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Zimmerman Petitioning for Language Ban; IRS Officials Face Grilling on Spending; Interview with Rep. Charles Boustany; Baseball's New Drug Informer

Aired June 06, 2013 - 09:30   ET

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

CHRISTI PAUL, CNN ANCHOR: Well, I hope Thursday morning is treating you well so far. I'm Christi Paul. Thank you for keeping me company. I'm in for Carol Costello.

Here's what we're watching right now in the NEWSROOM: the New York stock exchange. Stocks had a bit of a (ph) rebound after taking a bit of a tumble yesterday. CNN's Alison Kosik has more on what's expected in today's trading session. Do you have good news for us?

ALISON KOSIK, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: No, I don't. No rebound as of yet. There definitely has been, Christi, a change in momentum for stocks. You can feel it, you can see it. The Dow's fallen in three of the last four sessions. Yesterday put the average of the Dow below 15,000 for the first time in a month. And as I said, though, not much of a rebound despite the European Central Bank and the Bank of England leaving interest rates unchanged.

What that does do is quiet worries that our own federal reserve will pull back efforts to keep interest rates low and it's those low interest rates have helped to fuel the stock market rally this year, but that rally running out of steam for now. Traders saying we're probably in the middle of at least a 5 percent pullback, maybe even 10 percent correction.

I want to mention, first-time claims for unemployment benefits, the number of people claiming benefits fell by 11,000 last week -- $346,000 but the trend that moved higher and so did the number of people continuing to collect benefits. So, Christi, bottom line with that, it's going to be a mixed bag heading into tomorrow's big jobs report. Christi.

PAUL: All right. Allison, thank you so much.

In just five days, George Zimmerman is going to go on trial for the murder of Trayvon Martin. Today, his attorneys are getting one final shot to disqualify some of the evidence that could be used against him.

Martin Savidge is outside the courthouse in Sanford, Florida, where the hearing under way about whether voice analysis technology can be admitted. Martin, I wanted to ask you real quickly, this involves this 911 call which some people say is the most crucial evidence in the case. But regardless of what happens today, the 911 call coming in as evidence, yes? MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Correct, right. The 911 call. There are a couple of 911 calls. There is first one, George Zimmerman makes when he identifies Trayvon Martin and notifies authorities, that begins the tragic train of events. But then the other calls that come from people that lived in the area of condominium complex when they begin to hear an altercation. It's believed that they're hearing the altercation between Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman.

And this is the part that's crucial because it's really -- one of the key witnesses all of this is not a person, but a machine or recording, because during one of those 911 calls, it's when a woman calls and talking to the operator, that you hear what is believed to be that fateful shot that killed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin.

Prior to that you hear screaming, and that has been the key debate -- who is screaming and what are they saying? And you see the prosecution has brought in an expert to analyze those tapes. Four of them, but one of them specifically has said the person screaming for help is not George Zimmerman as defense has maintained, but 17-year- old Trayvon Martin. And there are other claims made that the defense says is absolutely detrimental to their case. That's is why they are arguing these experts should not be allowed to admit testimony into the courtroom.

PAUL: Okay, one of the things I found really interesting was this list of verbiage that George Zimmerman wants banned from the trial. Do we have the full screen? I want to show you what they are talking about. Racial profiling, we know they don't want that in there. Vigilante. Okay. But what about this self-appointed neighborhood watch captain and wannabe cop? I mean they want all -- how probable is it that all of these terms will be banned from this trial?

SAVIDGE: You know, if they were to ban, say, those -- and by the way, a request being made by George Zimmerman, through his attorney, defense attorney Mark O'Mara, and if you ban those terms, you will take out a lot of conversation in this particular court case, because in the lead-up to this, those words have been used over and over, especially by the prosecution to describe actions of George Zimmerman.

The defense is maintaining that kind of -- those worst specifically are inflammatory, or that they carry a certain amount of baggage that unfairly depicts George Zimmerman or portrays him in a negative way.

