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Father Of Migrant Disputes Department of Homeland Security Claims Into Daughter's Death; CNN Reality Check: Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke To Leave White House Amid Investigations; Report Says Vaping Among America's Teens Keeps Climbing; President Trump Calls Michael Cohen A "Rat" And Falsely Claims FBI Broke Into His Office. Aired 7:30-8a ET

Aired December 17, 2018 - 07:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:30:17] ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: So how did that 7-year-old girl from Guatemala die in Border Patrol custody? He father disputes some of the Homeland Security Department's version.

CNN's Ed Lavandera is live in El Paso, Texas for us with the latest. What have you learned, Ed?

ED LAVANDERA, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Alisyn.

Well, a congressional delegation is expected to visit the border patrol station in New Mexico where this young girl from Guatemala was first treated a little more than a week ago. And these are lawmakers who say that the Trump administration immigration policy is chaotic and led to this girl's young death.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

LAVANDERA (voice-over): Department of Homeland Security officials initially reported 7-year-old Jakelin Caal Maquin spent days crossing desert terrain without food or water when she showed up with her father and a large group of migrant refugees at a desolate New Mexico border checkpoint.

The girl's father disputes that account. He says Jakelin was in good health when they surrendered to border patrol agents.

Ruben Garcia runs the El Paso shelter where the father has stayed since his daughter died.

RUBEN GARCIA, DIRECTOR, ANNUNCIATION HOUSE: What is very important to us is to make it very clear that the father told us that "my daughter was eating, my daughter was receiving water and liquids, and that she was fine."

LAVANDERA: According to DHS officials and the father, the young girl first started showing signs of distress and vomiting during a 90- minute bus ride to a border patrol station in Lordsburg, New Mexico. The girl died about 27 hours after being taken into custody. The cause hasn't been determined. The father has told officials he has no complaints about how border patrol agents treated him and his daughter, and that he believes everyone around them did everything possible to save the girl's life.

The girl's death has sparked intense criticism of the Trump administration's immigration policy. Critics argue migrants are being kept from entering through legal checkpoints to request asylum and pushed into remote, dangerous areas.

SENAIDA NAYAR, RESIDENT, EL PASO, TEXAS: What happened with this child really goes to show just how damaging these policies are for these families.

LAVANDERA: Trump administration officials have criticized the father for putting his daughter in such a dangerous situation. Immigrant rights activists say the blame is unfair.

GARCIA: Their lives are beyond impossible. None of us in the United States can imagine.

LAVENDERA: The news of the girl's death has left her family in this poor Guatemalan village devastated. Jakelin had turned seven just days before leaving with her father. The family says she was thrilled by the thought of seeing the United States.

DOMINGO CAAL, JAKELIN'S GRANDFATHER (through translator): I'm not going to speak that much because I can barely take it. It's difficult for us. This happened because we are very much in need.

The girl would jump in happiness that she would get to go to the United States. Very happy and content, but she didn't know. For us, it's very difficult.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

LAVANDERA (on camera): We are still waiting for an exact cause of death. That's supposed to come from the medical examiner here in El Paso. That could come later this week.

Meanwhile, the young girl's body is already in the process of being returned to Guatemala while this father remains here at a shelter in El Paso -- John.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Ed Lavandera for us on the border. Obviously, our heart goes out to that family. Thanks so much, Ed.

All right, a cabinet secretary -- another one out at the White House after a stack of ethics questions. It's not the only legal test or ethical test facing the Trump administration -- not by a longshot. It turns out before or after the election, if Trump ran it, authorities want to know about it.

Our senior political analyst John Avlon has your reality check -- sir.

JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: That's right, John. So, Interior Sec. Ryan Zinke is out, making him the fourth Trump cabinet official to leave under an ethics cloud in less than two years.

Now, Zinke was the subject of no less than 15 investigations during his tenure, the latest involving a land deal made with a Haliburton executive in his Montana hometown.

And then, there's the lavish travel, taking his security detail on a personal vacation to Greece and Turkey. But outlandish travel and overblown security have snagged all the cabinet secretaries who have been pushed out to date.

For example, former EPA's Scott Pruitt is the reigning champ, having burned through more than $3 million taxpayer dollars in travel and security expenses, including taking complete detail on family vacations, football games, and trips home to Oklahoma.

That's not to mention the $43,000 soundproof phone booth and the sweetheart deal on a $50-a-month Capitol Hill rental from a lobbyist -- among about a dozen investigations into Pruitt to date.

