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Report: Rosenstein To Leave Justice Department; Paul Manafort Shared Polling Data With Alleged Russian Agent; President Trump Pushes Border Wall In T.V. Address; U.K. Parliament Votes To Create Financial Obstacle To A 'No-Deal' Brexit. Aired 5:30-6a ET
Aired January 09, 2019 - 05:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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[05:30:35] DAVE BRIGGS, CNN ANCHOR: Breaking news. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein reportedly preparing to leave the Justice Department. How soon he could leave and why.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: There is a growing humanitarian and security crisis at our southern border.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: President Trump making his case on immigration -- or trying to. Did he change any minds?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER (D-NY), SENATE MINORITY LEADER: Mr. President, reopen the government. End this shutdown now.
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BRIGGS: Democrats head back to the White House today to meet with the president. Are they ready to make a deal?
ROMANS: And it is official. Hundreds of thousands of federal workers on the front lines of national security will not receive their paychecks on Friday. We're going to tell you their stories.
Welcome back to EARLY START, everybody. Good morning, I'm Christine Romans.
BRIGGS: I'm Dave Briggs. Happy hump day. Five thirty-one eastern time.
Also, some major developments on the Russia probe and Paul Manafort. We'll get to those in a moment.
But we start with the breaking news this morning.
ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news. BRIGGS: (Audio gap) ABC News that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein is expected to leave that job in the coming weeks. Rosenstein has supervised special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia probe since former Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself.
ROMANS: ABC reports Rosenstein has told President Trump and White House officials he plans to leave around the time the president's nominee for attorney general takes office. That would be William Barr, assuming he's confirmed by the Senate following his hearing next week.
Rosenstein had apparently been thinking he would serve about two years under President Trump, and ABC News says there is no indication he is being forced out by the president.
BRIGGS: Just one of the headlines this morning that will have a big impact on the Mueller investigation. The other may be the clearest public evidence yet of coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia during the 2016 presidential race.
It came out in a botched court filing, actually, by lawyers for Paul Manafort revealing that the former Trump campaign chief shared polling data with an alleged Russian operative.
More now from Sara Murray.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
SARA MURRAY, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Christine and Dave.
We're now learning that Paul Manafort shared campaign-related polling and discussed a Ukrainian peace plan with his Russian associate Konstantin Kilimnik, all while serving as Donald Trump's campaign chairman. 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 say 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 just misremembered certain details. But, the lawyers submitted a redacted version of this filing with some formatting errors that allowed all those hidden details to be public.
Back to you guys.
(END VIDEOTAPE) BRIGGS: Big stuff, Sara Murray. Thank you.
Entering day 19 now of the federal government shutdown. This afternoon, President Trump will attend a Senate Republican lunch, 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 prime time 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.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROMANS: But those top Democrats, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate 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 American people hostage, must stop manufacturing a crisis, and must reopen the government.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[05:35:00] ROMANS: Now, despite earlier hints dropped by the White House, the president did not declare a national emergency in this speech, but that doesn't mean it's 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.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JIM ACOSTA, CNN CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Christine and Dave, President Trump did make his pitch for a border wall in a prime time address to the nation from the Oval Office.
And while the president did not declare a state of emergency down on the border, he did talk about the situation on the border in 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 briefing 8-minute address, at one point saying it was Democrats who were requesting a steel barrier down on the border. 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 a new trade deal between the U.S. and Mexico, but that's not how that trade deal works -- Christine and Dave.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ROMANS: Yes, there was a lot of fact-checking on the fly yesterday --
BRIGGS: Yes.
ROMANS: -- quite frankly, and that's just one of those things.
BRIGGS: Jim Acosta, thanks.
All right, let's stay in D.C. and bring in "CNN POLITICS" digital director Zach Wolf who is in D.C. this morning.
ROMANS: Hey, Zach.
BRIGGS: Good to see you, sir.
ZACHARY WOLF, DIGITAL DIRECTOR, CNN POLITICS: Good morning.
BRIGGS: It was a meme-inducing evening in the nation's capital. Chuck and Nancy, "Dr. Nos" and then, "It's Wall About Me."
But an interesting take came before the actual prime time address when the president, in an off-the-record meeting with television anchors, according to Peter Baker of "The New York Times," said this. He didn't want to give the speech -- he wasn't big on it -- but, quote, "The speech was not going to change a damn thing."
Was President Trump's prediction spot-on?
WOLF: Yes, I think it was but because he said what he's been saying, he said it with a nicer tone. He tried to sound, I think, a little bit more moderate. You could see him sort of controlling himself as he spoke.