And it's not just words, there were phrases too. For instance, here is a phrase that the defense is trying to stop. " He got out of the car after police told him not to." The defense is arguing, well, the police officer on the 911 call says, are you following him? George Zimmerman said yes. And that's when the 911 operator said we don't need you to do that. And George Zimmerman said okay.

So it isn't that the officer said don't get out of your car. These are the points the defense is arguing shade their case against them if you allow that kind of phrasing to be used in a courtroom.

PAUL: All right. Martin, thank you for walking us through it. So grateful. I want to let you know, we'll talk more about that phrase, that he got out of the car after the police dispatcher told him not to. He wants that banned. Is that a phrase or is that fact? Because the decision that comes out of today's hearing could have major implications in this case.

We're talking about that with criminal defense attorney Danny Cevallos, next.

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PAUL: All right, showing you some pictures here as the prosecutor there is arguing his case in front of the judge. George Zimmerman's lawyers you see on the right-hand side of the screen along with Zimmerman himself. All in this Florida courtroom to argue about the final details before the start of this trial, which is on Monday.

Whatever the judge decides today could play a big role in how this case is presented to the jury. Danny Cevallos is a criminal defense attorney. I wanted to start kind of piggybacking off that conversation wewere just having with Martin Savidge there.

This list of words or phrases the defense wants banned. One of the things they don't want anybody to say during court is, quote, "he got out of the car after the police dispatcher told him not to," referring to the fact that George Zimmerman did get out of the car and the conversation with the 911 operator when she said you don't have to follow him. Is that a phrase or fact? Because it seems to me that it's a fact that can't be withheld from this trial.

DANNY CEVALLOS, CRINIMAL DEFENSE ATTORNEY: The reason I like this motion is it will force the judge to evaluate whether this is a fact or just a phrasing that the prosecution has liked to use so far. So this is what we call a motion in limiting (ph). It just means a limiting motion. You're asking the judge before trial so that at trial they don't mention that phrase and you can't un-ring that bell even if you object, because the jury will hear it.

So, now we decide whether or not it's a fact and it appears from all of the evidence produced (ph) so far, this is not -- this is not a fact. The -- if you listen to the transcript, George Zimmerman gets out of the car, tells the police what he's doing and then they say, yes, well, we don't need to you do that, and he says okay.

When you use a simple balancing test, is the probative value, does it go to any fact, or is that outweighed by the possibility of prejudice? It seems like a simple one here. The prejudicial affect of that characterization of the facts is highly prejudicial, not very probative. I think the judge should exclude it.

PAUL: You do? So, basically you are saying when he said "okay" to that 911 operator, saying you don't have to do that, we don't know if he continued to follow or not? Is that what you are saying?

CEVALLOS: Yeah, well because we don't know, it -- because it's belied by the actual statement on the 911 call, that makes it really not a statement of fact, and I think the defense has a pretty good motion here to ask them to limit that phrase, because it is a mischaracterization of the facts that they have available. They can try to prove that through other circumstantial means, though.

PAUL: What about the voice analysis technology with the 911 call regarding who is screaming for help and who isn't screaming for help? How sketchy is the voice analysis itself? I would think we've used this in cases before, haven't we?

CEVALLOS: There are a couple of ways to attack experts. First you can say the expert isn't qual -- not well trained enough. The other way is to attack the underlying science, and this is what's called a fry- hearing (ph), at least in Florida. Different courts use different tests.

And the test is going to be whether this science is, quote, "generally accepted in the scientific community." And, when it comes to voice identification technology, courts have differed on this issue. Federal courts, states courts, obviously proponents will say it's a hard and fast science and detractors will say well, there are courts that found it to be unreliable, or really the magic words are "generally accepted in the scientific community."

However, as we said before, the call is still going to come in, and there is nothing to prevent lay witnesses from coming in and testifying. I know George Zimmerman, that's George Zimmerman.

