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U.S. Within Range of North Korean Missile?; New Call to Impeach Trump; Ransomware Attack Affecting More Counties; Trump's Travel Ban Back in the Ninth Circuit; Aired 10:30-11a ET

Aired May 15, 2017 - 10:30   ET

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


[10:30:00] JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Says the U.S. mainland is now within striking distance of its missiles.

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: And this is after a successful missile test over the weekend. The North Koreans are now saying one of their missiles could carry a large nuclear warhead. Analysts are looking at this and they say this test is very significant. It's a big advancement because at the very least, it shows North Korean missiles could reach the U.S. air base in Guam.

Joining us now, Major General James "Spider" Marks, our military analyst and advisory board member at Academy Securities.

Your reaction to how significant this is because you've got John Schilling, an aerospace engineer at Johns Hopkins saying that it represents a level of performance never seen before from the North Koreans. Is that your read as well?

MAJ. GEN. JAMES "SPIDER" MARKS, CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Poppy, it is concerning, very concerning, primarily because what this is, is the continual march of North Korean development of both its nuclear capabilities and its missile capabilities.

Let's be frank. For the last couple of decades, what we've seen in the last -- comparing the last couple of decades to the past three years, we've seen more missile tests in those last three years than we have cumulatively over the past couple of decades. That's not surprising. But North Korea has chosen this path to create this capability. They have nukes. They just need to marry them up with these missiles. But in complete isolation.

Again, all international bodies that are incredibly globally those that really interested in North Korea and frankly a nuclear North Korea, everybody should be concerned about, but inarguably nobody has been able to modify the behavior of this regime so that this becomes chilling enough that we're going to do something about it.

Now look, South Korea has just had an election. They have a new president. He has indicated that he wants to try to distance himself and South Korea from this, what I would call this very tight fabric with the United States, this immensely capable, very robust military alliance that has provided for the security of the South, and we'll see how that happens as we progress over time. So this missile launch I think had another audience and that is the new president in South Korea.

HARLOW: Yes.

BERMAN: You know, Spider, we've got about 30 seconds left right now. The fact that this test happened in the wake of all the president's pronouncements in this, all the meetings with China over this, what message has it sent from North Korea?

MARKS: Well, look, again, North Korea is a self-stirring pot. We get a lot of discussion about the president stirring the pot here with these tweets. None of that is relevant. What's relevant is North Korea continues to develop these capabilities. What we need to -- we really have three options. We've got to get China on board and agree what the options are for Pyongyang, and that is a nonnuclear peninsula, certainly a nonnuclear North Korea. We have to agree on that and work aggressively to make that happen.

Second, which is absolutely almost impossible to understand but could be a possibility, makes you want to throw up in your mouth, and that is, we might recognize Pyongyang, if that's what the Kim regime wants. That might be sufficient. And the third option is clearly military option, go after its nuke facility, and you go after its two missile launch facilities. That has a cascading effect that we would all want to try to avoid.

BERMAN: Three difficult options there. Some, as you said, distasteful, to say the least.

Major General James "Spider" Marks, always great to have you with us. Spider, thanks so much.

MARKS: Thank you, guys.

BERMAN: All right. You know Democrats are awfully upset right now with the Trump administration. How upset? One prominent law school professor says the president should be impeached and impeached now. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:37:48] BERMAN: All right, moments from now, the president heads to the capitol to speak before the Peace Memorial Law Enforcement Association, recognizing those who died in the line of duty. He just spoke to a group of officers inside the Oval Office. We just got that tape. Let's listen in.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Last year, 118 officers died in the line of duty, and of those, 66 were victims of malicious attacks. These attacks increased by nearly 40 percent from the year 2015.

This must end, and that's why in my first action having to do with this subject, the Department of Justice, I am asking to develop a strategy to better prevent and prosecute crimes of violence against our federal, state, tribal and local law enforcement officers.

They've had it with what's going on and we're going to get it taken care of. We're going to get it taken care of quickly. And I want to thank you all for being here today. It's a great honor to have you. Great honor to have you. Thank you.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thank you, Mr. President.

TRUMP: Some of you have suffered greatly and we're going to take care of it, OK? We're going to take care of it.

(APPLAUSE)

TRUMP: I think I'll present this pen in honor of a very great man, right? OK. Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you very much.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: The president with some law enforcement officers inside the Oval Office very shortly. He heads to the capitol. He will speak to this group at the Peace Memorial to honor their service and those who have lost their lives in the line of duty.

Of course, we're also waiting to hear if he talks about his process for determining the next director of the FBI will be. He's got to fill that spot after he fired James Comey last week. So we are waiting to hear from the president.

[10:40:05] In the meantime, our next guest has plenty to say on this subject. He believes that the president should be impeached and now. Joining us, Lawrence Tribe, professor at Harvard Law School.