But he repeated some of the same falsehoods. He didn't offer any new argument, I think, for why the government needs to be shut down for this wall. Democrats, meanwhile, are pretty clearly not going to give him a wall.
So I think we come into Wednesday pretty much where we left Tuesday, which is someone has to agree to back down from their position. And it's not clear, after last night, to me who that person is going to be.
ROMANS: How do you rate the Democrat rebuttal here? You had the very stern Chuck and Nancy, as the president would say --
BRIGGS: Yes.
ROMANS: -- telling the American people this is a -- this is a manufactured crisis. They said it a couple of different times.
"The Wall Street Journal" editorial board, this morning, saying these two sides are talking past each other on immigration. They call it the dialogue of the death that is America's immigration policy.
Did the Democrats break through or are they talking past each other?
WOLF: Well, if you can get me on the kind of odd staging --
BRIGGS: Right.
WOLF: -- of the Democrats and sort of they're leering at you, I think they made their points. But, yes, ultimately, the question is who actually consumed this last night? Was it movable people?
Ultimately, it doesn't really matter kind of what the American people want. It matters what about 20 senators in the --
ROMANS: Right.
WOLF: -- will do, and those are the 20 it would take to essentially overrule President Trump if Democrats won't budge on this.
So that was -- you know, at heart, his audience was Congress --
BRIGGS: Yes.
WOLF: -- because they're the people who are really --
ROMANS: Right.
WOLF: -- voting on this.
BRIGGS: Yes. Twitter collectively said it was like when you get home at three in the morning and you're parents were disappointed at you, looking at Chuck and Nancy there.
ROMANS: Only these are grandparents. They're grandparents.
BRIGGS: They're grandparents, yes. These are all the nation's grandparents.
Let's turn now to this breaking news from ABC News that Rod Rosenstein, the deputy A.G., is on his way out. Context, though -- he has said he long planned to be out around this 2-year mark. A new A.G. usually comes with a new deputy A.G.
But the concern might be what is and who is the guardrail now for the Russia investigation moving forward? We know Bill Barr, the new A.G., wrote that memo very critical of the Mueller investigation.
WOLF: Right, and we know that Mueller has asked for more time to do -- you know, asked the courts for more time to do his investigation, so it's unclear when exactly this Mueller investigation would wrap up.
It's not clear if Barr would protect it to the extent, essentially, that Rosenstein has. So that raises a lot of questions going forward.
And it's also a good point to -- good time to mention there is a lot of turnover in the Trump administration. People just don't last very long here.
ROMANS: All right. A big day in the Russia probe. Really, a big day on so many fronts --
[05:40:01] BRIGGS: True.
ROMANS: -- but I don't want to overlook the Russia probe because it was a very big day there.
And you point out the idea that there was no collusion was hard to defend before, even more so now because of what we've learned about Paul Manafort.
And then you've got this -- the Russian attorney -- a separate deal. A separate case altogether of money laundering for her. She was instrumental in arranging that Trump Tower meeting.
What do you make of yesterday's developments?
WOLF: Well, you know, it's -- we've been talking about this for -- you know, it feels like years but I guess it's months. The drip, drip, drip of everything that's going on. It's kind of like the wagon circling around all of the people who are in that Russian -- you know, that Trump Tower meeting.
Paul Manafort in jail right now, guilty on one set of charges, accused of duping Mueller on another -- on his ability to cooperate. We have the lawyer now targeted by a different set of authorities. So it's just things keep happening and these dominos keep sort of falling in slow motion and we just keep waiting to figure out what the final thing is going to be.
ROMANS: The fact that the government says Paul Manafort shared polling data with a suspected Russian agent --
BRIGGS: Right.
ROMANS: -- that's just remarkable.
BRIGGS: It strikes at the core of what the president has said --
WOLF: Right.
BRIGGS: -- that there is no evidence, no suggestion of collusion. It certainly looks like some pretty clear coordination. But another piece of news that we just need to mention on the end here is the Supreme Court refused to intervene on behalf of this foreign- owned corporation. They will now be fined $50,000 a day for not complying with the subpoena.
That could be the biggest story of all. We don't know a lot about it but it does relate to the whole context here.
ROMANS: Yes.
BRIGGS: Zach Wolf, good to see you here. Thank you very much.
WOLF: You, too.
ROMANS: And another very big day --
BRIGGS: Yes.
ROMANS: -- on the Russia probe front.
