally around the clock now

for three weeks, their primary motivation is trying to figure out who was doing this and stop them before they continued going on this spree of setting bombs across the city of austin. now begins the process of going back and trying to understand a number of different things, what were their motivations. were they targeting someone specific? and if so why? they will turn back the clock to try to understand those important dimensions of this case as well. >> tony, thank you very much. appreciate it. >> absolutely. pwrets bring in special agent james gagliano and phil mudd. motive matters. certainly it would determination the classification of this investigation. we haven't heard terrorism or terror raids because investigators didn't have any understanding of a political motive or objective here. but why he was doing it matters in terms of their determination

of continuing threat, right? >> sure, it does. in this case, i have a i couple questions i'm not sure we're going to answer. one rule of thumb. when you get one individual, if we determine that there are not other people involved in this, the likelihood of mental in stability is a lot higher. you get two, three, four five people you get conspiracies like i used to see that had some sort of political motivation. here clearly he is not targeting someone based on race, ethnicity because we have trip wire and packages where he doesn't know who will each the package or whether it might explode in the fedex facility.

let's go back to the unabomber, one we can draw connections to. ted kaczynski, purposely put

things inside the bombs to draw efforts away and scrutiny away from him. little hints like a small piece of metal with something stamped on it that had nothing to do with him, the area he was from or even the devices in the bomb. we have to be careful about that. this bomber was able to think about this, first three package, east saoeufpltd third, trip wire, west side of austin. dropped off papblsz in south austin p. finally corraled by police and ended up being killed in the northern part of austin.

>> where is the surveillance video? we're asking people in their

homes if they have any. all of that still being worked outcoming into play. what do you want to know that we are not getting an answer to? >> blessedly, there are no perfect crimes. criminals are like all of us. they take the path of least resistance. they do things where they're comfortable and do things generally in their back yards. the most difficult part of this will be, it's a bombing investigation. the most blast analytics. i have stood over many of crater from an ied in afghanistan and watched in austere conditions some of the bomb text to put together the pieces that you need to find out what the signature of the bombmaker was and then track that back and all the forensic evidence. we're blessed in the 21st century. latent fingerprints can be pulled from next to nothing. they have dna. they can track it off the bomb parts. and unexploded devices.

>> the biggest blessing is we have incredibly dedicated men and women who do this kind of stuff. phil, this ain't easy what they just did down there. this guy wasn't leaving any good indication where they were coming from. we know there was an army down there, termed used by the mayor in thanking them. how hard was it for law he enforcement to figure out who this was and relatively quickly if you think about it? >> it depends whether he made mistakes. when you have this volume of activity and you have this kind of digital trail, which i want to get into, the guy is going to make mistakes. he is leaving a credit card record in the store. how did he pay for the package when you have surveillance. are there license plate readers going out of the fedex facility that could identify after you saw that photo what the vehicle was. they said they had the option, the warrant to go into his google searches. again, another digital trail. this guy, moving so quickly,

will leave traces of activity all around. the problem is it's going to take 500 people to track like the store invoices. >> that part is remarkable to me too. they figured out -- we're not talking about i ordered something online.

so president trump has a lot of legal challenges facing him, specifically three women all in the same kind of universe of fact. they want to tell their stories of alleged affairs and sexual harassment. and they are all claiming one way or the other that the president has tried to silence them. he's also facing scrutiny of a much higher caliber of politics, his call with russian president vladimir beauty sin and what he insists on saying that he was advised not to. abby phillip. things written in all caps on note cards. >> reporter: the president is dealing with russia on several fronts this morning. and even as preparing for the

the special counsel interview coming up in the coming weeks, he is dealing with these new and growing legal challenges in his personal life. accusations about president trump's alleged past sexual exploits now developing on three different fronts. the lawyer for adult film star stormy daniels releasing this as a result of a polygraph test about her alleged affair with mr. trump. the results indicate that daniels was being honest when she said she had unprotected sex with the president in 2006. mr. trump denied the affair. polygraphs are generally in admissible, but the lawyer paid $25,000 for the rights to the footage. >> we want the public to know the facts, to know my client's story. i'm confident that after they view that interview and after they view this evidence, they are going to be conclude that what they have been told by mr. cohen, and the denials, if you can call them denials, from the white house are simply baseless