Now, former Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price blew through $1.2 million on lavish travel and nearly all of it -- some 20 trips -- violated federal requirements, according to the inspector general.

[07:35:05] And, the inspector general of the V.A. found, quote, "serious derelictions" in former Sec. David Shulkin's 10-day trip to Europe which was loaded with sightseeing jaunts and left taxpayers on the hook for airfare and other expenses for his wife.

But that's just the cabinet, folks

And far from the seriousness of it, a new report from "The Washington Post" finds that virtually every organization Donald Trump has led over the past 10 years is facing some form of investigation. At least six in total being looked into by everyone from Robert Mueller to multiple state A.G.s.

Now, we know all about the alleged campaign finance violations to pay off women weeks before the election, and the Trump transition team under investigation for contacts with Russians.

But now, there's the inaugural committee and questions about whether any of the $107 million that was donated to it came from foreign nationals, which would be illegal.

There's a pair of emolument lawsuits trying to determine whether Trump used his status as president to fill his companies coffers with foreign government money.

There's the New York State lawsuit over the Trump Foundation, a charity accused of using its money in unorthodox ways, like purchasing a gigantic portrait of Trump, himself, and paying off his businesses legal settlements. And who could forget Trump University which ran afoul of the law for everything from even calling itself a university to claims that students were defrauded through false ads and empty promises?

And those are just the big ones. Now, with a new class of Democrats heading to Washington with investigatory powers and the ability to release his tax returns, all of this could get a whole lot worse for team Trump.

We've never had a president under this much legal scrutiny and it's not because it's a partisan witch hunt, as the president says. The constant stream of ethics investigations in his administration seems like proof that tone comes from the top and no amount of fact-free rage tweeting is going to change that.

And that's your reality check.

BERMAN: Thank you so much, John.

You mentioned Scott Pruitt. Do we know whatever became of the lotion situation? Is that resolved?

AVLON: You had to bring it back to the lotion, didn't you?

CAMEROTA: He always does.

AVLON: You know, look, I think that is, in retrospect, among the least of his sins in terms of legal severity, but by far the creepiest.

CAMEROTA: Yes, thank you for putting a finer point on that. Yes, it's not supposed to be a get rich quick scheme to be on the cabinet.

AVLON: No, no.

CAMEROTA: But, thank you.

Look, I know you wanted a lotion update. We'll try to get a reporter on that for you.

BERMAN: Yes, I appreciate it.

CAMEROTA: All right.

BERMAN: Dry skin is nothing to laugh at.

CAMEROTA: No, not in this season.

BERMAN: Yes.

CAMEROTA: All right, a new study examines why more teenagers are vaping and why more doctors are now concerned. That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:41:11] CAMEROTA: All right. A new report highlights a significant and substantial increase in teenagers vaping over just the past year.

CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta has been reporting on this for months -- on the epidemic of underage e-cigarette use, and he joins us now.

So, Sanjay, tell us what surprises you about this new report.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, I think any time you're trying to predict behavior among young adults there's always going to be some surprises in there, for sure. This really like tries to monitor attitudes and behaviors going forward among young adults.

There was a couple of things that surprised me. First of all, illicit drug use and even marijuana use has not really increased that much among kids. It has been flat or even decreased despite some of the laxity of some of the state's laws among marijuana.

But this -- take a look at the screen there -- this is what surprised me the most -- vaping, and just how much it has increased. Take a look -- you know, 12th graders, now -- you're seeing between 2017 and 2018 how much it's increased -- almost 10 percent.

That's one of the -- one of the biggest issues and something I think has captured the attention of a lot of people at the FDA.

BERMAN: Those year-to-year increases -- you don't see stuff like that in statistics, normally. That does jump out.

And, Sanjay, the company Juul, it was singled out by the authors of this new report because it commands about three-quarters of the e- cigarette market. You've been looking into their advertising and what have you found?

GUPTA: Well, we talked to Juul. We've been following the story for some time and the question was this. Are you trying to appeal to young people? You shouldn't be doing that. Are you trying to do that?

Juul will say look, that's never been our intent to try and make this product appeal to young people. Despite the flavorings, despite the campaigns, that wasn't our intent.

And they say that most of the social media out there around Juul comes from third parties.

But what our investigation found was that, in fact, Juul was finding certain social media influencers, paying them to try and promote this product. Take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CHRISTINA ZAYAS, BLOGGER: We captured some photos --

GUPTA (voice-over): This is Christina at work. ZAYAS: -- added some lifestyle of me.

