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Legal View with Ashleigh Banfield

Kasich To End His Presidential Bid Later Today, According To Sources; Outsider Trump Says He Wants An Insider Running Mate; News Conference On Prince's Opiod Use; Attorney Says Prince Didn't Show Up For Addiction Doctor and Specialist Is Immune From Prosecution. Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired May 04, 2016 - 12:30   ET

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

ASHLEIGH BANFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: Do you think he's going to do it?

[12:30:07] MARGARET HOOVER, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: Yes, I don't think he's going to have and certainly talk about issues. I mean, he got through an entire Republican primary without really talking about any issues. I mean the most robust policy proposal he have is to fine play the immigration plan about how he's going to build a wall and make Mexico pay for it.

So I mean which nobody serious would say it's actually going to be a -- is a plausible policy. So I mean this is what people have their seat belts on, let's say June for. How does Hillary Clinton a very savvy thoughtful policy long, measure up against Donald Trump. And like what happens in the general election? I mean does this see to the lowest common denominator and what do the -- and I think of that, and what do the American people say about that?

BANFIELD: So maybe Trump has recognized this in himself and maybe that's why he sent on MSNBC this morning about his possible choice for vice president.

Have a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, (R) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I think that I will say that I probably will go the political route. I have the business, let's call up talents. And I think I'll probably go the political route. Somebody that can help me with legislation and somebody that can help me get things past and somebody that's been friends with the senators and the congressmen and all of, so we don't have to go the executive order route as much as Obama did. You know, where he can't get anything approved, so it just keep signing the executive orders.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BANFIELD: Well, go figure, the ultimate outsider has decided he's going to need an ultimate insider and maybe the policy wantiness that's required on the campaign trail will come from that guy or girl.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yeah, I would watch Newt Gingrich. Newt Gingrich has been cheer leading for Donald Trump a great deal recently. He is a Washington insider. He does know a lot about policy. He can speak for hours and hours.

BANFIELD: He's not a woman. And he's not flat or a ...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: ... for republican, check, check, check.

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think it's important to remember that, I don't think anyone on this any of three of us thinks Donald Trump can win. I think Donald Trump thinks he can win. That's why he's talking about someone who can help him govern. He think, and this is been the model, right.

Barack Obama chose Joe Biden because Joe Biden is helping the government. George W. Bush chose Dick Cheney because of they have people watching thing. That's become the template.

Now, for a guy like Donald Trump where I think he's delusional enough and he go centric enough to believe that he can win despite all of the evidence. I think he thinks that Gingrich could play that Cheney and Biden-like role.

BANFIELD: All right, I want to put up another graphic here from our CNN ORC poll that I think is extraordinarily telling now, that we are all talking about the general and these two.

When asked if they would switch their vote, liberal voters said 85 percent of them, gosh, I think these numbers are backwards. Pop that graphic down and I'm going to tell you exactly what one we're talking about at.

Eight percent of liberals said they would vote for Trump. Eight percent said they were not interested in their front-runner. They said they'd vote for Trump in a general election match-up and 28 percent of Conservatives said that they would switch over and not vote for Trump, instead, they would vote Hillary.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think that's an emotional response because even when you poll Hillary Clinton supporters' right after she loose the primary to Obama, a lot of them said the same thing, we're not going to vote for Obama, we'll stay home or we'll go to the other side. A month later, those numbers are very different. The stakes are high particularly around the Supreme Court.

BANFIELD: So this is a reaction?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think it's a reaction. I think it's a frustration.

HOOVER: It's early. I mean look, everybody bowed out what. I mean John Kasich hasn't even bowed out, yet. It's going to happen in the next five or six hours.

There's a saying, Democrats fall in love and Republicans fall in line. And you've begin to see that even amongst Conservative (inaudible) are starting to lay the intellectual foundation while not supporting Trump, falling in line behind Donald Trump.

BANFIELD: Your husband John Avlon wrote a very stood book called "Independent Nation" which clearly outlines how this country and its elections turns on the independent voters. And if you look at the independent numbers in our CNN ORC poll, it says that independents favor Clinton 51 percent, independents favor Donald Trump 40 percent.

Peter is it still early? Is it still easy to get out the independents?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: People have very strong opinions of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump at this point. I don't think it's going to be easy to change a lot of minds. It may be true that Donald Trump maybe unencumbered about what he said in the past and may move some significant new directions in the general election in order to try to win more moderate voters. But you're talking about a guy whose negative ratings among are 75 percent.

And as Margaret rightly said, you lost the last two elections. And so you have to win all the Conservatives who won and then you have to make inroads in Democratic constituencies, single women, African- American, Latino, young people.