and false. >> reporter: president trump's legal woes don't stop there. a injure judge denying a dismissal of a lawsuit against summer zervos. weeks before the 2016 election, zervos accused trump of sexual assaulting her. >> he came to me and started kissing me open mouthed. he put me in an embrace, and i tried to push him away. i pushed his chest, put space between us, and i said come on, man, get real. he repeatedly words back to me. get real, as he began thrusting his genitals. >> reporter: the president denied her claims saying i never met her at a hotel or greeted her inappropriately a decade ago. very he vose's lawsuit zervos's lawyer said it damaged her reputation by essentially

calling her a liar. and former "playboy" model karen mcdougal who claimed she had an affair in 2006. these lawsuits come as sources tell cnn that special counsel robert mueller's russia investigation continues to agitate the president. president trump facing scrutiny over his reluctant to confront russian president vladimir putin. >> i had a call with president putin and congratulated him on the victory, his electoral victory. >> reporter: the "washington post" reports that president trump ignored warnings from national security advisers, including a note in his briefing materials that read in capital letters, do not congratulate. a white house official tells cnn that he did not read his notes before speaking with putin, whose sweeping reelection has been widely condemned as a sham. >> we don't get to dictate how other countries operate. what we do know is that putin has been elected in their country, and that's not something we can dictate to them how they operate. >> reporter: the "post" reports

mr. trump overruled guidance to condemn the nerve agent used to poison a spy agent and his daughter in the uk. instead the white house emphasizeing the purpose of the call was to discuss shared interests with russia on iran and north korea. >> we had a very good call. suspect we will be meeting in the not too distance future. >> reporter: president trump also did not bring up the russian meddling in the election or sanctions they just imposed on russia. this morning he's been tweeting about special counsel again. this time quoting what appears to be some comments made by harvard law professor alan tker, wits. he thinks that the president was right that there should not have been special council appointed at all because there was no

probable cause for a crime. there were misspellings. clearly this morning russia still on the president's mind. special counsel still front of mind for him as he goes more aggressively in his own defense on social media for the first time since this whole thing has begun. he is talking about mueller directly and naming him on twitter. erica. >> abby, thank you. will the president's twitter attacks turn into action against robert mueller? we'll discuss, next. the fastest samsung ever demands t-mobile, the fastest network ever. right now get the new samsung galaxy s9 for half off. ♪ ♪ can i get some help. watch his head. ♪

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i'd of said... i'd of said you're dreaming. dreaming! definitely dreaming. then again, dreaming is how i got this far. now more businesses in more places can afford to dream gig. comcast, building america's largest gig-speed network. the president is tweeting about the mueller probe again this morning. he said special council, he meant counsel but spelled it differently, is told to find crimes wether, another typo, crimes exist or not. i was opposed to the selection of mueller to be special council. he is quoting a piece of alan desrhowitz who wrote for the hill. the point is pretty simple.

you don't have to read this mangled tweet to get it. which is alan believes there was no probable cause of a crime being committed so there was no need for special counsel. the president is echoing that in his own continued attacking of the fact that there is a special counsel. and he is trying to, quote, professor dershowitz in making that case. here is trey gowdy to one of the lawyers to the president on sunday. >> to suggest that mueller should shut down and that all he is looking at is collusion, if you have an innocent client, act like it. russia attacked our country. if you believe, as we found, there is no evidence of collusion, you should want special counsel mueller to take all the time and have all the independence he needs to do his job is. and when you are innocent, if the allegations of the collusion

