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At This Hour

Prosecutor Should Recuse as Michael Brown Grand Jury Begins; ISIS Allegedly Beheads U.S. Journalist; Should Obama Visit Ferguson?

Aired August 20, 2014 - 11:30   ET

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


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MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: This morning, a grand jury is expected to begin hearing evidence in the death of Michael Brown. It's unclear if Officer Darren Wilson is going to face charges for shooting the unarmed teenager. Robert McCulloch is the prosecuting attorney in the case. Critics are saying, though, he's not the right man for the job. This is what they say is the reason why. He has been St. Louis prosecutor since 1991, but his father was a police officer who was killed on duty back in 1964. His mother was a police clerk. He has three relatives who were with the St. Louis police department and he had wanted to be a police officer but lost one of his legs to cancer.

Let's bring back our correspondent, Evan Perez. And here with me attorney Danny Cevallos. And welcome Areva Martin, an attorney and legal affairs commentator.

Thanks so much for coming on.

Evan, I'm going to start with you. We know the A.G. is expected to arrive there in Ferguson. Any idea on what he is planning on saying? We know he's going to meet with community leaders, with investigators, but what kind of comments is he expected to make?

EVAN PEREZ, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: He's going to have to walk a very fine line. He wants to obviously show that the federal investigation is moving along and that they are going to do a good job of this, but he also wants to stay away from any involvement in what the state is doing, what the county prosecuting attorney is doing because frankly he has no power over that. He has no jurisdiction over that. He knows obviously -- everybody knows that there's some concern over this, but what I'm told behind the scenes is that federal investigators haven't seen any investigation yet that this isn't being done fairly. Obviously that is still a very early process. We know that the county prosecuting attorney is now telling the media down here that he's looking at mid October before he's done presenting evidence. So it is something that is -- that the attorney general is going to try to stay a way from because his is a civil rights investigation.

PEREIRA: I'm going to turn to you. Local leaders are asking him to recuse himself? Do you think he should?

AREVA MARTIN, ATTORNEY & LEGAL COMMENTATOR: I think given the history that there's ample evidence to support the recusal. It's not just his family ties to law enforcement and the fact that his father was killed by an African-American. There's also been several high pro-style cases where the community feels that the prosecuting attorney, Mr. McCulloch did not conduct himself in a fair and just manner, particularly there was a shooting in 2000 two African-American men inside a car, sitting on a jack in the box parking lot and two officers shot about 20 or 21 times into that that car, killing those two men and as a result of that, there was some concern about how he conducted himself in the grand jury, statements made after the grand jury that seemingly were contradictory about the evidence presented during that hearing. There's some real concerns whether he can be fair and impartial with respect to the prosecution of this officer involving the mike Brown shooting.

PEREIRA: I know that Danny has a response and I'll give that to him in a second. But first we have received a statement from the St. Louis county prosecutor himself. He told local media that his office is working on the timeline of mid October for the presentation of all of the evidence presented to the grand jury Michael Brown shooting. He says, "I know the pain the Brown family is going through right now. He also addresses concerns he should be taken off the case and says if Missouri Governor Nixon wants him off the case, he needs to just say it." Do you think that's something we're going to hear and do you think that's a good move, Danny?

DANNY CEVALLOS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: At this point, I have to respectfully disagree with Areva. It's true that prosecutors have to avoid the appearance of impropriety. But you have to look at the law. The law addresses when a prosecutor should be recused and disqualified. Number one, does he have a personal relationship with the officer? But, number two, there's no hard and fast rule that simply because you are prosecuting a police officer that you should be recused. If that were the case --

(CROSSTALK)

CEVALLOS: We wouldn't be able to prosecute police. We would overthrow our justice system. One more thing, the family relationship, the family history should be completely irrelevant. If you look at prosecutors --

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PEREIRA: Even if somebody lost a loved one in a --

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CEVALLOS: Do you know how many prosecutors got that fire in their belly to go to law school?

PEREIRA: Because of some personal --

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CEVALLOS: Because of some personal tragedy. Nancy Grace is one of them. To use that sort of prior history, something they had no control over as a sword against somebody to force them out seems patently unfair.

