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Moscow Judge Denies Bail to Whelan; Presidential Democratic Field Grows; Slight Warm-up in Northeast. Aired 6:30-7a ET

Aired January 22, 2019 - 06:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:31:44] JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: We are following breaking news.

A Russian judge has denied bail to U.S. citizen and accused spy Paul Whelan. His lawyer tells CNN that Whelan was found with evidence that constitutes state secrets when police arrested him in Moscow, but that he did not realize it.

CNN's Fred Pleitgen live in Moscow outside the court.

Fred, what's going on there?

FRED PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Hi, John.

Well, I was inside the courtroom when Paul Whelan had that very short hearing to try and get bail, which obviously he didn't receive. And it was the first time that we actually saw him since he was arrested in late December and he seemed to be in fairly decent spirits. He was smiling every once in a while. I tried to sort of throw him a question, ask him how he was doing. He didn't answer that. He was actually behind bullet proof glass. The security here obviously very tight in these Russian courts.

It was interesting because the hearing was very short. The judge just came in and essentially said that bail would not be granted to Paul Whelan. We weren't even allowed to film the judge as he was doing that.

We do have some new nuggets about the case that we got from Paul Whelan's lawyer. He says essentially that Whelan was give a flash drive by an individual while he was in his hotel here in Moscow and that that flash drive had state secrets on it. Now, he claims that Paul Whelan did not know that there were state secrets on that flash drive that he thought that this was information about tourism and cultural information as well, for instance, for cathedrals. We do know that Paul Whelan is someone who liked to travel around Russia as a tourist as well.

It's interesting because a lawyer said he believes that so far this trial is going forward in a professional manner. However, he also admitted that so far he was only able to view about 5 percent of the material that is available. So, obviously, still a lot to be done. So, for Paul Whelan, this is a setback, not one that was necessarily

unexpected because it's such a high profile case. A case, of course, also involving espionage charges, which, of course, his family denies, but he's going to have to remain in jail, it could be for months until this trial actually is finished.

Alisyn.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Still mysterious and so many questions. Fred, thank you for explaining all of that.

You know how you and I joke that I don't understand sports?

BERMAN: It's a joke?

CAMEROTA: Well, yes -- sometimes it's a joke.

BERMAN: OK.

CAMEROTA: I just pre-read this story that I'm about to read.

BERMAN: OK.

CAMEROTA: I don't understand a single word in it.

BERMAN: OK, let's go.

CAMEROTA: So, here -- here it is. The NFL is planning to give its pass interference policy a second look.

BERMAN: Good job.

CAMEROTA: Following Sunday's heart-wrenching no call which many say cost the New Orleans Saints a trip to the Super Bowl.

BERMAN: It did.

CAMEROTA: The league is set to consider making pass interference subject to video review at its March meetings.

BERMAN: They are.

CAMEROTA: As well as introducing a replay review challenge. I feel like Giuliani honestly right now. This would give teams an option when they question the call or no call of officials. Again, that's Giuliani-esque. Any change would need the blessing of 24 of the league's 32 owners.

BERMAN: You can't hit the receiver before the receiver catches the ball. You have to wait until he catches the ball to tackle him.

CAMEROTA: Why didn't I just say that? I actually understand what you just said. Why not just say that.

BERMAN: That's -- that is the essence of pass interference. The Saints aren't going to the Super Bowl, and they should be, because of a call that was blown at the end of that game.

CAMEROTA: All that I understand -- the part I don't understand is call or no call. What's the no call that I'm supposed be --

BERMAN: They didn't make a call there. It was a no call that let them go home as opposed to going to the Super Bowl?

CAMEROTA: Who's with me?

BERMAN: And as you well know, the problem, though, of reviewing --

CAMEROTA: Tweet John.

[06:35:00] BERMAN: The problem with reviewing pass interference is, as you were discussing with me before -- before the break, is that every play -- there's some pass interference in nearly every play.

CAMEROTA: Yes, there is.

BERMAN: So it's hard to catch it.

CAMEROTA: Yes. I knew that.