with russia and there is no evidence of that, act like it. >> gowdy makes an excellent point there. nobody should want this probe to continue and conclude and then have a finding where, look, there are no crimes related to the president. that's the only way the questions will go away. the more he attacks the process the more it looks like he has something to hide. chris solcillizza and phil mudd. dershowitz is in the news. i consulted with him a lot. he has one fundamental theory. you should not take political fights into the legal arena. >> right. >> you should not prosecute political opponents. point taken. good points. smart points. but we have to look at why there is special counsel here, chris cillizza. >> yeah. >> rod rosenstein, trump's choice at the doj, made this determination after the firing of comey because he came to the conclusion that this could not be investigated in the normal

challenges. with sessions. everything was compromised they needed an independent. look, dershowitz said it should have an independent committee. should have taken it out all the way. shouldn't have gone this route. that's an argument to be had. but this is the route they decided to go. that's why there is this special counsel. >> i think the professor is making a theoretical argument against special counsels without probable cause. okay. let's put that there. let's deal with where we are and what trump is using the argument for, which i don't think is exactly what the professor intends it to be. not just rod rosenstein as an appointee but bob mueller, george w. bush's pick for fbi director. >> and sitting across from trump in the oval office. >> as a potentitential -- so, a

if you scrape the surface, and you don't have to scrape a lot, the idea that this is some sort of partisan witch-hunt that should never have been started and was started because democrats can't deal with the fact that donald trump won, it just doesn't hold water. i make this case to anyone who asks. if you are donald trump, per trey tkpwoudy, you are only full exoneration is bob mueller. because muller is still widely respected. not all that well-known. his voice and his report will be taken as fact. why work to undermine that

unless, dot, dot, dot. and i don't know what that means. smart people on twitter say, you know why he's doing it. i don't know. i don't think we can conclude that at this point. i don't think it would be responsible to conclude that. but i do think it does not follow logic if you're donald trump if you believe you're innocent, if you know you're innocent. why spend all of this time calling it a hoax, a witch-hunt. >> hedging against a bad result. that's why you do it. i don't know why he is doing that when he might wind up frustrating his own efforts. >> that is a great question. that's like what we heard from trey gowdy and chris cillizza. these are also the attorneys, some of the attorneys who promised the president this was going to be over before the end of the year. so part of it may be too that the president has these, as we know, unrealistic expect euatio of a timeline. >> real quickly, i think that is at least part of what we have

seen the last six days, the hiring of joe i did generdigeno. >> and the call that the president had with vladimir putin. he was very important information and strict instructions from his team in all capital letters, do not congratulation. not congratulate vlad peer putin on his win in the election. ignoring that sreufplts not talking about meddling. not talking about the poisoning of the spy in the uk. the broader implication is not surprise anything a number of ways this is how the phone call went. and yet there is concern. >> i don't think he ignored the advice. let me couple this with the he

had with justin trudeau, it is clear the president didn't have a knowledge of what the trade relationship was with the canadians because he told us he made it up. i served in the national security council. when you have a meeting between the president of the united states and foreign official, the president gets background about canadian trade or what happened during the russian elections, including ballot box stuffing. and he gets talking points. this is what we suggest you say. based on those two experiences, the canadian prime minister and the fact that he didn't appear to know what the package was, what the materials were provided by his staff, i don't think he reads any of this stuff. as national security council staffer, you want to bang your head against the wall. it's not that hard. you get half a page of stuff that says tell the russian president you won but it was a little bit of an ugly election. tell him you don't like him meddling in the elections. and saying our closest ally is uk, we stand with them on the

attempted murder of a former spy on uk soil. he didn't read any of that stuff, just as he didn't read it when he was talking with justin trudeau. >> also, the president wants to talk about the mueller investigation, he can. he's not going to convince anybody it is is illegitimate except people predisposed to reading what was already said. on this one he can shed some light he should tweet why we say so generous in his relationship with vladimir beauty in. we just passed sanctions. they didn't want to deal with executing those sanctions. they have been on the desk for months. he would have acted much faster, like they are in north korea and other place, where they want to act. why does he keep doing this with putin? if only, just look at raw politics. it's a bad look for him to coddle someone that everyone believes you have to keep at arm's length. >> particularly as the head --

