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Legal View with Ashleigh Banfield

Race for the White House; China Chemical Blast; Frat Hazing Accident. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired August 13, 2015 - 12:00   ET

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

[12:00:00] KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Banfield starts right now.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Whoa!

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Whoa!

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What the - holy (EXPLETIVE DELETED)!

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ASHLEIGH BANFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: The fire still burning. Hundreds of people in the hospital after back-to-back chemical explosions so huge they were visible from space and shook the ground like an earthquake in a city of 13 million people.

Also ahead, three more Cosby accusers coming forward yet again with some disturbing details unlike any we've heard before. And some that sound all too familiar.

And Donald Trump says she'll be a great first lady. Meet the former model and current Mrs. Trump, businesswoman and mom, Melania, who's ready to make her mark in the White House.

Hello, everyone. I'm Ashleigh Banfield. Nice to have you with us. Welcome to LEGAL VIEW.

Fair play might just be a rare sight in presidential politics, but at least for a few days, every four years, politics comes to the fair. The Iowa State Fair, to be exact. A deep fried slice of Americana that no presidential wannabe dare miss out on. It starts today. And while it's hard to take one's eyes off of the rides and the foods and the shows and the crazy, like the cow sculpted out of 600 pounds of butter, yes, I said a cow entirely made of butter. Mmm. I do want to attention - or direct your attention instead to this, the soap box. That is a platform for candidates to pretty much say anything they want with listeners afforded the same privilege.

Last hour, Mike Huckabee became the first of at least 14 GOP candidates expected to take this soapbox stage over the next 10 days. Four of the five Democratic candidates are planning to be there, too. Hillary Clinton has a plan to tour the fair on Saturday, but apparently she's going to skip the soapbox. And then there's Vice president Joe Biden. "The Wall Street Journal"

says Joe Biden is using part of his vacation this week to sound out friends and family on whether he should make one more run for the very top job. Democrats by and large seem to be divided. A new Gallup poll showing 45 percent want Biden to run, but 47 percent don't.

I'm going to stop right here and bring in CNN political reporter Sara Murray and Nia-Malika Henderson.

Nia-Malika, I want to start with you, if I can.

At least one party elder thinks Joe Biden's time has passed. I want you to listen to what Howard Dean told the "Today" show.

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HOWARD DEAN, FORMER DNC CHAIRMAN: I have a lot of respect for Joe Biden. He's been a terrific vice president. The problem is that Joe Biden is a very good guy and probably has no appeal whatsoever to people under 35. The people under 35 elected Barack Obama president of the United States. That is a key part of the Democratic coalition, along particularly with Latinos and African-Americans and Asian- Americans. So I think it makes sense to have a candidate, and I think Hillary is one, I think Bernie is another, who really can turn on the under 35 set. And I think that would be a problem for Joe.

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BANFIELD: That kind of hurts to hear it and I'm not sure, Nia-Malika, if that is ageism or if that's just relatability. Can you weigh in on that?

NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL REPORTER: Yes, it sort of doesn't really make sense. I mean he says that people under 35 elected Barack Obama. Well, they also elected Joe Biden as well. I think he is getting at a larger issue, this idea of, where does Joe Biden fit in at this point? If Hillary Clinton is turning on people under 35, if she's turning on African-Americans and Latinos as well, how does Joe Biden make a case that he can come in and chip away at what Hillary Clinton is already able to do in terms of connecting with those voters.

I will say this. It is interesting, and I think notable, that he was trying to decide this in South Carolina, because that would be the state where I think Hillary Clinton really could start to do well. African-Americans are down there. It was a state that was very important to Barack Obama's rise to prominence in 2008 and overtaking Hillary Clinton in that race in 2008. I'm told that there's a lot of buzz down there, a lot of love for Joe Biden, particularly among African-Americans in South Carolina. He spent sort of the first part of the week with is family. He's using the later part of this week to talk to folks down there who love him. People who are very high up in the African-American community down there, reverends and people on the state legislature. So he's got, you know, if he's going to decide, I think South Carolina will be a key state and a key sort of metric for him to go by to figure out if he could run against Hillary Clinton and chip away at some of her support among African-Americans.

