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Accuser Takes Stand Faces Defendant; Jared Fogle to Plead Guilty to Child Porn; Bangkok Police Hunting Suspect and Accomplices; Hillary Clinton Jokes About Wiping Server; White House Confident Nuclear Deal with Iran Will Pass. Aired 10-10:30a ET

Aired August 19, 2015 - 10:00   ET

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


[10:00:00] ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: You take this drug all the time, it's not like Viagra, where you take it only before sex. And so when women are taking this all the time, they have found that if they drink, it increases the chances that they're going to get low blood pressure or even fainting, and so the makers of the drug say, look, you're not supposed to drink when you take this drug.

So women technically are supposed to make a choice. Either they can drink alcohol or they can take Flibanserin. It will be interesting to see what choice women make.

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Yes, it will. Elizabeth Cohen, reporting live for us. Thanks so much.

The next hour of CNN NEWSROOM starts now.

And we are following a couple of big stories this hour. Former Subway pitchman Jared Fogle will plead guilty to charges related to possession of child porn and worse. That plea could come at any moment now.

Also settlement talks going on this hour between Tom Brady and the NFL. Thing is, the future Hall of Fame quarterback will not be there. According to reports he was not happy with how the first day went. We'll talk about that.

And good morning. I'm Carol Costello. Thank you so much for joining me. We begin with that teenage prep school student retaking the stand this morning to face the upper classman she says raped her. She says 19-year-old Owen Labrie sexually assaulted her as part of the so- called Senior Salute, a competition to see which upper classman can rack up the most female conquests.

The defense claims the pair never actually had intercourse, but the prosecution says they can disprove that using Labrie's own words.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CATHERINE RUFFLE, PROSECUTOR: Shortly after the assault, (bleep) messaged him asking him, did you wear a condom? You'll ask -- you'll see his responses that he sends back. "Are you on the pill? I think you're OK. We should be good. I put it on halfway through," referring to the condom.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: CNN's Boris Sanchez is following the trial for us this morning.

Good morning, Boris.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol. The details in this case unsettling. Not something you would expect from a school with so many distinguished alumni. Secretary of State John Kerry and several U.S. congressmen among them. Again, the testimony difficult to listen to as we expect another day of it in court.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SANCHEZ (voice-over): Just a few miles from the elite St. Paul's High School, 19-year-old Owen Labrie sat in court listening as his former schoolmate gave her tearful testimony accusing him of rape, saying in court, quote, "I thought his intentions were really wrong," end quote.

The prosecutor arguing Tuesday that when Labrie contacted the then 15- year-old schoolmate last year he did so with one intention.

RUFFLE: To solicit, lure or entice her to meet with him with the plan that he was going to have sex with her.

SANCHEZ: Labrie is pleading not guilty to allegations that he raped her at the elite prep school where they were both students and further denying that they had sex days before his graduation last year.

RUFFLE: This was not a consensual act.

SANCHEZ: The prosecutor revealing that a nurse observed an abrasion on the accuser's genital area which she says are, quote, "consistent with a sexual assault." The encounter occurred, both sides agree, as part of a decades-old tradition at St. Paul's known as the Senior Salute, a competition described as male seniors try to rack up sexual encounters with younger female students.

Labrie's attorney arguing Tuesday that not all Senior Salutes were sexual, even reading messages in court to illustrate that the accuser willingly participated. "Only if it's our little secret," she wrote. Labrie replied, "Not a soul needs to know."

On Tuesday St. Paul's published a statement on the school's Web site, saying, quote, "Allegations of our culture are not emblematic of our school or our values, our rules or the people that represent our student body, alumni, faculty and staff."

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SANCHEZ: The trial is under way right now and the alleged victim is said to take the stand for another day of emotional testimony. We're still waiting to see if Owen Labrie himself will take the stand and testify -- Carol. COSTELLO: All right. Boris Sanchez, reporting live for us this

morning. Thank you.

Next hour one of the most well-known company spokesman in America will enter a guilty plea in a child pornography case. Jared Fogle, the longtime pitchman for the Subway sandwich chain, is due in court just weeks after federal investigators raided his Indiana home and hauled away computers and other electronic devices.

CNN's Jean Casarez is here and this is bad.

JEAN CASAREZ, CNN LEGAL CORRESPONDENT: This is worse than we thought it was allegedly, according to the federal information that was just filed today.

Let me tell you the charges, Carol. First of all they are distribution and receipt and conspiracy to engage in sexual conduct with minors. And also count two, travel to engage in illicit sexual contact with minors and attempting to travel to engage in illicit sexual contact with minors.