Donald Trump is, we could not draw up in a test. We could not create in a tattoo a candidate who is in a worse position to do that right now.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: But weren't -- we had just as much certainty 10 months ago about him not winning the primary, right. We say that that's 20 percent. Once we get out of the plurality to lose, et cetera.

[12:35:06] UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Go ahead, yes.

HOOVER: This is what I mean, this is exactly to the point. If he is the nominee of the Republican Party, he can be elected. He can win. Because they are outside events we can't predict.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, they are outside events although -- Hillary Clinton beats him on terrorism, by the way. But I would just say the polling in the Republican race has been very constant Donald Trump was always been polling very well. He simply met his polling numbers. He's polling very poorly in the general election.

BANFIELD: Guys, I want to ask you one last question. I want to make it quick though because I think as we've all looked at Donald Trump just selling, you know, opponent after opponent that we never thought could happen. He's now got Hillary Clinton in his sights. But Hillary Clinton has the benefit of watching this battle that has played before.

She knows the play book of Donald Trump. She knows what's worked for him and she knows about all of those $57 million in advertising, anti- Trump advertising that had almost no effect.

So very quickly sort of a one-line answer, how does she take that kind of information and run with it?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think she just has to charge him to lose. I think she's just has to play her game, present her experience, present her knowledge and not overplay her hand. I think problem is that people over thought it on the Republican side and they lost.

HOOVER: ... corrupt businessman as a misogynist and as erratic.

(CROSSTALK)

HOOVER: And they started to late and ...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They were appealing to Republican. She is appealing to people who are much more hostile to those perspectives than many Republican voters.

BANFIELD: It's maybe why John Podesta her campaign chair put out a statement last night saying, Donald Trump is too much of a risk. It was very pointed and had nothing to do with Indiana or her lost there. It had everything to do with Donald Trump.

Guys, thank you so much. Do appreciate it. Great insight in such breaking news. We're get some brand new details too about the decision of John Kasich to drop out of this race for the White House, effectively at the airport on the way to fundraisers.

We did not expect Ted Cruz last night. We did not expect John Kasich this morning. But it is a new political landscape, folks.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:41:25] BANFIELD: It is our breaking news right now. Today may be the end of John Kasich's presidential campaign.

Sources telling CNN in the past few minutes that the Ohio governor called several of his closest friends this morning and told them, "My heart is not in this."

John Kasich says, he'll make a formal statement in just a few hours from his home base of Columbus, Ohio.

Our Sara Murray is here again.

We were expecting him to be heading off still on the campaign, fund raising, it was business as usual even all the way to the steps of the jet.

SARA MURRAY, CNN POLITICAL REPORTER: Right, it was -- it's kind of amazing. He had this whole, you know, not necessarily a public schedule this event. But a few media there, a number of fund raising events. They felt like they could raise enough money to sort of continue running the shoe string campaign up until Cleveland.

And publicly last night and this morning, aides were still projecting this idea that he was going to go all the way to the convention.

But privately, you heard some seeds of doubt, some of the sentiment that maybe John Kasich would wake up the next morning and sort of see the light that there was no path.

And ultimately, it sounds like his decision come down to this idea that he was hoping to be a voice of hope, A voice of unity within the Republican Party. And a time where when he felt like Donald Trump was a voice of division and he just felt like he wasn't getting the message across effectively as candidates that people kind of tuning him out now.

BANFIELD: So maybe not as a candidate but certainly he could do exactly that as a vice presidential candidate. So the question would be, he could bring Ohio, the swing state, to Trump's map. He could bring the independents and the moderate Republicans to Trump's map. He couldn't maybe bring the minority vote or the woman vote as well, let's say another V.P. choice.

But Donald Trump himself said today, I'm looking for an insider, a politico. A guy who knows the ropes and he knows the ropes, are you interested?

MURRAY: So bring the briefcase. John Kasich does know the ropes. He's run a state as a governor. He spent a lot of time in congress. So he knows how congress works. And John Kasich does not want to be Donald Trump's V.P. He does not want to be anyone's V.P. and he was very public about that during his campaign and saying I would be an awful vice presidential candidate.

So there's one, the temperament. John Kasich is the guy who used to running his own thing and not used to being number two but the second part of this is his own discomfort with Trump's rhetoric. He really has been watching this campaign and feeling like Donald Trump has been sewing seeds of division not just within the Republican Party but within the country and that's sort of the opposite narrative that John Kasich was trying to run on.

And I think he's sort of navigating how he can continue to push that message. And I think we'll see a bit from that when he makes this formal announcement tonight at 5:00.

BANFIELD: Just over 12 hours ago, my biggest question has completely changed but it was, will Ted Cruz fall in behind Donald Trump and endorse him, back him, even vote for him, honestly, I even had to ask myself, would Ted Cruz even vote for Donald Trump. And I had the same questions still today and I'm adding John Kasich to the list. Will he endorse for him, stump for him, vote for him? Do we have any feeling?