All right. Also, an emotional moment on the House floor late last night. This was remarkable.
Republican Congressman Steve Scalise and former Democratic Congressman Gabby Giffords, both survivors of gun attacks, shared a hug. Scalise approached Giffords just before a moment of silence marking the eighth anniversary of the shooting that nearly killed her. Six other people died in that attack.
She was in Washington to help introduce a bill requiring background checks on private-transaction gun sales. The Democrats' background check proposal appears unlikely to advance in the Republican- controlled Senate. So, status quo --
BRIGGS: Yes.
ROMANS: -- even though there was a nice hug.
BRIGGS: Ahead, an investigation underway in Arizona to determine how a woman in a vegetative state for 14 years became pregnant. How her family is responding, next.
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[05:46:47] ROMANS: All right.
Tim Cook wants Wall Street to focus on Apple's happy customers, not how often they may be upgrading their phones. In an interview on CNBC's "MAD MONEY," Cook said trade war tension with the U.S. led to a more sharp downturn in the Chinese economy, but he believes it is temporary.
As for Wall Street's response to Apple's warning to investors that they should expect lower sales from the holiday quarter, he said this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) TIM COOK, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, APPLE, INC.: I think the market is quite emotional in the short-term and we sort of look through all of that. We think about the long term. And so when I look at the long- term health of the company it has never been better.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROMANS: Apple's lowered revenue expectations rattled investors and its stock sank. Apple's value has fallen 40 percent to $715 billion. That's down from an all-time high last year of almost $1.2 trillion. I mean, just think of how big of a chunk of value disappeared.
In that interview, Cook said customer satisfaction, loyalty, and innovation are the most important things to Apple, but not necessarily to Wall Street or investors.
BRIGGS: Multi-Grammy-winning R&B singer R. Kelly could be facing a criminal investigation in Chicago and Atlanta after the airing of a Lifetime 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 the Fulton County district attorney is investigating the R&B singer. Savage's family claims she's having a sexual relationship with R. Kelly and is being manipulated by him and cut off from the outside world.
Prosecutors want to know if there are other potential victims out there.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KIMBERLY FOXX, COOK COUNTY STATE'S ATTORNEY: Please come forward. There is nothing that can be done to investigate these allegations without the cooperation of both victims and witnesses. We cannot seek justice without you.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
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, claimed Kelly was not in the video.
ROMANS: Police in Phoenix trying to determine how a woman in a long- term vegetative state gave birth last month. On Tuesday, investigators served a search warrant seeking DNA from male staffers at the Hacienda Healthcare facility.
The CNN affiliate -- Phoenix affiliate -- reports the woman has been a patient there for at least a decade and had a baby last month.
The family's attorney releasing a statement saying, "The family obviously is outraged, traumatized, and in shock by the abuse and neglect of their daughter. The family would like me to convey that the baby boy has been born into a loving family and will be well cared for."
BRIGGS: A second suspect facing capital murder charges in connection with the drive-by shooting of a 7-year-old girl in Houston. Larry Woodruffe will have a preliminary hearing in the murder case on Thursday.
The news came as Jazmine Barnes' family and thousands of others packed a church for her funeral.
Authorities say the shooting was most likely a case of mistaken identity.
Eric Black, Jr. has also been charged in the case. He is suspected of driving the car.
[05:50:02] ROMANS: All right, let's get a check on "CNN Business" this morning.
Global stocks are mostly higher as trade talks wrap up in Beijing, and the feeling is that maybe China gave a little. You've got Tokyo, Shanghai, Hong Kong stocks all higher. And then, when the European markets opened, they all opened a little bit higher as well.
On Wall Street, futures following the same lead. Stocks are on a 3- day winning streak. The Dow climb another 256 points -- that's 1.1 percent -- on Tuesday. The S&P also up one percent.
Both the Dow and the S&P are up for three straight days. That's the longest win streak since late November. It's been real hard to put those back-to-back wins together.
The Nasdaq closed up 1.1 percent. That's up the eighth time in nine days.
All right, Sears reached this Eleventh Hour deal Tuesday to remain open, at least for now. After a series of last-minute negotiations, attorneys for Sears say they reached an acceptable agreement with a hedge fund controlled by the former CEO Eddie Lampert. Now, without an agreement, Sears faced liquidation.
The deal, a revised version of a $4.4 billion bid Lampert submitted in December -- it would keep 425 of the stores open if certain conditions are met. Under the new terms, Lampert must come up with $120 buck cash payment -- $120 million by this afternoon as a down payment there.