obviously as the leader of the country, but particularly as the head of the republican party. i mean, the republican party is not premised on the we need a new relationship with russia. they have long been premised on we need to be very skeptical and tough with russia. the short answer to your question, chris, is i have no idea. but it's a pattern. not saying that this saying this was a free and fair election. the continued unwillingness not to talk about the election meddling. all of this stuff, it adds up. >> well, the president just corrected one of his tweets. he corrected the spelling of weather, but not council. the president should tell us why he is acting the way he is with putin. it would help a lot of people very much especially this morning. phil, chris, thank you. facebook is planning to brief congress on the cambridge analytica scandal. what do lawmakers want to know

from the data firm? we will ask a member of the house intel next.

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in an undercover video, alexander nix said the data firm ran all of president trump's digital campaign. he describes his meeting with the house intelligence committee saying his questioning with republicans lasted five minutes while the interview with democrats lasted two hours. joining us now is democratic congressman jim himes of connecticut, who serves on the house intel committee. what's the beef, congressman? >> good morning, chris. well, you know, cambridge analytica in particular and nix, when you watch that video, you realize this guy is one hell of a mercenary. some of the things his firm offered to do in terms of entrapment and finding dirt on people. it was pretty sleazy. opposition research in politics is a fact of life. he just took it to an extreme. facebook, of course, very, very sloppy, particularly years ago about what their platform could be used for about, you know,

sending off data to an academic in this case for academic use which turned out to be not academic. the piece that is getting lost here is people need to realize when they take personality quizzes, when they put the name of their favorite car or what they felt like when they had their first kiss into a quiz, that information has value. people are going to use it. and i think there's a real lesson here for the american people in terms of what they do with their personal information. >> look, we all know something is going on. you and i could be having an e-mail about 57 chevys and then i got all of these pop-ups about car parts. and another aspect is the doctor involved creating this personality test, kogan, 270,000 users had data collected.

and they had their friends users as well as. but what is the relevance to this campaign? as you said, research is an ugly business. >> you highlight one of the up comfortable aspects of this. if you take a personality quiz and answer 15 questions, you shouldn't be surprised when somebody uses that. but it looks like in this particular case this guy, kogan, had access not just the people who took this quiz but their facebook friends information. i bet you, i don't know because i haven't read all 20 pages of the privacy agreement, i bet you on page 19, footnote 6, that's probably okay. facebook in a court of law, i haven't read the full privacy agreement like 99.9% of americans, i bet you in a court of law they don't lose that. people need to realize if they're not reading the privacy agreement, if they are offering up this information, it's likely to get out there either because the privacy agreement said it

can or lo and behold, somebody steals it. >> i get that is a legitimate concern. you guys should get after that. but it seems to be getting woven into untoward activity by the trump campaign, whether it's having parscale, his digital guy looking like he is being held out for not wanting to answer questions. what does this have to do with trump and the campaign specifically in your mind? >> look, when you look at the trump campaign, and i'm just coming off this investigation and the house intelligence committee that the republicans had. when you look at this campaign, this is a campaign that didn't observe any of the traditional norms of an election, right? the president's son. when he hears russian government, people want to give him information on hillary clinton, he says that's wonderful. let's do it. the timing is perfect. that's not the right reaction. there is example after example after example. if this is yet another example of the trump campaign stepping over lines which are ethical but may in fact, be illegal, i

certainly won't be surprised. >> what happens next? >> mark zuckerberg and others will spend time in front of congress. it will serve two purposes. one, facebook will continue its evolution, along with so many of these social media skpebg tolling companies, understanding they have a real measure of social responsibility. chris, at some point the videos that facebook put up that the russians purchased, the ads will be available for american people can see and they will understand how how manipulative it was. and this other piece, it really needs to get into the minds of the american people f. they put information out there, there is a good chance that it becomes public, either legally or illegally it will be out there. be careful about what you type in to this incredible machine we call the internet. >> it is interesting how the government, congress specifically, couldn't move net