MURRAY: This is an even more difficult question for John Kasich because the convention is in his home state of Ohio. And doesn't sound like they've reached the point of being able to mull over those issues, this is a very fresh decision. It is a very raw open wound.

I'm being told that they haven't really discussed how they're going to deal with the convention with Donald Trump expecting the Republican nomination in John Kasich's home state. But they're going to have to figure out. He's going to have to figure out if, you know, watching Donald Trump, maybe he'll tone down as rhetoric, maybe people like John Kasich who are moderate will begin to feel more comfortable or maybe you can have a really awkward scenario where the sitting Republican governor of Ohio is not supporting the Republican nominee. It remains to be seen. I think John Kasich is still figuring that out.

[12:45:06] BANFIELD: There's a whole long list of establishment Republicans. Some say John Kasich is one of those who are still on the never trump bandwagon but they changed their brands and never, ever Trump.

They're digging in and looking at the possibility of all those down ballot disasters as they see it if Donald Trump has going to have the ticket, do you see John Kasich as part of that equation anywhere else?

MURRAY: You know, John Kasich was never really so much on board with the never Trump thing. He was always really careful in his rhetoric even though he had a lot of problems with Trump and a lot of problems with Trump's rhetoric, he always said, you know, I'm running on my own message, I'm running for my own voters.

I'm not running just to defeat Donald Trump. So he was in a little bit of a different camp in that sense. But you have to remember, Rob Portman, a senator in his own state is going to face his own tough race. So that can even more complicated calculous. In the pivotal swing state of Ohio, John Kasich's position is not an enviable one at this point.

BANFIELD: Unless we thought, once we had front-runners everything would be quieter, we all get some vacation time and the headlines would be boring.

MURRAY: Yeah, you can sleep in late November.

BANFIELD: I would say so. Sara Murray, thank you so much. Appreciate it.

Coming up at 2:00 p.m. eastern time today, we're going to get Hillary Clinton's reaction to all of this news. She will be live on CNN with our Anderson Cooper. And then on "The Situation Room," Donald Trump will be live with Wolf Blitzer and that starts at 5:00 p.m. eastern only on CNN.

So the two front-runners both on CNN today, you got to hear what they have to say with the new political landscape that has just unfolded before them.

And coming up next, we still have the president who is in the White House. But today, he's not. Today, he's in Flint, Michigan. He's in the community being briefed on that toxic water crisis.

And actor Mark Ruffalo has been working to get clean water to Flint, Michigan, residents. He's going to join me next to talk about whether he think a high level visit like President Obama is going to make a difference. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BANFIELD: The news keeps breaking, folks.

I want to take you live out to Minneapolis. The man on your screen is William Mauzy and he is an attorney for a California doctor who was asked to come out to do an emergency life saving mission for prince.

[12:50:05] And just the very day that his son was able to fly out and do an assessment, Prince was found dead. In fact, it was the son of that doctor who discovered, who called 911 about the discovery of Prince in the elevator at his compound. I want to go live to this doctor who's talking about or this lawyer who was talking about Dr. Howard Cornfield that renowned authority on opioid addiction.

(JOINED IN PROGRESS)

WILLIAM MAUZY, ATTORNEY FOR ADDICTION SPECIALIST: Any addiction issues that you wanted. This is something that Andrew has done for years. He's been a spokesman for the program and he convinced patients to go there and how it would be in their best medical interest to go there.

So he has asked to meet with Prince that morning. Prince at some point that morning was scheduled to meet with the Minnesota doctor. When he arrived, Prince was not available. They went looking for Prince, couldn't initially find him. They saw the staff representatives apparently found him in an elevator unconscious. One of the staff members started screaming. Andrew heard the screams and went to the elevator where he saw that Prince was unconscious.

Andrew was the person who - to make the 911 call describing a medical emergency at Paisley Park. Andrew Mill Valley California, not locally he didn't have the address for Paisley Park. The 911 call doesn't have an address. It didn't know the address at Prince's place, Paisley Park.

Andrew and everyone at the scene was interviewed by the Cairo County Sheriff's Office at that morning. Andrew went back to San Francisco that night although Andrew had in his possession small pills. Those pills were to be delivered to the Minnesota doctor. There were no pills, any type of medication given to Prince by Andrew or by Howard. Those pills were taken into possession by the Cairo County Sheriff.