PAUL: All right. Danny Cevallos, thank you for getting us through that. So we understand better what's happening today in court. Good to see you.

CEVALLOS: Thank you.

PAUL: By now, I know we've all heard about the IRS parody video, right? You've probably seen it. Well, today, this guy, the man who played Dr. Spock in that spoof is going answer questions about it as IRS officials head to the Hill to face a House hearing on excessive spending.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PAUL: Well two IRS employees are on administrative leave this morning for their involvement in a 2010 conference in Anaheim that cost millions of taxpayer dollars, this of course coming on the heels of today's House hearing on IRS spending, it's titled "Collected and wasted."

J. Russell of Georgia is going to be testifying. He's the Treasury Department Inspector General. His eye opening report detailed $50 million in spending on employee conferences from 2010 to 2012. We have chief congressional correspondent Dana Bash with us right now from Washington. So Dana what do we expect to hear today?

DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well the star witness is going to be the star of the video, the now infamous "Star Trek" video. And the star was Spock. It turns out Spock, the real man who played him his name is Ferris Fink, and he's a pretty senior guy at IRS. He is the commissioner of the Small Business and Self- Employed Division, the division that had the key conference where they spent some $4 million in Anaheim in 2010.

He's sitting there now, he is going to be -- to be grilled in a very bipartisan way. In fact, Christi just before we came on the top Democrat on this committee was talking about the fact that he stayed up until 3:00 a.m., watching these videos, trying to find redeeming value in why they spent so much money on them. Even though the IRS actually isn't sure how much money because guess what the IRS didn't save their receipts and documents to prove how much they spent. But he said that there simply isn't any.

So that's -- that's what we're going to look at bigger picture, the whole question is going to be about why the IRS was able to spend so frivolously here and simply didn't have the resources in an area which we now know to try to get expedited tax exempt status for Tea Party -- Tea Party groups, which some of whom have been waiting for years to get that status.

PAUL: Oh my goodness. All right hey Dana thank you for bringing us the latest there.

BASH: Thank you.

PAUL: Let's talk to Republican Congressman Charles Boustany. He's a member of the House Ways and Means Committee and I know that you started asking some questions about the IRS and the Tea Party about two years ago. And of course this week we have the hearings. First of all, what do you hope is going to be accomplished with these hearings ultimately?

REP. CHARLES BOUSTANY (R), LOUISIANA: Well we have to get to the facts on a whole number of issues. We need to understand what exactly happened, why -- why were these conservative groups targeted? Why was private, personal taxpayer information leaked?

And also on a broader note, why is the IRS wasting all this money and yet claiming they need more resources. And in fact, Secretary Jack Lew when he appeared before Ways and Means a few months ago, I specifically asked him, is there any other area you can cut over at the IRS? They're asking for another $1 billion in the fiscal year, an additional $1 billion and he of course said no.

Well, the fact of the matter is, we've seen compelling evidence of waste with the "Star Trek" video the "Gilligan's Island" video and now advance video as well as the conference. All of this conference spending, this lavish spending and so we're going to get to the bottom of all of this through these hearings and through the interviews that we're conducting.

PAUL: You know we mentioned that two IRS employees have already been placed on leave. Do you anticipate more dismissals?

BOUSTANY: I would expect there will be more as the new acting commissioner continues his work reviewing things from top to bottom. But you know we're going to continue our congressional investigations. We have been told by the acting commissioner we will have a full and timely cooperation in this. And we're going to hold him to it.

PAUL: You know, people who has been you know, you drive down any roadway and you see fair tax on the back of some people's trucks. Are they getting some good ammunition from this scandal, do you think?

BOUSTANY: Well, I think there's a public outcry now for tax simplification. And that can take on many different forms the House Ways and Means Committee has been working well over two years now on a complete rewrite of the tax code, starting from scratch, making the tax code fairer for the individual, getting the IRS out of everybody's business, keeping it simple so that the IRS plays more of an administrative role and not an intrusive role and I think this is critical.