GUPTA: For the last 10 years, she has made her living as a blogger and social media influencer. One of her recent jobs, post positive content about the e-cigarette, Juul.

ZAYAS: They really wanted to appeal to the younger market and they did.

GUPTA: Juul had hired an influencer marketing firm which then reached out to the then-35-year-old Christina in September of 2017, hoping to target her 57,000 Instagram followers.

ZAYAS: If you are a smoker, then please let me know your interests in a collaboration with Juul.

GUPTA: Christina shared that five percent of her followers are in the 13 to 17 age range. They're especially susceptible to being influenced, according to Stanford researcher, Dr. Robert Jackler, who has been following Juul since early marketing campaigns more than three years ago.

DR. ROBERT JACKLER, OTOLOGIST-NEUROTOLOGIST, STANFORD UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE, They advertise exactly where young people live. Young people today are on social media. They're on their phones continuously throughout the day looking at social media channels.

ZAYAS: Juul's team reached out to me to work together. We came up with working on a sponsored post, which is just a blog post and then one Instagram post. Their budget was OK, we can offer you $1,000.

GUPTA: Juul declined an on-camera interview but conceded it paid fewer than 10 influencers who were all smokers or former smokers and collectively paid less than $10,000.

DR. SCOTT GOTTLIEB, COMMISSIONER, FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION: I think it's incumbent also upon the companies that are marketing these products to also take steps to crack down on the youth use.

GUPTA: FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb's concern is that teens are not aware that many e-cigs contain high levels of nicotine, which is addictive, particularly harmful to the developing brain, and more likely to lead to traditional cigarette use.

ROBIN MEADE, HLN ANCHOR, "MORNING EXPRESS WITH ROBIN MEADE": You know, the FDA seized thousands of documents from e-cigarette maker Juul.

GUPTA: Since the FDA cracked down on Juul this fall, the company says it ended its social media campaign in the United States. Dr. Jackler says too little, too late.

JACKLER: Turning off Juul's own contribution to this, at this point, doesn't matter because it's become a fad and it's taken on a life of its own. [07:45:06] GUPTA: For her part, Christina has stopped using Juul. And while her Instagram posts and blog reach more than 5,000 people, she wonders if it was worth it.

ZAYAS: Stepping back, I think that when I saw all the kids smoking at this festival during the summer, it just kind of turned me off to it. And I'm actually considering writing a blog post on why I quit.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CAMEROTA: So, Sanjay, is part of the appeal of these Juul cigarettes that kids think that they're much healthier than smoking real cigarettes?

GUPTA (on camera): Yes, I think -- I think there's a -- there is a lack of perceived harm with this things. People, they think they're just doing flavorings. They don't realize that they may be getting nicotine and may be getting high doses of nicotine.

And we followed up with Juul as we uncovered this and they said look, we've distanced our self from social media. We're no longer paying influencers to do this sort of thing. But again, they conceded that that was part of their strategy.

The big issue I think, Alisyn, more than any other is if e-cigarettes can help certain people stop smoking, are they also making certain start smoking? And if you take a look at kids, specifically -- kids who are using these e-cigarettes versus non-users -- the likelihood they're going to start smoking actually combustible cigarettes within six months -- look at that, Alisyn. That tells the tale -- 30.7 percent versus eight percent.

So, yes, maybe these e-cigarettes could help adults stop smoking, but if it comes at the price of young people starting, that's too high a price to pay.

CAMEROTA: Sanjay Gupta, thank you very much for breaking down all of this new study. I mean, it's everywhere right now and as parents, I hear so many people who are concerned. Thank you for that.

All right. So, is the government going to shut down on Friday? Well, we have a Democratic senator here next to tell us what he wants to see happen.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:50:58] CAMEROTA: Nearly every organization that President Trump has run is now under investigation this morning, and the president is responding with a barrage of angry tweets.

One of them is getting a lot of attention. In it, the president says, "Remember, Michael Cohen only became a 'Rat' after the FBI did something which was absolutely unthinkable and unheard of until the witch hunt was illegally started. They broke into an attorney's office! Why didn't they break into the DNC to get the server or Crooked Hillary's office?" OK. Joining us now is Democratic Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware. He is a member of the Judiciary Committee. Senator, great to have you here in studio.