[10:05:10] Let's start with count two, because what the prosecutors are alleging here is that between 2007 and 2015 Jared Fogle solicited through the Internet sexual services of minors, and then between 2010 and 2013, which I believe it would have been after the Subway making him relatively famous for Subway and losing all the weight, he travelled to New York, to the Plaza Hotel, according to the information initially, engaged in sexual contact with minor victim number 13 who was 17 years old, for money, Carol.

And then he said to her, do you know any other young women? I would prefer 16 or younger if possible that I could engage in sexual conduct with. He told her he would give her a finder's fee allegedly if she would find these other minors. According to the information he traveled back to New York in another point of time, stayed at the Ritz Carlton Hotel, again engaged in sexual contact with minor victim 13.

And also then 2011 to 2013 repeatedly solicited other minors to engage in sexual activity with them also. And it wasn't always New York. It looks like it was involving Indiana also, which is his home state.

COSTELLO: These are serious charges. He could --

CASAREZ: These are extremely serious. Now today he is supposed to be entering a plea deal. Could be doing it right now.

Here's what's going to be interesting, Carol. These are such serious charges that have allegedly victims involved, young people. What will he plead to? What will he be given for this not to go to trial? Will he be given a great gift and plea to maybe attempting to engage in sexual contact? You've got victims here.

COSTELLO: Yes. But if he pleads guilty to the most serious charges, he could go to prison.

CASAREZ: I think prison -- this is federal, so I think prison is going to be an automatic here. This is very, very serious, but there might -- people may be outraged if he gets something far less than what he's charged with.

COSTELLO: OK. So let's go back in time a little bit because his best friend was running his foundation, which supposedly benefited obese children and helped them overcome obesity, right? So what -- this friend has already been convicted of child porn charges.

CASAREZ: At least he's been charged. His home was raided in April. He was charged a little bit later, and it was for production of child porn videos, which, according to this information, he told the children to just engage in their normal activities, taking a shower, doing different things, and he secretly recorded them. And then possession of it.

According to this information, and this involves count one, that Jared was a co-conspirator of this man. He knew the videos were being produced, he got them on his computer, he even showed them to someone else. And remember, this is while they have that foundation you're talking about, the Jared Foundation that came off of his success with Subway, to combat childhood obesity.

COSTELLO: It's just -- OK, so, Jean, I know you -- I know the court proceedings have yet to take place but you're following this. And -- so I'll let you go so you can continue to do that.

CASAREZ: All right.

COSTELLO: Jean Casarez, thanks so much.

CASAREZ: Thanks.

COSTELLO: In Bangkok, police say the suspect in a deadly bombing at a popular shrine likely had accomplices. That news comes as a taxi driver tells CNN he thinks he gave the suspect a ride shortly after the blast. Twenty people were killed and more than 100 injured in that bombing.

CNN's Saima Mohsin has been doing excellent reporting in Bangkok. She joins us now to tell us more.

What can you tell us, Saima?

SAIMA MOHSIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Carol, the team here has been speaking to a lot of people throughout the day trying to piece together our own vision of what exactly happened. We're speaking to everyone involved.

Now you mentioned that motorbike taxi driver. Let's talk about him first. This man was standing at his rank when we -- who we now believe to be the main suspect in that yellow T-shirt approached him. He didn't talk to him, Carol. He handed him a note. On it was written, Lumpini Park as -- as we've discussed before, Carol, you and I. That's a major park in the center of Bangkok, just like Central Park in New York. Now he didn't say a word. Handed him this note, got on the bike, and

then a few meters down the road, the taxi driver has told CNN that this man in the yellow T-shirt started speaking on his phone in a foreign language. It's a language he could not identify as Thai or English.

Now the picture is becoming even clearer. In the past hour, Carol, I have spoken to the police spokesman here in Bangkok who tells me the police are now zeroing in on two men they believe to be his accomplices. One man wearing a red shirt, another wearing a white shirt, clearly seen in the same CCTV footage where they've identified this man with the yellow shirt bringing in his backpack, leaving it on the -- that bench.

[10:10:23] Now these two men, you can clearly see them standing in front of this man as he's leaving his backpack. They believe he may have been helping him conceal himself when he was doing that. They also all leave around the same time. Of course, right now these are just possibilities. But police want to speak to these men. They want to get more information from them.

We've heard that they are even asking people -- them to come in for themselves and asking people, Carol, to provide mobile phone footage or photographs. Tourists, international tourists being asked to help as well. Can they piece together a 360 perspective of these men going in and coming out. Who are they, where are they from. Warrants out as well soon perhaps for their arrest. The courts are being asked for those warrants -- Carol.

COSTELLO: All right. Saima Mohsin reporting live from Bangkok this morning. Thank you so much.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM, an explosion so powerful it flung firefighters 20 feet. An update in the search for victims of this motel blast, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:15:49] COSTELLO: Turning now to presidential politics, Hillary Clinton still holds a commanding lead among Democrats but some cracks may be starting to show.