[12:05:20] BANFIELD: All right. I want to move north for a big just because I love deep fried butter and that's one of the big things at the Iowa State Fair, which starts today. So, Sara, I'm going to get you in the Iowa state of mind right now. Throw up some polling that CNN has just completed so that we can have some frame of reference here to talk about.

But we're six months - actually less than six months away from the Iowa caucuses. And CNN is weighing in on, you know, where people are right now. But I always wonder, gosh, with six months to go, should we even be doing this? Should we even have these parlor games? Here's the Republicans and how they shake out with the Iowa caucus goers, likely Iowa caucus goers. Donald Trump's ahead 22. Ben Carson's squeaking in number two at 14. But then if you continue moving down those numbers, on our prime page you don't even get Jeb Bush. And you don't even get some of the folks who were weighing in much, much higher before the debate. The question I have for you though is, how many people are actually decided at this point this early on in Iowa? They may answer those questions, but how many are really decided?

SARA MURRAY, CNN POLITICAL REPORTER: Well, like you said, this is a snapshot in time right now and we're still really far out. And because we're so far out and there are so many candidates, most likely caucus goers in Iowa still aren't sure who they're going to vote for. Two- thirds said they still have not made up their mind about a candidate. So when we see this snapshot, you know, we see Donald Trump on top. We see a lot of other candidates who don't have Washington experience, who aren't professional politicians, we see them rising to the top very early.

But we've also seen this in the past in Iowa. Remember, Mitt Romney ended up coming in second in Iowa in 2012. He lost by just eight votes and people were lamenting his status in the polls. It takes a while for these establishment candidates to come around and to start rising, so I don't actually think it's that big of a surprise to see some of the candidates that we would have thought of as long shots leading in the polls there right now.

BANFIELD: Nia-Malika, I want you to talk a little bit about John Kasich, if you can, because in polling that we had over the weekend, he just skyrocketed. You know, he squeaked into that debate and it was questionable by some people's standards whether he should have been in the debate at all in favor of Rick Perry. But he squeaked into that primetime debate. And then all of a sudden shot up to the top of the polls in New Hampshire. But in the Iowa polling, he barely even registering. Why such a discrepancy?

HENDERSON: Different states. I mean it's a different sort of constituency. A different base of voters. He's more of a moderate, more of a better fit, I think, for New Hampshire. He's up on the air in that state in terms of ads. He's got some top Republicans who have come out to support him and back his candidacy. So that's where he is staking his candidacy. Like Chris Christie, a lot of people are betting on New Hampshire. So it's not exactly a surprise that he's not doing so well in Iowa, much more socially conservative, a lot of home schoolers there, sort of the culture issues are much more important to folks there. And if you look at Kasich's record, it's very different in terms of expanding Medicaid. He's done things that don't really sit well with the kind of voters that are going to be caucusing in Iowa.

BANFIELD: We'll have the same conversation only entirely different next week. Thank you, Sara. Thank you, Mia.

HENDERSON: That's right. Thank you, Ashleigh.

BANFIELD: I always love having you guys. Thank you.

Just a reminder, too, CNN's going to host three Republican debates. The first one taking place in September. Then in October, CNN is going to host the first Democratic presidential debate, so stay with us here on CNN for the very latest on the race for the White House.

Coming up next, a chemical explosion so massive, this thing was visible from space. How much damage did it do to a city where 13 million people live? And can they even get close enough to it nearly 24 hours later to find out?

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[12:12:30] BANFIELD: These pictures are just almost impossible to fathom, and we're seeing some of these as well for the first time as the evidence starts to roll in. And in an incident where at least 50 people are now confirmed dead. This chemical explosion in eastern China. We have some new video as well as these remarkable still pictures. And the video is of the moment that the fireball filled the sky.

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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (INAUDIBLE).

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh - what the - holy (EXPLETIVE DELETED)! No (EXPLETIVE DELETED) way! (EXPLETIVE DELETED). (EXPLETIVE DELETED). No (INAUDIBLE)! No! Now we're (ph) dangerous! Oh, my God!