SEN. CHRIS COONS (D-DE), MEMBER, SENATE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE, FOREIGN RELATIONS COMMITTEE: Great to be with you again.

CAMEROTA: I know that there are a lot of things that the president tweets that have Democrats' hair on fire or the media, but this --

COONS: My hair doesn't get on fire.

CAMEROTA: No, it clearly had been, at one time, on fire.

(LAUGHTER)

Sorry about that.

Here's the point. He's talking about the Fourth Amendment.

COONS: Right.

CAMEROTA: There -- when you have a warrant, of course, it is legal for -- to go into a --

COONS: Right.

CAMEROTA: -- suspected criminal's office or home and do a search and seizure. And I'm just wondering what you and even your Republican colleagues there behind the scenes in the halls of Congress say when the president goes after the criminal justice system?

COONS: Well, the president is clearly going after the rule of law in our criminal justice system and he's undermining it.

For the millions of people who follow closely what President Trump has to say on Twitter every day, the idea that the FBI broke into his attorney's office runs right up against the foundation of our law, which is the FBI was executing a dually-authorized warrant.

So law enforcement -- federal, state, local law enforcement doesn't just break into people's offices. They were executing a warrant issued with the approval of a judge. This is part of how investigations work.

His use of the term "rat" for Michael Cohen and mischaracterizing this as a break-in to his attorney's office, frankly, makes him sound more like a mob boss than President of the United States.

CAMEROTA: I mean, do you think that it does some damage to the -- the FBI has to do lots of --

COONS: Yes.

CAMEROTA: -- serve lots of search warrants.

COONS: Yes.

CAMEROTA: I mean, do you think that it has some sort of pernicious effect?

COONS: This is not good. This is not healthy for law enforcement. Law enforcement doesn't want to be dragged into partisan politics. They're just going to keep doing their job.

I'm the co-chair of the Law Enforcement Caucus in the Senate. I have enormous respect for what federal law enforcement has to do each and every day. This is just another disheartening chapter in the president's attempts to mislead the American people about Mueller's investigation.

CAMEROTA: Where are your Republican colleagues on this?

COONS: Sadly, silent -- most of them. There are a few who every time there's been a tweet like this step forward and say the Mueller investigation has to be protected. Mueller is executing an appropriate investigation.

Quietly, the vast majority of them say it's not a witch hunt. We're going to take steps to protect it.

But this week, Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona will, once again, join me on the floor of the Senate asking for a vote on our Mueller protection bill and I'm, sadly, confident it will get blocked and it won't get a vote, and it should.

CAMEROTA: I mean, this -- I understand, but this is beyond Mueller. This about the FBI --

COONS: That's right.

CAMEROTA: -- and they should -- Republicans don't feel the need to talk about a fundamental principle, and the Fourth Amendment, and protecting the search and seizure tenets?

COON: Well, I can't speak for them but I'll tell you that when we have private conversations, most of my colleagues recognize that this is not healthy, this is not good.

But they're so happy with what they're getting out of the Trump administration in terms of tax cuts, deregulation, and the tax on the Affordable Care Act and Obamacare, two new justices to the Supreme Court, that they're willing to let him, as they say, just ramble on on Twitter. They pay attention to the policy accomplishments, not to the Twitter statements.

I think having the President of the United States saying and doing things like this on Twitter is fundamentally corrosive to the rule of law in our country.

CAMEROTA: And, of course, it's paradoxical because as you point out today, you got a victory --

COONS: Yes.

CAMEROTA: -- with criminal justice reform. You believe he is going to sign that today.

COONS: Yes, this afternoon in the Senate, we're going to take up and I believe pass the First Step Act, which has some important sentencing revisions in it, as well. This is a bipartisan effort that I've been a part of for three Congresses now. There are real leaders in the Republican and Democratic Caucus who have pushed this over the finish line.

[07:55:04] President Trump has said he'll sign it. You know, unfortunately, we've seen this movie before where the president commits to signing something important, like immigration reform, and then changes his mind.

I think we should take this particular deal, get it through the Senate, hope the president will sign it before Christmas, and this will be a heck of a holiday gift for thousands of families who will see family members who've served long, long sentences released early.

CAMEROTA: Let's talk about Obamacare. As you know, a federal judge has ruled it unconstitutional.

COONS: Right.

CAMEROTA: Of course, people are -- all of our legal experts say that will be challenged on appeal and could work its way all the way up to the Supreme Court.

I know that you, of course, don't want anybody to lose their coverage --

COONS: Right.