A new CNN-ORC poll shows Clinton's support among Democrats has dipped below 50 percent. That's a first in national polling. 47 percent reflects a big drop, nine percentage points from just last month.

Political maverick Bernie Sanders, once a punch line in the race, has gained 10 points and is narrowing the gap separating the two.

And when Democrats were asked about a President Bernie Sanders, 31 percent thought he'd do a better job than Hillary Clinton would, 37 percent said he'd be worse than Hillary Clinton, and a large number, 29 percent said there'd be no difference at all.

In head-to-head matchups, let's talk about that. Registered voters show Clinton still holds a big lead over Republican Jeb Bush. Nine percentage points. But look at the contest with Donald Trump. It shows that potential race tightening with Clinton holding a six-point lead over the billionaire.

One issue that could be holding Clinton back, the scandal over her use of personal e-mail while secretary of state. She went head-to-head with reporters in Las Vegas trying to brush aside allegations that she had wiped her server clean.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HILLARY CLINTON (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: You know, I have no idea. That's why we turned it over --

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: You were in charge of it. You were the official in charge. Did you wipe the server?

CLINTON: What, like with a cloth or something?

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: I don't know. You know how it works digitally. Did you try to wipe the whole thing?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: OK. She was joking about it, right? So exactly how does that work digitally?

We're joined by Christina Warren. She's the senior technology correspondent for Mashable.

Thanks for joining me. I appreciate it.

(LAUGHTER)

COSTELLO: So I mean you had to laugh when Hillary Clinton said that. I mean, clearly she must know what wiping a server means.

CHRISTINA WARREN, SENIOR TECHNOLOGY CORRESPONDENT, MASHABLE: Absolutely, absolutely. Of course, she knows. But it was a fun way to try to, you know, maybe obstruct a little bit from the question.

COSTELLO: Deflect the question, right?

WARREN: Absolutely.

COSTELLO: So but for those of us who don't know what wiping a server actually entails, tell us.

WARREN: OK. So what actually happens when you want to erase a hard drive is you're rewriting everything that's on that hard drive with ones and zeroes, so little bits of information. So basically, you know, to wipe it clean, you were rewriting everything that's on top of it so that what was underneath it before can no longer be accessed.

COSTELLO: No longer ever accessed by anyone?

WARREN: Well, that's the thing. You know, there's a lot of activity that happens with data forensics. And it's a really big business. The FBI is really good at it. So I know they have her server now and they can actually recover a ton of stuff. Even if you've rewritten a server, even if you wiped it clean, it depends on the type of hard drive, it depends on how things was stored, you know, whether it was sort of across multiple drives or just one, they can recover a lot of things.

COSTELLO: OK. So we don't know if or when this happened, so could it have happened long ago, and could you just wipe certain information like personal e-mails from your server.

WARREN: Sure.

COSTELLO: And leave the other stuff.

WARREN: You know, there's -- in theory she could if she had several databases for different e-mails. She could have gotten rid of some of her personal e-mails and left the rest. But what I think probably happened was they turned over what they said was, this was all of the classified -- excuse me, the unclassified information that was taking place for work. We're just going to wipe the servers, you know, clean. And now that the FBI is investigating, they're saying, OK, well, we'll turn it over and if you can recover anything, then good luck.

COSTELLO: OK. So -- OK, well that --

(LAUGHTER)

COSTELLO: I just wish that they'd be more transparent so that we would exactly know.

WARREN: That's the biggest problem here is that there's a lack of transparency. And it's also a problem because it's a technical topic, so it's hard for regular people to understand how this works, but I feel like if they would be open and say this is how it was secured and this is what we did to get rid of the data, this is how we were protecting the data, then the people in the technical community could come out and audit that and say, yes, this was appropriate, no, it wasn't appropriate, and then we could start having a conversation about maybe other things.

Because right now the problem is we don't know so many things. It's easy to draw conclusions and go to the worst-case scenario.

COSTELLO: Right. And in fairness any little thing you say as a politician can be twisted by the other side so easily even if it's a perfectly innocent statement, right?

[10:20:02] WARREN: Absolutely. And I think it's also important to point out that, although she's been getting a lot of, you know, blowback for using a personal e-mail server, as we've seen this year, you know, the White House e-mail server hasn't really been the most secure thing either. So I really think that if anything classified was happening over her e-mail, that's a much bigger problem the State Department needs to discuss above and beyond whether or not she was as using her own private server.

COSTELLO: Christina Warren, thanks for stopping by. I appreciate it.

WARREN: Thank you.

COSTELLO: Christina Warren from Mashable.