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, dear.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Are you filming?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, I'm filming.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Whoa! Whoa!

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BANFIELD: Whoever shot this video, lucky for them, was a relatively safe distance away from the warehouses and the shipping containers that caught fire and then exploded last night in the port city of Tianjin. The shock waves blew out windows and doors, get this, a mile and a half away from the site of the explosion. Twelve of the people who are registered now as dead were firefighters. More than 500 people are hurt at this most early count and are being treated in hospitals there. Officials have called off the efforts, though, to stop the fire - this happening just a couple hours ago - because they said they just don't know what it is that's burning and how dangerous it is to be close by that inferno.

CNN's Will Ripley is there and has more.

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WILL RIPLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: When you look around at all the devastation here, it's really remarkable. One, just all of the damage that was done to this convention center building, the windows smashed in, the doors smashed in as well. Take a look at this car. It clearly caught fire. The windows smashed. It's crumpled to bits.

And we are standing two kilometers from the blast site. We're not even close to the epicenter. That gives you a sense just how strong this was and how scary this was for the 15 million people who live here in Tianjin when they were jolted out of bed overnight, a lot of people in those apartment blocks we visited earlier, and many of those windows are smashed. There is shards of glass piled up on the ground. And people were running outside in a panic. They didn't have time to put on their shoes. And so they were - they were barefoot going through this and that's why we see so many people, hundreds of people in the hospital, a lot of them with cuts because of all of the broken glass.

[12:15:30] You can see there are helicopters in the air flying overhead and looking at that gigantic smoke plume which you can kind of make out through the haze off in the distance. The fires are still burning right now as they have been since the initial chemical fire, then the first explosion, then the second explosion and so on.

The air has a thick chemical smell and we actually feel it a bit in our throats. We wonder exactly what it is that we're breathing in right now even though most of the people that you see out here are not wearing masks. Either they didn't have time to grab any, they just don't have any. We saw some police and medical personnel with masks. That's about it.

We were over at the hospital earlier. It was a very emotional, very sad scene. We actually have security here telling us that we need to - we need to move out of the way. And that was an issue that we ran into at the hospital earlier, security, and onlookers were not happy that we were filming and we were told to stop. I was actually knocked off the air and surrounded by a pretty angry mob.

And these are people who have gone through so much. They haven't slept. Some of them have loved ones who are sick in the hospital. At least one man had a loved one who had died. And emotions are high right now. The grief is high and people are still trying to process all of this, exactly what happened and why. Why was this huge city rocked by these explosions overnight?

It's a question that investigators will be looking into as they try to assess the damage, try to treat the sick and the emotionally scarred and then try to figure out what happened and how they can prevent it from happening again.

Will Ripley, CNN, Tianjin, China.

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BANFIELD: I want to - I want to stay there if I can for a moment, but I want to take you over the disaster scene. Let's not forget, this is a city that is larger than New York City in population. This is video that we have from a camera that's attached to a drone that's flying over this hollowed out set of shells of buildings and warehouses. It's pretty much the closest image that you can get of this crisis zone.

China's Earthquake Center has weighed in on this and says that one of the explosions - and don't forget there were more than one - but one of them alone registered as a 2.9 magnitude earthquake. In what may be a sign of some further developments to come, we learned today that several executives from that warehouse company have now been taken into police custody.

Coming up next, a fraternity pledge who was found dead in a lake under a bridge. Was this a horrible accident or was it something else? Was it hazing? Some brand new court filings and a brand new witness account just might be offering some clues.

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[12:21:45] BANFIELD: A new witness is injecting some brand-new energy into the investigation of a teenager's death in South Carolina. His name is Tucker Hipps. He was a student at Clemson University. And in the process of pledging a fraternity there when instead his body was found floating in a lake near a bridge. A newly filed family lawsuit has fresh details from someone who said that 19-year-old's death was no accident. CNN's Sara Ganim is here. Also legal analyst Paul Callan.