PEREIRA: But, Danny, the optics of all of this are concerning. We know the situation in Ferguson right now. We know the mistrust. We know the concern. We know about the call for transparency. In an already hurting community that feels as though they are not being represented, not being heard, is there a case to be made that maybe of his own volition, he should step aside?

CEVALLOS: We're on the side, as soon as there's any -- the prosecutors are elected to serve their community and they are expected to be impartial. If we start questioning that every case without evidence, at this point all I hear is hey, this is racial, however we don't know yet what the officer's motivation was or that he has a connection with law enforcement? That's ridiculous because prosecutors always have a relationship with people in law enforcement.

PEREIRA: A quit rebuttal?

MARTIN: The evidence is very clear in this case that there is a long history of distrust in this community and there is enough information available. The leaders from pastors to civil leaders are saying this prosecuting attorney cannot be fair in the prosecution of this case. You have to look in this case in the totality as what's happening in this community. This is a case where African-Americans have had a horrible relationship with the entire judicial system in Ferguson, with St. Louis coin and with these police. We've seen this time and time again the refusal to release the name of the officer, releasing the videotape that showed Michael Brown allegedly committing that robbery in the market all suggest that it's going to be very difficult for the prosecuting attorney to be fair and just in this case and require someone to step in and be impartial.

PEREIRA: Reminder we're in early days of this.

Thank you so much.

When we come back, we're going to turn to our big story. The horrific situation, the beheading of an American journalist and how is the White House responding to the threat by ISIS militants, the threat to kill more Americans.

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We do indeed have breaking news into CNN. American journalist, James Foley, savagely beheaded by ISIS militants. The White House is now responding.

Michelle Kosinski is with the president in Martha's Vineyard. Michelle, what are we learning?

MICHELLE KOSINSKI, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Michaela. We expected to hear from the president today. Now it is official that we will. At 12:45, the president will come here to where the press is making and he will make a statement. The White House doesn't spell out what the statement will be about, but one can assume that it will be about this situation and the ISIS threat. Also the president's national security team has now made another

statement about the video. Remember yesterday they said that they were reviewing it to try to authenticate it. Well now they say they have. They believe that the images do show the two American journalists that have been named and they say the video they believe is real. It comes from ISIS and that they will keep having updates as available.

So the president now we believe will respond directly to this and we have heard from him three times over the last week on the situation in Iraq. The past three times, it has been good news that the president has announced the progress made on the ground there because of the air strikes, the gains made by Iraqi and Kurdish fighters. Now a much different situation and I think it will be interesting to see how exactly the president will respond to this, especially since this ISIS operative in the video apparently put the onus directly on the American president and threatened the second journalist's life -- Michaela?

PEREIRA: Calling the president out by name saying this other journalist that is in their hands, his life hangs in the balance and that the next move is President Obama's. Do we know if the president has reached out to James Foley's family?

KOSINSKI: We don't know. In fact, we've heard very little offer the past 24 hours from the administration. Obviously, they are working on this and their line has been, you know, as we expected, we'll have updates as they are available. Not answering a lot of questions at this point, but we think the statement today at 12:45 will be the opportunity to get directly from the president what their take on the situation is, what if anything the U.S. can do about it, and possibly will field some questions. So we should know more detail on that later.

But the big question, of course, and as very good question has been how does the administration respond to something like this? It would really be a different situation if we saw some direct response. We've been talking to analysts and they seem to be in consensus it's not as if the U.S. is going to respond to the terrorist demands and stop air strikes. One analyst told us that would be crazy. They seem to be agreement that this gives the U.S. and others more reason to pound ISIS positions from the air. What could the U.S. do? We've been told that this is the kind of situation and we know this has come up, very similar situations in the past, where the U.S. can work behind the scenes, say the CIA, and look for ways to make inroads or ways to influence the situation. But we've been told that, one way that this could change immediately, one possibility out there, would be if say some wealthy donor to the ISIS cause in say some other country decided that this was just too much and urged ISIS to change course on this, to spare this second journalist's life. Whether that's going to happen, of course, we don't know anything about that. But it seems like behind the scenes is the way that things could possibly change. It's not as if the U.S. ignores the situation, but I think the other similarity that comes up of course is the case of Daniel Pearl back in 2002 where his captors were demanding the release of all Guantanamo Bay captives. The U.S. didn't directly respond to that. But we know the U.S. was working behind the scenes. The demand of course is immediately this happened and nine days later Daniel Pearl was killed. This situation obviously has a lot of differences too and we'll see wait to see what the president has to say at 12:45.