If we can simplify the tax code and lower rates, I think we'll see better compliance, we'll see, you know, happier taxpayer in the long run. And we can lower rates and actually help this economy.

PAUL: You know, though, there are Americans watching this who had been audited, people who are meticulous with their receipts. When they hear that IRS representatives and employees haven't kept their own receipts that is enraging to so many people. What can you say to Americans watching this right now that would help give them any faith in our system?

BOUSTANY: Well, first of all, it's absolutely astounding that the IRS would have such a glaring double standard. Any of us knows that if are you audited, you have to produce documents and make your case. Well the same absolutely should hold for IRS expenditures and they have refused repeatedly to fully come clean before our committee as we've looked at their budget. We're going to hold them to a much higher level of accountably now.

And we're not going to stop. We're going to be relentless in this pursuit of finding out what's going on with every single dollar that they pay.

And -- and then we're also looking at as to why certain taxpayers were -- were particularly targeted for audits.

PAUL: All right. Representative Charles Boustany, thank you for taking the time to talk with us. It's good to see you today.

BOUSTANY: Great -- great to be with you, thank you.

PAUL: Thank you. And we are back in just a moment. Stay close.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PAUL: Well Tony Bosch the man at the center of baseball's new drug cheating scandal is expected to start talking with investigators tomorrow. Now according to a new report, Bosch tried to get money from Alex Rodriguez before he struck a deal to talk with Major League Baseball. Joe Carter has more in the "Bleacher Report". Hey -- Joe. JOE CARTER, "BLEACHER REPORT": Hi, Christi, yes, this report is according to the "New York Daily News", now they're saying that Bosch tried to get hundreds of thousands of dollars from Alex Rodriguez. Alex Rodriguez never gave him any money. And Major League Baseball heard of this and they became kind of concerned obviously that Bosch might then turn to other players seeking more money. They decided to step in and they decided to strike a deal with Bosch.

Now he is expected to present them with tons of evidence to suspend 20 players of Major League Baseball, now baseball has been in turn dropped their lawsuit against Bosch. This video you're seeing right here is from Tampa, Florida yesterday where A-Rod has been for the past five weeks rehabbing from left hip surgery.

Now, after this rehab session, A-Rod did not speak to the media or fans after his workout.

The White Sox and the Mariners boy they are playing a marathon game yesterday went 16 innings, lasted six hours, Seattle's Kyle Seager made baseball history in the 14th inning. He is the first player ever to hit a grand slam to tie game in extra innings.

You think that hit was enough to win the game? It wasn't. Chicago scored twice in the 16th inning to win 7-5. This game was scoreless for 13 innings. Then the two teams combined to score 12 runs in the last three innings.

Well tonight is the night the NBA finals do start. Even though Miami and San Antonio have never played each other in the finals, it still feels like a rematch for LeBron James and that's because in 2007, when LeBron played for the Cleveland Cavaliers the Spurs, many of the same Spurs swept those Cavs right out of the finals.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LEBRON JAMES, MIAMI HEAT: You know, in '07, they beat us on our home floor, celebrated us on our home floor. And you know I won't forget that. You shouldn't as a competitor, you should never forget that. So, you know, it's the same group of guys for the most part. The same big three and Coach Pop.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARTER: Take it for what you will, Christi, the people of Vegas believe that Miami is a sizable favorite to win another or a back-to- back championship.

PAUL: I like how he smiles when he said, you know, that same group of guys.

CARTER: I know. The Spurs keep coming back. It's like -- I thought they was over with years ago. We though we did away with them. But here they are again in the finals -- the Spurs.

PAUL: Nice. Joe carter, always good to see you. Thank you.

CARTER: You too.

PAUL: Hey, actually just go get some more coffee, some OJ. CNN NEWSROOM, starts over after a break. Stay close.

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