neutrality through fast enough. when it comes to regulating facebook the way we get regulated or the sec regulates the networks, it's a real slow walk going on. and why? why should those outlets be treated any differently than any other mass media outlet? >> first of all, regulation of media outlets is a mess. cable channels -- >> at least it exists, jim. here you have nothing with facebook in terms of policing their activities. >> it doesn't really exist. the "new york times" can publish what it wants. the government does not tell it whatnot to publish. the national security apparatus will say if you publish this, people will die. the reality is that in the media world, things are not very regulated. it points back to the first amendment. and i think the regulation for a group -- an organization like facebook has to be about privacy and the preservation of private data, not about what they can say or what they can't say.

>> true. but political ads get pleased in other plates for use of a better way, of regulation. about when it is a certain amount, you have to register, file, know who the people are. those should apply as well, no? >> absolutely. and they do. russians can't contribute -- no non-u.s. persons or organizations can contribute to electoral campaigns. if that happened on facebook, and i think it did, that is a violation. now, here's the interesting question there. whether facebook knew it was foreign money that was purchasing those ads. that is for a court of law to work it. you're absolutely right. our election laws are too weak in terms of money and who can say what about whom. those should absolutely be tightened. they are there. facebook is a mechanism for the violation of our election laws, by all means they have to be held accountable. >> we see more and more campaigns are moving off traditional media and onto online. an important area.

congressman jim were himes, appreciate the candor. thank you. erica. >> a massive nor'easter bearing down on the east coast. how much snow will accumulate, chad myers has that next.

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they could get more snow in the previous three storms combined. thousands of flights already canceled. chad myers has the forecast. those superlatives are just fantastic. >> yeah. snow. i saw a little meme that says this winter is like an angry person that storms out of the room after an argument and runs back in and says, and another thing! that's kind of what it looks like. snow in the higher elevations already 10 inches. d.c., zero. dulles, more. if you're at sea level, you won't get a lot of snow. if you are 150 feet above, like danbury, franklin lakes, you will get much more at the surface or at sea level. it snows all day today or for a long time. new york city, 18 hours. same story for boston, philadelphia, all the way to d.c.

d.c. downtown 35 degrees. philadelphia is also 35 degrees. boston, you're going to change over to snow. you will get 6 to 10. the models have significantly gone down from where they were yesterday, which was a dangerous forecast. some numbers were like 25 on the computer models yesterday. not today. we are talking about a bigging swath of 6 to 10. there may be spots around 18. that is going to be the exception, not the rule. so we'll go from there. we canceled the flights. a lot of schools are out anyway. let it snow, let it snow, let it snow, chris. >> a lot of people saying nothing here. shouldn't have been a snow day. see how they feel 3:00 this afternoon. appreciate it. time for cnn "money" now. the crisis at facebook intensifying. the federal trade commission putting new pressure on facebook over its failure to protect user data. yet still no word from ceo mark zuckerberg. chief business correspondent christine romans "in the money" center with more. >> we are really waiting to hear

from him, aren't we? ftc investigating how they accessed data of 50 million users without their consent. they are facing millions in fines. another hit to its reputation. facebook makes billions of ad dollars off your data. so where is mark zuckerberg? he's been notably absent, even from a staff-wide meeting. facebook top execs are frustrated we're told he's not speaking publicly, including about russia meddling in the 2016 election. in the meantime, investors are suing facebook claiming it cost them money. facebook shares fell another 3%, wiping out $49 billion in market value this week alone. that's a big number, erica. >> christine, thank you. cnn learned white house chief of staff john kelly is furious over a leak to "the washington post"

that president trump congratulated vladimir putin on his re-election despite being told very clearly not to do so. we'll speak with one of the reporters who broke that story next. i'm just worried about the house and taking care of the boys. zach! talk to me. it's for the house. i got a job. it's okay. dad took care of us. hey. pass please. i'm here to fix the elevator. nothing's wrong with the elevator. right. but you want to fix it. right. so who sent you? new guy. what new guy?