And you want to tune in tonight for CNN SPECIAL REPORT, "THE DONALD TRUMP INTERVIEW." The GOP frontrunner joins Chris Cuomo for a frank discussion, how he's playing the game and writing his own rules. That's tonight 9:00 Eastern on CNN.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM, cheaters beware. Hackers say they leaked a list of users from a match-making site. Not just any match- making site either. At risk, more than 30 million spouses looking to cheat.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:25:25] COSTELLO: The White House remains confident the Iran nuclear deal will pass Congress, even after another prominent Democrat has come out against it.

Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey, the former Ranking Member of the Foreign Relations Committee, says after poring over the agreement he's concluded it's based on wishful thinking and not sound policy.

CNN's Athena Jones live in Washington tells us more. Good morning, Athena.

ATHENA JONES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol. As you mentioned Senator Menendez is the second Senate Democrat to come out against this deal. This is after influential New York Senator Chuck Schumer announced his opposition just a few days ago.

I should mention, though, that Schumer did it in an online blog post. Senator Menendez did so in front of a huge audience at Seton Hall University yesterday. Listen to what he had to say in that big speech.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. ROBERT MENENDEZ (D), NEW JERSEY: I have looked into my own self and my devotion to principle may once again lead me to an unpopular course, but if Iran is to acquire a nuclear bomb, it will not have my name on it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JONES: "It will not have my name on it." So strong words from Senator Menendez. And in his argument he wrote -- this is a lengthy speech, several pages long. And he echoed some of the arguments that his colleague Senator Schumer made, saying essentially, this deal is based on hope. Hope that Iran won't violate this agreement as it has past agreements. Hope that in 15 years when this deal's sun sets Iran will not be a bad actor in the region, it won't be a state-sponsor of terrorism and that it won't want a nuclear weapons. And he says look, hope is not plan here.

But as you mentioned the White House still thinks that they can manage to hold together enough Democrats to keep Republicans from blocking this deal, a spokesman saying we remain confident that ultimately a majority of Democrats in both the House and Senate will support the deal" -- Carol.

COSTELLO: We'll see. Athena Jones reporting live for us this morning. Thank you.

JONES: Thanks.

COSTELLO: Checking some other top stories for you at 27 minutes past, a passenger plane that crashed Sunday in Indonesia was carrying nearly half a million dollars in cash, cash meant for the poor. You see the bags there. Officials with the country's Postal Service planned on giving the money to 6600 poor people. Search teams recovered the bodies of all 54 people on board.

Three people all right unaccounted for after a Motel 6 near Seattle exploded. Firefighters now searching the rubble in case those people were inside their rooms when the motel went up. It's not clear if those missing were actually in the motel at the time of the blast. The blast believed to be caused by a gas leak. It blew firefighters back 20 feet and severely burned a gas worker.

An Ohio mother confesses to killing her three sons because her husband ignored her daughter. Brittany Pilkington admits to killing her 3- month-old yesterday. Her 4-year-old in April and another 3-month-old last summer. Police initially did not rule their death suspicious, the newborn boy and the couple's daughter had just returned home from protective custody.

And good morning. I'm Carol Costello. Thank you so much for joining me.

Look across your street. See any clothes strewn across the lawn? More than 33 million unfaithful men and women are hoping their spouses remain in the dark when it comes to the dark Web. This after hackers who targeted the infidelity dating site Ashley Madison spilled the beans releasing private information from the site's customers.

Laurie Segall is with me now.

So how much information has been released so far, if any?

LAURIE SEGALL, CNN MONEY TECH CORRESPONDENT: The bearer of bad news. A lot. We're talking 35 gigabytes of date when you actually download. That is a huge, huge amount. I talked to a security researcher. He said that's unprecedented. And let me get to what some of this data is. We're talking 33 million accounts leaked, 36 million e-mail addresses. Take that with a grain of salt because sometimes put in fake e-mail addressed but they don't put fake payment information in there.

So you also have the street addresses and internal corporate data. So this is a pretty scary hack because they were able to not only get inside these servers but they were able to do a lot of damage and they certainly made good on their threat to put this out there -- Carol.

COSTELLO: So where is this information?

SEGALL: Well, so this -- it started out on the dark Web which is kind of difficult to access. It's this deeper layer of the Web. But now what you're seeing, and this has happened in the last couple of hours, people are taking this data and making it easy to find on the open Web right before I jumped on set here with you, I just found a site that enables people to put the e-mail of a cheater in and it will tell you if that person is in the database. So there's another person who's trying to create a geo-located map. So we're really, really begetting here.

COSTELLO: I just had Christina Warren from Mashable. She says she's already investigating because she wants to know, you know, if there are any interesting names. You know?

SEGALL: Yes.