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Early Start with John Berman and Zoraida Sambolin
Oval Office Address; Shutdown Showdown; No Paycheck for Federal Workers; Bombshell Mueller Filing; Secretary of State Pompeo in Iraq. Aired 4-4:30a ET
Aired January 09, 2019 - 04:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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[04:00:17] DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: There is a growing humanitarian and security crisis at our southern border.
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DAVE BRIGGS, CNN ANCHOR: President Trump making his case on immigration. But did he change any minds?
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SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER (D-NY), SENATE MINORITY LEADER: Mr. President, reopen the government, end this shutdown now.
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CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: The Democrats head back to the White House today to meet with the president. Are they ready to make a deal?
BRIGGS: It's official. Hundreds of thousands of federal workers will not receive a paycheck Friday. We'll tell you their stories.
ROMANS: It may be the clearest public evidence yet of coordination between the Trump campaign and Russians. What Paul Manafort shares with an alleged Russian operative during the 2016 election? A very big day on the Russia investigation, folks.
Good morning and welcome to EARLY START. I'm Christine Romans.
BRIGGS: I'm Dave Briggs. It's Wednesday, January 9, 4:00 a.m. in the East.
And the reviews are in. The president tweeting about his address. A very interesting experience.
Sounds like that restaurant you tried and not sure you'll go back to it. It's interesting though.
We're at day 19 of the federal government shutdown. This afternoon, President Trump will attend the Senate Republican lunch and then return to the White House for a meeting with top congressional leaders. The president setting the stage for today's meeting in his Oval Office address last night.
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TRUMP: The federal government remains shut down for one reason and one reason only, because Democrats will not fund border security. This situation could be solved in a 45-minute meeting. I have invited congressional leadership to the White House tomorrow to get this done. Hopefully, we can rise above partisan politics, in order to support national security.
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ROMANS: But those top Democrats, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senator Minority Leader Chuck Schumer rebutted the president this way.
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SCHUMER: This president just used the backdrop of the Oval Office to manufacture a crisis, stoke fear and divert attention from the turmoil in his administration.
REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA), SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE: President Trump must stop holding the American people hostage. Let's stop manufacturing a crisis, and must reopen the government.
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ROMANS: Despite the hints dropped by the White House, the president did not declare a national emergency in this speech. That does not mean it is off the table. But a source close to the president says he's been told by several advisers that an emergency declaration probably won't work legally.
CNN's Jim Acosta has more on the address from the White House.
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JIM ACOSTA, CNN CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDEN: Christine and Dave, President Trump did make his pitch for a border wall from the Oval Office. And while the president did not declare a state of emergency down at the border, he did talk about the situation on the border and humanitarian and national security terms, at one point saying he wanted to appeal to the heart and soul of the country.
Here's more of what he had to say.
TRUMP: Over the years, thousands of Americans have been brutally killed by those who illegally entered our country, and thousands more lives will be lost if we don't act right now. This is a humanitarian crisis, a crisis of the heart, and a crisis of the soul.
ACOSTA: The president did manage to tell a number of falsehoods in that brief eight-minute address, at one point saying it was Democrats who were requesting a steel barrier down at the border, when a Democratic aide up on Capitol Hill tells CNN that is not the case. The president also said that Mexico would somehow pay for that steel barrier through the new trade between the U.S. and Mexico, but that's not how that trade deal works -- Christine and Dave.
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ROMANS: All right. That's right. Jim Acosta, thank you.
A few other fact checks of the president's address. The president listed several heinous murders by undocumented immigrants, but a 2018 study by the libertarian Cato Institute which revealed data from the Texas Department of Public Safety found that immigrants, legal or illegal, are less likely than nature-born Americans to be convicted of crimes.
The president was cherry-picking the action of some undocumented Americans.
BRIGGS: The president also claimed migrants used children as human pawns to cross the border. But "The Washington Post" reports between April 19th and September 30th, last year, this accounted for about one quarter of 1 percent of all family units apprehended. Most are legitimate families trying to enter the U.S.
And finally, the president claimed 1 in 3 women are sexually assaulted in caravans. This is true. According to Doctors Without Borders, but this evidence is exact reason why many women say they choose to come to the U.S. and travel by caravan.
[04:05:02] ROMANS: At the stroke of midnight last night, it became official, federal employees at America's airports, borders and prisons, men and women who are working hard to feed their families and protect us will not be getting paychecks on Friday.
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CATHERINE FICCO, FORLOUGHED IRS EMPLOYEE: We are deferring payments where we can. We are boning everything back to the bare necessities to try and make it through.
CHRISTINE VITEL, TSA EMPLOYEE WORKING WITHOUT PAY: I am a single mom. My son just graduated his first two years of college. He's going back. I'm not getting paid. I just bought a house. I'm not going to be able to pay my mortgage.
ANGIE ACKLIN, CORRECTIONAL OFFICER: You have the stress of I'm not getting paid. I'm not getting a paycheck. And you have inmates who, you know, just want to tease and mess with you as an officer, so they can make it a more dangerous place. For safety and security, I mean that puts that at risk.