CAMEROTA: -- but do you take some slight perverse pleasure in watching this play out since it means that Republicans have broken their promises on the campaign trail to protect preexisting conditions and the things that are in place now?

COONS: Well, Alisyn, this is an opportunity for the Republicans in the Senate to show they mean what they say -- that they actually want to protect preexisting conditions and they want to work across the aisle to try and fix and stabilize parts of the Affordable Care Act that are now widely popular.

I remain hopeful, even though there hasn't been any real movement in that direction in this Congress. It is going to be a very tough issue for Republicans facing the electorate in 2020. The Affordable Care Act, in particular, it's protections that allow young people under 26 to stay on their parent's health care, the closing of the so-called doughnut hole that reduce prescription drug costs for seniors, and the preexisting condition protections.

Those are very popular, so much so that governors and senators who ran against Obamacare -- who participated in this lawsuit -- ran in the last few weeks of the 2018 election claiming without foundation that they, in fact, were trying to protect preexisting conditions.

CAMEROTA: Is the government going to shut down, partially, this Friday?

COONS: I have no idea. The only person who is on T.V. and on Twitter saying they would be proud to shut the government down is our president. I am confident that leadership -- Republican and Democratic in the House and Senate -- we want to finish our appropriations bills and we want to go home, and we don't want to see a government shutdown.

But in a fairly famous exchange --

CAMEROTA: But your -- yes.

COONS: -- in the White House --

CAMEROTA: I mean, as we saw.

COONS: -- the president said I'm willing to shut the government down over getting my wall.

Now, they haven't spent the money that was appropriated last fiscal year.

CAMEROTA: And why haven't they? I know -- I've heard you say that. Why haven't they spent that $1.3 -- whatever it was -- billion?

COON: One point three billion. They have spent money on some models and some studies, and they have obligated some of the money, but it's not as if they built 100 or 200 miles of wall in the last year.

And there's a number of problems. A simple one, I think, for folks to understand is that the vast majority of the land on which President Trump's imagined a concrete ribbon wall would be built is privately owned and a lot of those landowners are not volunteering to come forward and have a huge concrete wall put at the end of their property. It would take a lot of time and effort to get permissions and legal authority to put this wall on a lot of the places where it doesn't exist.

There's already 700 miles or border fencing and border wall in some of the areas where there's the most active crossing. A lot of this very long border is extremely remote, far out in the desert in very rugged areas, mountainous areas.

And I've heard from both CBP and DHS -- the Homeland Security and Customs and Border Patrol folks -- that a single-ribbon concrete wall is just a foolish way to spend money and there are other smarter ways that we could invest in border security.

I have voted, as have almost every Democrat, to invest in border security, but this isn't the way to do it.

CAMEROTA: All right. Well, we'll see what happens before Friday.

Senator Chris Coons --

COONS: Thanks, Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: -- thanks so much for being here in the studio.

COONS: Great to be with you.

CAMEROTA: All right.

The president's legal issues are growing and NEW DAY has it all covered for you now.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RUDY GIULIANI, ATTORNEY FOR PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Paying $130,000 to Stormy whatever and paying the other one is not a crime.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The president has continued to weed these stories. He does not tell the truth.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I urge Mueller to wrap it up. I'm confident that it will lead to zero collusion or coordination.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The public needs to know exactly what happened.

SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER (D-NY), SENATE MINORITY LEADER: President Trump is not going to get the wall in any form.

STEPHEN MILLER, WHITE HOUSE SENIOR ADVISER FOR POLICY: We're going to do whatever is necessary to stop this ongoing crisis of illegal immigration.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm working to the effect of keeping the government open and I think that's what the American people expect.

SEN. SUSAN COLLINS (R), MAINE: We have to prevent a government shutdown.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ANNOUNCER: This is NEW DAY with Alisyn Camerota and John Berman.

BERMAN: Good morning and welcome to your NEW DAY. It is Monday, December 17th, 8:00 in the east.

I would like to begin with a dramatic reading from "The Washington Post" this morning.

CAMEROTA: Fantastic, go right ahead.

BERMAN: Two years after Donald Trump won the presidency, nearly every organization he led in the past decade is under investigation. Thus, ends the reading.

Lest you think that is an exaggeration. His administration, his campaign, his transition, his inauguration, his charity, his business, and yes, his personal life -- they are all under a legal microscope.

So how is the president responding this morning? Name-calling and lies.

He called his former attorney --