PEREIRA: He will be directly addressing the beheading of journalist, James Foley. A tragic, horrifying development.

Michelle, thank you so much.

And the big question is what other countries, if they are going to join in the fight against ISIS, what kind of international coalition could be formed, what kind of international conversations the president will be having with other foreign leaders.

We'll take a break here @THISHOUR. Ahead, should President Obama head to Ferguson, Missouri? Can he help calm the unrest? He can, for political reasons. We'll explain.

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PEREIRA: Some live pictures now of an airplane arriving in Ferguson, Missouri, in that airplane is Eric Holder, the attorney general. The first black attorney general, we should mention, has been tapped to head to Ferguson to take a look at what the investigation and how it is proceeding, to also talk to some community leaders. He has been sent there at the behest of the president of the United States who obviously has chosen not to go. He's getting some heat for that. The attorney general is arriving there. We'll try to take a listen to who he has to say, who he speaks with, as he makes his way to Ferguson.

Meanwhile, President Obama, the nation's first African-American president, he finds himself in a strange quandary in terms of the situation in Ferguson. His staff says he's not going to visit Ferguson because it will put undue pressure on local officials to provide security for him at a time that that city needs security the most.

But there may be something else going on. It's a conversation I started with our awesome commentators, Sally Kohn and L.Z. Granderson, yesterday. And I wanted to see if we could get a chance to revisit it.

Sally, do you think, in part, that is why the president isn't going -- the tax on the resources?

SALLY KOHN, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I'm not interested in debating whether the president is or isn't doing. It sort of feels like a continuing trend of this sort of scrutinizing. Oh, let's scrutinize the black president. Let's scrutinize Michael Brown. Let's scrutinize the protesters. What about the protesters? What about the police? Who just shot another unarmed black man? Who was wielding a knife? I can't imagine a situation, surrounded by a number of police, with any size knife, and I would end up shot dead. There is a pattern here. This is a pattern here that is highly racialized. We should be focusing on that pattern and not just scrutinizing the acts of every single person in the story. PEREIRA: L.Z., the adviser, Valerie Jarrett, told politico, let me

read it to you, "The circumstances determine the reaction, and it isn't appropriate for the president to speak up emotionally in the midst of an ongoing investigation by the Justice Department." Quite a different tone than the president took when Trayvon Martin was shot.

L.Z. GRANDERSON, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes, it is. We've seen the president kind of grow into this row, you know, this conversation began with him way back when Henry Lewis Gates was arrested at his home in Cambridge, and the president responded immediately by calling the police out and said they behaved stupidly.

PEREIRA: And he got --

GRANDERSON: Yes, I think the police did behave stupidly. Any time a situation like this occurs, he becomes more of a more centrist, emotionally. But in terms of what he is actually saying to the American people, he's becoming much more thoughtful. I thought his speech in regards to Ferguson was a very thoughtful speech. If he were to go to Ferguson, I don't think you can expect him to go and be a preacher and talk about racism and talk about oppression because that really doesn't get us anywhere. He can look at the numbers in terms of who's voting. He can look at the numbers and say, how come there hasn't been enough African-American politicians to be mayor of Ferguson? How come in the last three election, less than 15 percent of the population voting? Those are the conversations, if he were to go to Ferguson, I would like to hear him say because those can lead to actual solutions and not just spinning our wheels and talking about oppression.

PEREIRA: That's a very good point. It would be interesting to take a look at the voting numbers in Ferguson, what the black vote has been like, how many black voters have gotten out to vote. That points right to the question about the person that they're saying needs to recuse himself in this case. That's another --

(CROSSTALK)

Should we pick that topic tomorrow? Should you guys come back tomorrow? Did we just book two more guests for tomorrow?

(LAUGHTER)

Check and check. Check your schedules.

L.Z. Granderson and Sally Kohn, it's a delight to have you here. Let's find answers together.

Thanks so much for watching @THISHOUR. I'm Michaela Pereira. John Berman remains on vacation. He'll be back soon.

"LEGAL VIEW" after a quick break.

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