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ROMANS: Air traffic controllers, border patrol, prison guards, the list goes on and on. And now, this CNN exclusive, an e-mail written by a high-ranking official at the TSA, raising concerns about airport security being compromised.
Rene Marsh has more. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
RENE MARSH, CNN AVIATION & GOVERNMENT REGULATION CORRESPONDENT: Christine and Dave, excessive callouts by TSA officers have hurt security operations at a southern California airport. That is the assessment of a high-ranking TSA official. It's all laid out in an internal e-mail dated Monday.
The TSA official in charge of security operations at Palm Springs International Airport wrote, and I'm quoting, due to excessive, unscheduled absences recently experienced at this airport, PSP, Palm Springs International, that has adversely impacted security operations. If you have an unscheduled absence, you will not be placed in an intermittent furlough status. Plainly speaking, concerns about the number of callouts at the airport have reached the point that TSA management is now warning in this e-mail that there may be disciplinary action if employees call out.
Now, the e-mail was directed to all TSA personnel at the airport. And it's significant, because it exposes for the first time an acknowledgement that this partial government shutdown now stretching into a third week is impacting some aviation security at least one airport. Now, we received a statement from TSA, it says in part that Palm Springs airport is a small airport that requires a full-team effort. The deputy FSA who is the federal security director referenced in the e-mail obtained by CNN was simply expressing that all screening employees must report to work during the current lapse in appropriations as required by federal rules.
TSA on its part says it has not seen any impact on its operations there. Of course, this comes from safety warnings from major pilot, flight attendant, and TSA employee unions -- Christine and Dave.
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BRIGGS: Rene Marsh, thanks.
Some FDA employees are worried the shutdown is risking the safety and health of the American public. About 41 percent of the FDA staff are off the job and the rest are working without pay. Jeannette Parks is a chemist who tests medications at an FDA lab in Detroit.
She tells CNN, the agency is doing the best it can with the skeleton crew but he says, quote, it's terrifying. What if there's an outbreak? What would the agency do if something happened and they don't have the staff to handle it? Well, in an emergency, the FDA can call staffers back from furlough for as long as that emergency lasts.
ROMANS: Hundreds of low income families facing possible eviction this morning because of the shutdown. More than 1,100 HUD contracts with landlords who provide subsidized housing have expired since the shutdown started. And over 1,000 more are set to expire by February. HUD is asking the affected landlords to deep into their reserves to cover any shortfall.
BRIGGS: Despite the shutdown, the Agriculture Department says it will be providing food stamps to 38 million Americans through the end of February. Initially, the agency could only guarantee them until the end of January. Agriculture officials say they will use a provision which allows them to make obligated payments within 30 days of a funding lapse. They're now working with states to issue food stamp benefits $4.8 billion worth by January 20th.
ROMANS: All right. It may be the clearest coordination of evidence between the Trump campaign and Russia. It came out in a botched court filing by lawyers of Paul Manafort revealing that the former Trump campaign shared polling data with an alleged Russian operative.
We get more from CNN's Sara Murray.
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SARA MURRAY, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Christine and Dave.
We're now learning that Paul Manafort shared campaign-related polling and discussed Ukrainian peace plan with his Russian associate Konstantin Kilimnik, all while serving as Donald Trump's campaign chairman.
[04:10:01] Manafort and Kilimnik stayed in touch after Donald Trump was elected, even meeting in Madrid in 2017.
Now, those revelations are the closest public sign of coordination between a Trump campaign official and Russians. In this case, it's Kilimnik, a man prosecutors says has ties to Russian intelligence. That same Russian intelligence that investigators say hacked the Democratic Party and leaked stolen e-mails during the 2016 campaign.
Remarkably, we're learning all of this thanks to Manafort's legal team. They submitted a filing to explain that Manafort never intentionally lied to federal investigators when he was supposed to be cooperating with special counsel Robert Mueller. Manafort's lawyers insist their client has misremembered certain details. But their lawyer submitted a redacted version with formatting errors that allows all of these details to be made public.
Back to you, guys.
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ROMANS: All right, Sara. Thank you for that.
The Supreme Court ruling on a case tied to the Mueller investigation, the justices rejecting a challenge by an unnamed foreign owned company that sought to avoid complying with the grand jury subpoena. The order reinstates daily contempt fines totaling $50,000 every day against the mystery company for failing to comply with the subpoena. Now, Chief Justice John Roberts put those fines on hold while the high court considers the matter. The case marks the first time the Supreme Court has had to intervene in the Mueller probe.
BRIGGS: A Russian lawyer who met in 201 at Trump Tower with members of the Trump campaign has now been charged with obstruction of justice in a separate case. Federal prosecutors in New York charging Natalya Veselnitskaya in connection with the money laundering case. It does highlight her deep ties to the Russian government. She helped organize the infamous meeting at Trump Tower between members of the campaign and Trump's family and Russians, promising dirt on Hillary Clinton.
So, there is a success of the whole primetime address, it's that the president distracted from a very bad day in the Russian investigation.