It is my belief that the Good Samaritan 911 law provided immunity for people who make a 911 emergency call are to receive immunity for any medications, any controlled substances found on the scene will provide statutory immunity to Andrew relating to the medications that were found in his backpack on the scene. And again, no drugs were ever administered. There was never any attention of drugs being administered to Prince by Andrew or by Dr. Cornfeld.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Can you describe how urgent sir that (inaudible) was?

MAUZY: Dr. Cornfeld felt that his mission was a life-saving mission, so that sounds -- certainly he felt it to be urgent. Dr. Cornfeld was intending to fly to Minnesota on Friday but the first step of the plan was to have him meet with the Minnesota doctor on Thursday. Before Dr. Cornfeld couldn't clear his business schedule to come to minnesota.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Why tell this story now?

MAUZY: The star tribune contacted me. They knew that I represented Andrew and Dr. Cornfeld seemed to have significant sources. I don't know for sources are within that Cairo County Sheriff's Office, but I certainly -- I have not publicized in anyway the fact I was representing him, so my belief is the only logical source is within the Cairo County Sheriff's office. Star tribune is going to run a story it was a question whether I should comment on the story or let it run. I think we were able to influence the story that was written that appeared today's paper by giving truthful explanations for what happened.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Are you concern that the Sheriff is interested in charging him?

MAUZY: I am concerned about that. I believe that the Good Samaritan 911 call by Andrew will provide statutory immunity to him.

(OFF-MIC)

MAUZY: Who brought morphine? It's used in pain managements and addiction.

[12:55:07] UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And you were saying here is that the doctor ...

MAUZY: Yes. So it was Dr. ...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Any if there addiction or any other illnesses other than pain pill addictions?

MAUZY: You know, I can't comment on that. There's still remaining issues of patient confidentiality post-mortem. Dr. Cornfeld was never able to meet Prince and never talked to Prince and was sadly not able to arrive on time to help Prince. So, and I don't know the answer to that question.

(OFF-MIC)

MAUZY: I don't know that.

(OFF-MIC)

MAUZY: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Does Prince know about anything?

MAUZY: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Was able to make first days together back then?

(OFF-MIC) MAUZY: The first time he was contacted by a Prince representative was the evening of Wednesday, April 20th.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: So they never met?

MAUZY: Never met. Never talked. Never talked. Correct.

(OFF-MIC)

MAUZY: He did. Yes.

(OFF-MIC)

MAUZY: What?

(OFF-MIC)

MAUZY: There are some inaccuracies. They did describe the medication on the scene, but that medication is used in pain management as well as addiction and Dr. Cornfeld is well known in both pain management and addiction.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Beyond the initial statement made at the scene, talking to investigators, have the reached background to Dr. Cornfeld for the last two weeks? Been interrogated, interviewed in any sort of formal setting?

MAUZY: He has not been interviewed since I assumed representation which was the afternoon of April 21st.

(OFF-MIC)

MAUZY: Representative of Prince. It's useful to give those names.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Couple.

MAUZY: Yeah.

(OFF-MIC)

MAUZY: Unconscious.

(OFF-MIC)

MAUZY: No.

(OFF-MIC)

MAUZY: At the present time, yes.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Did they call the meeting to hire him because of the investigation like what everybody hear, what was the ...

MAUZY: He was taken into custody and interviewed and told it was a criminal investigation.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: One more question.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Would prince still be alive today if ...

MAUZY: All hindsight, of course. He wishes he had the opportunity to meet with him and treat him along with the local Minnesota doctor.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Should the doctor have called local politicians since he thought it was so important to send a spot on overnight red eyes ...

MAUZY: He did call the Minnesota doctor and he talked to that Minnesota doctor. And the Minnesota doctor opened his morning schedule, canceled all his patients and was there all morning waiting for Prince to arrive. So that was part of the plan. Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: That was Thursday morning or Wednesday?

MAUZY: Thursday morning. Yeah, he got the phone call on Wednesday evening. And he immediately contacted Minnesota doctor because he couldn't get there himself. Yeah. That doctor would do an assessment to get a feel for the nature of a problem and make some recommendations and treat him if need be at that time and Dr. Cornfeld would arrive on Friday the next day.

(OFF-MIC)

MAUZY: He is not a doctor. He was pre-med student. He intends to go to medical school.

(OFF-MIC)

MAUZY: Yes, he's on the staff of recovery without walls. And his role on that staff has been to meet with prospective patients said who covered that wall. So this was the type of mission that he's been on other times.

(OFF-MIC)

MAUZY: I don't know the answer to that question.

(OFF-MIC)

MAUZY: It was difficult. Yeah, It was difficult. Arrive after a red eye and go to talk to Prince in a positive way and he arrives to see him dead in an elevator unconscious in the elevator. So it was certainly a difficult time for him.

(OFF-MIC)

[13:00:10] MAUZY: I don't have any information. I have no information on that.