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theratears® uniquefer from the electrolyte formula, i mean, why would i replace this? corrects the salt imbalance that causes dry eye. so your eyes will thank you. more than eye drops, dry eye therapy. theratears®. the president trump is facing partisan backlash for congratulating vladimir putin on his re-election. cnn has learned white house chief of staff john kelly is furious about the leaks -- about this phone call getting into "the washington post." the newspaper reporting that the president congratulated putin despite the advice of his national security adviser. that's probably the part that bothers kelly the most. joining us is cnn political analyst josh dawsey, one of the reporters from "the washington post" that broke the story. you made the general angry.

they don't like leaks in the white house. what do the leaks suggest to you? >> the leaks suggest the president's national security adviser clearly said do not congratulate in the written briefing. they wanted to bring up the attack with a nerve agent in london of a russian ex-spy that is believed to have happened at the hands of the russian government. neither one of those things were addressed in the call with vladimir putin. there was a lot of debate and dissension in the white house on whether he should congratulate vladimir putin on this re-election because it's seen as a sham, seen as a fixed election, not a democratic election. there's a sense by congratulating him you give more legitimacy, at least in the eyes of many close to trump. the president was given exte extensive briefings on how to handle this call. he obviously handled it in his own way. we were able to reveal he did handle it in his own way and did not follow the national security guidance he was given. >> what was the argument in

favor of congratulating putin and what do you hear in terms of the rationale for the relatively light hand that the president uses with putin? >> the president often congratulates leaders who are not democratically elected. you see him do it with the chinese president, the turkish president. he often gives autocratic and dictators congratulations even if the elections are not done like the united states elections are done. the white house would argue the administration has put new sanctions on russia, there's been a lot of tough talk about russia from administration officials. the president has said repeatedly he wants to have a positive relationship with vladimir putin. that has attracted a lot of scrutiny because of the investigation of did russians affect the election. there's been charges brought by special counsel mueller trying to show how they tried to sway the election.

the international research agency tied to moscow, a lot of scrutiny on these relationships. >> very interesting. let me ask you something else in terms of the idea that he didn't follow advice on this call. there's some reporting that suggests he may not have looked at the note cards that said it. your reporting is whether or not he looked at the note cards doesn't matter because he was briefed in person about what should and should not happen on this call. yes? >> the president has given two briefings, extensive note cards for his binder and also an oral briefing. it is unclear what came up in the oral briefing and whether the oral briefing queued specifically to what was in the binders, do not congratulate and the condemnation of attack, were both in his written notes, his oral briefing conducted by h.r. mcmaster, his embattled national security adviser may have taken a different tone. we obviously weren't present for that so can't speak to the entirety of its contents. >> josh dawsey, thank you very much. . >> thank you, chris.

we're following a lot of news this morning. let's get after it. >> good morning and welcome to your "new day." it's wednesday, march 21st. now 8:00 in the east. alisyn is on assignment. erica hill by my side. we have breaking news for you. the suspected serial bomber who terrorized the city of austin for nearly three weeks is reported dead. austin police confirm the suspect killed himself using an explosive device in his car. >> authorities using surveillance video from a fedex location to identify the 24-year-old white male and track him to the location where they then ended up pursuing him in a car and where things later ended. cnn's ed lavandera joining us from round rock, texas, with more on these breaking details. good morning. >> reporter: good morning, erica. you can see over my shoulder the flashing lights. that is where the pursuit of this suspect, the serial bomber has come to an end just a few

hours ago. austin police confirming that they started the process of tracking down -- they had gotten a lead on this suspect who has only been described right now, no name released, as a 24-year-old white male. at some point here in the last several hours, overnight hours, they were able to track the suspect down to a parking lot just up the road here, just off the edge of enter nate 35. we're in a suburb called round rock which is just north of austin. police say they were waiting for tactical teams to arrive to move in on that suspect. he left the parking lot and started driving away, eventually driving into a ditch. that's where we're told s.w.a.t. team members approached the car and the suspect detonated a bomb inside his car killing himself. >> as members of the austin police depar