Professor, thanks so much for being with us. You wrote an op-ed this weekend in the "Washington Post." You said, "The remedy of impeachment was designed to create a last-resort mechanism for preserving our constitutional system."

In your mind, we're already at the last resort after not even 120 days?

LAURENCE TRIBE, PROFESSOR, HARVARD LAW SCHOOL: Well, this guy does a lot every day, as he reminds us. We just heard something very good, he's going to do things to protect cops. Important. But he is basically a loose cannon. And with every passing day, he rolls around the deck and blows holes in the ship of state.

When he fired Comey, people don't quite understand, I think. The problem isn't that he didn't have the right to fire the director of the FBI, he certainly did. The problem is that the Constitution doesn't give him the right to offer the director of the FBI a deal, a rather sweet deal. You want to be reappointed? Well, I think I'll reappoint you if you lay off on your Russia investigation.

That's called a bribe and the Constitution is absolutely clear. It says the president and vice president shall, not may, but shall be impeached, convicted, and removed from office for committing a bribe or other high crimes and misdemeanors.

HARLOW: OK, Professor, you call it a bribe. You nor I nor John were in the room for their dinner or have heard their conversations. Now there may be tapes of them, as the president alluded to in a tweet on Friday. And if so, we would all like to hear those conversations. However, you write that to wait for the results, to even wait for the results of these multiple investigations over Russia is to, quote, "risk trying our nation's fate -- tying our nation's fate to the whims of an authoritarian leader."

That is your description of him as an authoritarian leader. Why not wait, even to find out the results of the Russia investigation? Why the urgency?

(CROSSTALK)

TRIBE: Sure. First of all -- the point is that we have it from the leader's own mouth. Of course we should investigate. What I specifically say in the op-ed is we should immediately begin an investigation into an abuse of power, but that is an impeachment investigation. While we do that, we should investigate his ties to Russia, all of his business entanglements.

I'm not saying that, as he said, you know, jail Hillary now. I'm not saying kick the guy out of office tomorrow. I'm saying that we should not wait until it's too late to begin an impeachment investigation because as the checks and balances are dismantled, as more and more of the officials of our government know that when they get too close to the truth, the president will disregard the limits of the Constitution and get rid of them. The closer we get to that, the more difficult it will be to undo the harm. Yes.

BERMAN: Professor, you say -- and again, your op-ed was saying we should start the impeachment process now. You said to wait would be dangerous. You're saying we need to investigate whether there was a bribe, but on our show just moments ago you said there was a bribe. So you have already convicted him of that, yes?

TRIBE: I believe that he's confessed publicly that he would keep Comey on, he would have kept Comey on, if Comey had assured him his loyalty, had assured him that he wasn't being investigated.

Now he may take that confession back. I'm not saying that the proof is absolutely certain, but impeachment is an important remedy, not a punishment. The guy remains punishable criminally for the crime of bribery after he's been removed. You can't indict and criminally prosecute a president while he's in office. But what you can do is gear up the machinery to see if the bribe that he has confessed to, the obstruction of justice that he has essentially admitted to and bragged about, is what it appears to be. You know, when you're writing these --

(CROSSTALK)

HARLOW: Many, many legal experts --

TRIBE: Go ahead.

HARLOW: Professor, let me just jump in. Many legal experts, as you know, disagree with you that it was not perhaps right for the president to ask, for example, for this pledge of loyalty, as has been widely reported that he did from Comey, but not illegal to do so.

You know, the bar for an impeachment proceeding is high for a reason, right, violating the Constitution. Do you believe, you know -- what do you say to critics who might look at you and say that you are just throwing this out there and -- without even waiting, without putting a pause button on it, waiting to see what the Russia investigation shows, waiting to see if there are these tapes, waiting for a bit more evidence before starting those proceedings?

[10:45:11] TRIBE: I have said the proceeding -- the basis for the proceedings is clear enough. When President Obama, in my view, violated the Clean Air Act by doing what I thought was good policy but illegal, I didn't hesitate to say that we should call him on it.

This is not politics. And then there were a lot of liberal law professors who disagreed with me. I don't take the poll of law professors to see whether I think the Constitution, which I've studied for 50 years, has been violated, but I'm not jumping to the conclusion. I'm trying to jump start the process, and I know that a lot of people don't think this makes a lot of sense, but I'm going out on a limb for a purpose.

I want national attention to be focused on what this president is doing before it becomes a new normal, before dumbing everything down so profoundly and pervasively our reality that we'll no longer recognize it when we see it. You know, this is the guy who said I could go out and shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and my supporters would stick by me. I think we have to take him at his word.

HARLOW: We have to leave it there. We're out of time, but we appreciate it.

TRIBE: Thanks.

HARLOW: We appreciate the spirited debate this morning. Thank you, Laurence Tribe.