There were a lot of questions after Netflix claimed this astonishing number -- that more than 45 million accounts watched "BIRD BOX" over the holidays. Now, there's data from Nielsen that backs up that number.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SANDRA BULLOCK, ACTRESS, BIRD BOX: If you hear something in the woods, you tell me.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROMANS: According to Nielsen, nearly 26 million viewers watched the film which stars Sandra Bullock. This is during the first week of its release.
This number does not include viewers outside the U.S. or viewing that happened on mobile, tablet or laptops which is, of course, how a lot of people watch it. So that might explain why Netflix's number was so much higher.
The debut week of "BIRD BOX" came in second to the debut week of season two of "STRANGER THINGS." That was in October 2017.
Netflix declined to comment on those Nielsen numbers.
Safe to say a lot of people are watching "BIRD BOX."
BRIGGS: Right away, it's massive.
ROMANS: Yes.
BRIGGS: And if you look at YouTube, too many people are taking the "BIRD BOX" challenge --
ROMANS: Oh, yes.
BRIGGS: -- as well.
Ahead, this morning, British lawmakers resuming their debate over Theresa May's Brexit deal. A live report from London is next.
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[05:56:43] BRIGGS: Today, British lawmakers resume their debate over Prime Minister Theresa May's Brexit deal. She faces an uphill battle to gain support.
CNN's Anna Stewart live at Downing Street in London with more.
We are now less than 80 days away from a Brexit without an agreement. Good morning, Anna.
ANNA STEWART, CNN INTERNATIONAL REPORTER: We sure are. Time is running out. And actually, Dave, you might see the prime minister leaving 10 Downing Street shortly because she's due to head to Parliament for prime minister's questions and day one of what will be a 5-day debate on her Brexit deal.
Now, just to recap, this is the deal she negotiated with the E.U. over many, many months. It was supposed to be debated and voted on last month but it was canceled just hours before the vote was due to take place because she wasn't going to win it.
You know what? Nothing has changed. The Parliamentary math (ph), a month later, is much the same. It doesn't look like it's going to pass. So we're already starting to look at what will happen next, come Tuesday when she loses.
What will happen? Will she go to the E.U. and try and demand more concessions because she cannot get this through? Will she face a huge mounting opposition within Parliament -- potentially, a confidence vote on her government?
Will there be a second referendum? Plenty of calls for that.
So she's facing much of an uphill battle here and we're just going to have to see how this first day of debating goes. It's going to be a tense one for Theresa May.
BRIGGS: Massive implications if they can't get that agreement.
Anna Stewart live for us at 10 Downing -- thanks.
ROMANS: All right.
The government shutdown appears to be the gift that keeps on giving, at least for Jimmy Fallon. Here's your "Late-Night Laughs."
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JIMMY FALLON, HOST, NBC "THE TONIGHT SHOW STARRING JIMMY FALLON": The government shutdown is in its 18th day and I saw that some members of Congress are starting to pick up part-time work while they're out of a job. I'll show you what I mean.
Senator Roy Blunt got a job as the president of the Lollipop Guild.
Senator Angus King got a job as the sheriff in a town that doesn't allow dancing. It's forbidden -- wow.
Senator Lindsey Graham got a job as an Applebee's waiter that's a little too chatty. Hey, y'all, who wants some apps?
Senator Tom Carper got a job as a gravedigger from the "Goosebumps" book.
Senator Chris Coons got a job as an assistant gravedigger from the "Goosebumps" book.
And finally, Sen. Mitch McConnell got a job as a smiley French fry. Way to go.
They've got to work.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROMANS: All right. Thanks for joining us. I'm Christine Romans.
BRIGGS: I'm Dave Briggs. Here's "NEW DAY." We'll see you tomorrow.
ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.
ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: All right, we want to welcome our viewers in the United States and around the world. This is NEW DAY. It is Wednesday, January ninth, 6:00 here in New York.
And we do begin with breaking news in the Mueller investigation. A source tells CNN that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein is expected to leave the Justice Department in the coming weeks once a new attorney general is confirmed.
Rosenstein has been overseeing Robert Mueller's Russia investigation for more than a year now, ever since Jeff Sessions recused himself.
Rosenstein has been a target of President Trump's on Twitter. President Trump recently reposted an image of Rosenstein and other DOJ officials behind bars.
JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: So, with Rosenstein gone, it means that the Mueller investigation will be overseen by people who have expressed open and public hostility to at least some of the probe.
And this news comes at the same time as a major development.