So, what's the story? What's this new information? Where's it going?

SARA GANIM, CNN CORRESPONDENT: So this is a tragedy that has been going on for nearly a year now and it's been a mystery, did he jump over this bridge, was he pushed over the bridge, was he forced to jump? His family attorney says this fraternity had a history of forcing pledges to jump off of bridges during early morning runs and then swim to shore. And we also know from the family lawsuit that the brothers were upset with him because that morning he didn't have the money to bring them their McDonald's breakfast.

Well, now we know that three brothers have been charged. One of them notably is the son of Delaware Congressman John Carney. But now, 11 months later, as we approach the one-year anniversary, a new witness is coming forward telling police - or leading the family to believe that Tucker Hipps was, in fact, forced to walk along the railing of that bridge. I want to read to guys a little bit from the lawsuit. It says, "they

believe," now after this witness came forward, "that Tucker slipped from the railing and caught the railing under his arms, tried to climb back onto the bridge unassisted, lost his grip on the bridge and fell headfirst into the water below, striking his head on the rocks in the shallow water." Now, afterwards, the lawsuit says that these brothers, they didn't call police for several hours. They even lied to his girlfriend so that she wouldn't do anything, telling her that they spotted him in the library when they hadn't.

BANFIELD: Wow.

GANIM: I talked to his mom yesterday, Ashleigh, she's understandably, obviously, heartbroken. Here's what she told me. She said, "it does answer some questions. It connects some of the dots. His dad and I miss him so terribly. He is still the first thing and the last thing we think about every day and he is just so terribly missed."

BANFIELD: Oh.

GANIM: Of course, really quickly, everyone who's being sued is denying these allegations. In fact, Sam Carney is saying, through his attorney, that they didn't see anything and he doesn't know how he fell.

BANFIELD: When you've got a lawsuit, you've got to deny it, that's the number one thing. But I want to ask you about this new information. If this witness is to be believed that there might have been some anger or even a confrontation over, you didn't bring the McDonald's that we ordered to you bring as a pledge, does that take this from sort of a negligence or a cover-up to a potential murder case? I mean are we looking at the possible manslaughter or murder two in this case?

PAUL CALLAN, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Well, I - I think murder two might be a bit of a stretch, but I certainly think that manslaughter would be a charge that people would look at. Remember -

BANFIELD: Yes, but what if they had a confrontation on that bridge and he went over because of it?

CALLAN: Well, if it happened during the confrontation, possibly. But the facts, as I understand it from this witness, were there he - he was supposed to buy breakfast for like, I don't know, 30 kids or something. Very, you know, expensive for a college kid. And he shows up without the breakfast. So they tell him essentially to walk the plank. Get up on the bridge, walk this narrow rail, and then he falls to his death into the river, unassisted as he's hanging on. It's just the most horrific scene.

[12:25:00] Now, I think that that would support a manslaughter charge because these fraternity brothers are in essence his guardians. He's a pledge. There's a relationship, a trust relationship, and they're forcing him to walk the plank and he dies as a result of it. That strikes me as criminally reckless conduct. It doesn't strike me as an intentional murder which requires an intent to kill. It's a tragic accident, but it's based on reckless conduct. BANFIELD: You're going to have to keep us up on this one as the

filings change and the, you know, witness evidence seems to be changing as well. Sara Ganim, great work. Thank you. Paul Callan, as always, thank you for your insight.

Coming up next, Donald Trump says she's going to make a great first lady. So meet Mrs. Trump, the former model, now mom and businesswoman, who typically stays out of the political spotlight.

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BANFIELD: Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson is defending his attacks on Planned Parenthood, as well as his own research on aborted fetuses in the early '90s. You heard me right, his own research on aborted fetuses in the early '90s. You know that Ben Carson's a neurosurgeon turned presidential candidate and he's now being called a hypocrite by an OB/GYN who dug up an academic paper that Carson co-authored on the very types of research that he now says is not even necessary.

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BEN CARSON (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Virtually everything that can be attributed to progress by using fetal tissue can also use other types of tissue.