ROMANS: All right. Twelve minutes past the hour.
Grammy Award-winning R&B singer R. Kelly could be under investigation. How a Lifetime series resurfaced allegations of abuse and pedophilia.
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[04:16:15] ROMANS: After all that Christmas Eve gloom, Wall Street is now on a winning streak. Optimism about trade talks with China is the reason for right now. The Dow climbed another 256 points. That's about 1.1 percent Tuesday.
The S&P 500 closed up 1 percent. The Dow and S&P up for three straight days. And that's the longest winning streak since late November because it was kind of a terrible end of the year. The Nasdaq closed up 1.1 percent, rallying for the eighth time in nine days.
Trade sensitive stocks like Boeing, and Caterpillar and Apple all closed higher. While Wall Street is slowly recovering from a horrible December, President Trump thinks the economic slowdown in China will give the U.S. an edge in trade negotiations.
But former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, a Democrat, told Christiane Amanpour that is not necessarily the case.
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LARRY SUMMERS, FORMER TREASURY SECRETARY: The president vastly overstates the comfort of our own economic position. If you look at consensus economic forecast, people are now saying there's a 40 or 50 percent chance of recession within the next two years. That's the right reading of what financial markets are saying. So, our position isn't so strong.
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ROMANS: A U.S. and Chinese negotiators met for a third day in Beijing, a sign that discussions may be moving in a positive direction.
BRIGGS: Multi Grammy-winning singer R. Kelly could be facing a criminal investigation in Chicago and Atlanta. After a documentary series that detailed allegations of more than two decades of abuse and pedophilia. An attorney for the family of Jocelyn Savage, one of the women featured in "Surviving R. Kelly" says that Fulton County district attorneys investigating the R&B singer Savage claims she was having a sexual relationship with R. Kelly, being manipulated by him, cut off from the outside world. Prosecutors want to know if there are other potential victims out there.
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KIMBERLY FOXX, COOK COUNTY STATE'S ATTORNEY: Please come forward. There's nothing that can be done to investigate these allegations without the cooperation of both victims and witnesses. We cannot seek justice without you.
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BRIGGS: In 2002, Kelly was charged with 21 counts of child pornography, for a videotape that allegedly showed him having sex with an unidentified underage girl. He was acquitted. And his lawyers at the time claim Kelly was not in the video.
ROMANS: All right. Police in Phoenix try to determine how a woman in a long-term vegetative state gave birth last night. On Tuesday, investigators served a search warrant seeking DNA from male staffers at the Hacienda facility. CNN Phoenix affiliate reports the woman has been a patient there nor at least a decade, had the baby last month. The family's attorney releasing a statement saying the family is obviously outraged, traumatized and in shock of abuse and neglect of her daughter. The baby boy has been born into a loving family and will be well cared for. That story is just a real shocker.
BRIGGS: Just awful.
Ahead, a U.S. Navy veteran from California is being held in an Iranian prison. Why his mother said he traveled to the country.
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[04:23:51] ROMANS: We have breaking news this morning. We are getting word that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo making an unannounced stop on his Middle East tour. He's landed in Baghdad. We're going to bring you more pictures and details as soon as we get them.
BRIGGS: Meanwhile the mother of 46-year-old navy veteran Michael R. White said her son has been held in an Iranian prison for months. Joanne White (ph) says he flew to Iran last July to visit a woman he said was his girlfriend. Mrs. White declined to discuss why her son was being held. She says she worries about his health because she he's had cancer and suffers from asthma.
The State Department says it is aware of reports of U.S. citizens detained but would provide no further investigation. White's detention could aggravate tensions between Tehran and the U.S., which have worsened since President Trump withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal.
ROMANS: Today, British lawmakers resume their debate over Prime Minister Theresa May's Brexit deal. And she faces an uphill battle to gain support. May will argue that parliament has the duty to support her or face the unpredictable consequences of a no-deal cliffhanger.
But she faced another setback Tuesday, members of her own Conservative Party joined the opposition Labour Party, backing a vote to curb the government spending powers if it fails to secure a Brexit deal with the European Union.
[04:25:09] There'll be five days discussions on the terms of the U.K.'s withdrawal and future relations with the E.U. ahead of that expected vote next Tuesday.
BRIGGS: Trade talks in Beijing between the U.S. and China ending overnight. The session was supposed to last two days but both sides agreed to extend the negotiations by one day. It could be a sign that discussions are making progress.
On Tuesday, China also announced would improve imports of five new varieties of genetically modified crops, a move that would allow more American farmers to sell bio-tech seeds to the Chinese.
Are you optimistic that a minor deal is done that allows both sides to ramp-down tensions?
ROMANS: Look, they've long opposed those GMO imports. So that is a sign. Now, you need changes, you need to protect intellectual property. There's a very long list there.
So, we'll see if there are deeper, deeper gives from the Chinese.
All right. President Trump and the Democratic leaders delivering dueling speeches, and while the federal government is shut down for 19 days. We break down both sides, next.
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