Next, a huge cyber attack around the world. It's been dampened for now, but will these copycats strike again? Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:50:35] BERMAN: All right, this morning experts they're afraid of a new wave of attacks after hackers pulled off what could be the largest global cyber attack ever. At least 200,000 computers have been held hostage so far.

The areas you can see right there in orange infected by a ransoming software called "Wannacry." This is a virus that demands people pay hundreds of dollars to regain control of their files.

HARLOW: Companies right now are hoping their employees don't see this screen pop up when they log into their computers this Monday.

Our tech correspondent, Samuel Burke, is live with the latest.

Samuel, I have been under the impression that this did not hit the United States as much, but if we pull up that map again, you see all those orange dots all over the United States. What's the deal with this virus here right now?

SAMUEL BURKE, CNN TECH CORRESPONDENT: The claws of this virus are sinking in all around the world. Nobody is immune for this. And in fact, we're also seeing a huge uptick in China.

Poppy, keep in mind that on Friday morning, this news broke. People in China were already asleep. They're going back to work and their computers have been infected over the weekend and they're just seeing this message for the first time. Also, we're seeing new strains of this virus. Maybe it's the same group of cyber criminals and they've changed the code, or maybe it's just copycats and it's infecting the United States and other countries that way.

Plus, here in the UK, we still have seven hospitals that are affected. They've actually had to cancel outpatient appointments. So think about how technology is affecting human lives there. And you will have Microsoft blaming the NSA for this. Remember, if you've updated your Windows computer, you're fine, but actually, Microsoft is saying this was code the NSA developed and then it was either leaked or stolen from the NSA, and when you have that code gets into the hands of the bad guys, this is what can happen.

Of course, Microsoft to blame as well because their Windows computers weren't able to withstand the NSA or the hackers this time.

HARLOW: Fair point. Samuel Burke reporting from London, thank you. Nice to have you on.

Meantime, just looking at stocks and the reaction to this. Cyber security stocks have been rallying on the news in the U.S. The ransomware attack is proving to be somewhat of a wake-up call for these firms, security firms like FireEye, Symantec, Cisco seeing shares jump right now on the news.

As for the Dow as a whole, it's up on the day about an hour and a half into the trading day, just slightly up 81 points. The bump thanks in part to higher oil prices and rising tech stocks.

BERMAN: All right. As we sit here right now, the president is headed to Capitol Hill. He will speak at the National Peace Officers' Memorial on Capitol Hill. We are waiting to hear if he will talk about his search for a new FBI director.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:57:30] HARLOW: All right, the president's travel ban 2.0 facing another legal hurdle today. Administration lawyers are set to argue in front of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, trying to sway those justices to reinstate the suspended travel ban for a second time. BERMAN: CNN's Laura Jarrett in Washington for us with the very

latest.

Laura, what have you got?

LAURA JARRETT, CNN JUSTICE REPORTER: Well, for the second time, guys, the state of the president's travel ban is back in the hands of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, a court that Trump has repeatedly blasted on Twitter and elsewhere. You'll remember him calling for the court to be broken up, and certainly -- heightening the intrigue here, I should say, is the fact that today's panel is made up of three judges, all appointed by former President Bill Clinton.

Now I should point out that they do have a range of viewpoints with Judge Richard Paez seen as the more reliable liberal vote, whereas Judge Ronald Gould and Judge Michael Hawkins are considered more moderate. Judge Hawkins ruled that a ban on same-sex marriage in California was unconstitutional. Judge Gould, by way of background, voted to expand Title Nine protections, protecting against sex discrimination for high school athletes. And Judge Paez, a former staff attorney for the Legal Aid Foundation, also found that Arizona once went too far in enacting certain immigration-related restrictions.

So that's just by way of background, but the political leanings aside, the biggest challenge for the Justice Department here is going to be convincing at least two out of those three judges that trump's past statements about Muslims during the campaign trail do not matter for purposes of assessing this executive order.

HARLOW: And Laura, what about the fact that, you know, the Fourth Circuit -- because this is being tested in the Fourth Circuit and the Ninth Circuit -- they chose to have a wider panel of justices. I mean, the Ninth Circuit could have chosen to have more than these three justices on it to hear this, and these three, as you guys have pointed out, were all appointed by President Clinton.

JARRETT: Yes, that's right. And because they only have three, I don't think it would be, you know, unusual to see them come back faster than the Fourth Circuit because they have a final panel of judges -- a larger panel of judges, I should say there, Poppy.

HARLOW: All right, Laura Jarrett reporting for us. Thank you for that. We'll keep an eye on those hearings as well and hearing live. You'll see it here live 12:30 p.m. Eastern. Stay with CNN.

BERMAN: All right. And of course, we're watching the president, set to speak very soon. That is all for us today. I'm John Berman.

HARLOW: I'm Poppy Harlow. Thanks so much for joining us. "AT THIS HOUR WITH KATE BOLDUAN" begins right now.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, everyone. I'm Kate Bolduan, we are following breaking news.