BERMAN: We're going to go to something much more clear here. Anthony Scaramucci is trying to survive in the "Big Brother" house longer than he did in the White House. All of that is actually a statement of fact. He made his debut on the CBS show "Celebrity Big Brother," revealing that he still has access to the president.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

Anthony SCARAMUCCI: I still get along with the president. I talk to him probably once or twice a month. But I'm usually the one making the call.

I would think that a portion of the public probably dislikes me because of my Trump support, but I had a great time. I haven't come across one person that doesn't think I'm nuts for going into the "Big Brother" house, which is probably the reason why I'm doing it, all right. It's going to last longer than my stint at the White House, God willing.

I started at the White House my first day with a chainsaw and a hockey mask. I left a big mark there and I expect to leave a big mark in the "Big Brother" house, too.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: I had questioned why he was doing it. Now I understand. Now, I understand perfectly. He's perfect for the "Big Brother" house. He's perfect for the show.

BERMAN: There's another piece of news in the house. Julie Chen Moonves, who is the host --

CAMEROTA: Yes. BERMAN: She introduced herself using her full name, Julie Chen Moonves. Of course her husband, Les Moonves, in so much trouble here. And all I was going to say is, there was more news, more things connected to news and the future of our country in that one episode than in any reality show ever except for every episode of "The Apprentice," obviously.

CAMEROTA: Let us know what you think about the Much's (ph) star turn.

Meanwhile, top Democrats link Martin Luther King's civil rights struggle to the fight against President Trump. One even calling him a, quote, "grand wizard." So we discuss that messaging strategy, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:40:51] CAMEROTA: Well, Democrats are already lining up for the chance to go head-to-head with President Trump in 2020. California Senator Kamala Harris becoming the latest to announce her bid for the White House. And she joins a growing field of candidates shaping up to be the most diverse in history.

Joining us now to discuss the field, we have Jess McIntosh, former director of communications outreach for the Hillary Clinton campaign and Joe Trippi, former campaign manager for Howard Dean.

Great to see both of you.

OK, so, Jess --

JOE TRIPPI, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Good to be with you.

CAMEROTA: Here's where -- here are the people who have announced their candidacy. We'll just put this up. There's also people who have announced exploratory committees. Not sure what the difference is. There are people who are on a listening tour. OK, they're listening. There's Cory Booker, who says that he'll be making his decision very soon. So things are getting exciting.

JESS MCINTOSH, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Very.

CAMEROTA: With Kamala Harris, as you know, already there is pushback from the progressive wing of the party because she was a prosecutor. Here is what one op-ed said. Time after time when progressives urged her to embrace criminal justice reform as a district attorney and then the state's attorney general, Ms. Harris opposed them or stayed silent. Most troubling, Ms. Harris fought tooth and nail to uphold wrongful convictions that had been secured through official misconduct that included evidence tampering, false testimony and the suppression of crucial information by prosecutors.

Are progressives about to cut off their nose to spite their face by finding something that they don't like about every one of these candidates?

MCINTOSH: I think some progressives are certainly going to spend their time doing that. I'm not one of those progressives. I want to take a hot second and celebrate the fact that the top three candidates right now, top three, are all women. Like, we get asked every week whether America is ready to have a woman president and it's just an irrelevant question right now. It is really clear that we belong in this fight. If we lose it, we lose. But women belong in the fight for 2020.

To get to Kamala's record, I'm glad people are starting this early. I know it's a bit of a nightmare, but it gives them the time to have these conversations. Lots of candidates have evolved since the '90s talking about criminal justice reform. I want to make very sure that we do not hold the women candidates to a different progressive purity standard than we hold the men, because that is something that occasionally our party finds themselves guilty of doing.

Of course there was a rebuttal in "The New York Times" about Kamala's progressive prosecutorial career. She has been out in front on a lot of criminal justice reform issues. And I think she's going to have the time to make that case to folks.

BERMAN: In this case, so far, it doesn't seem like the women are being held to a different standard. Joe Biden just gave a whole speech yesterday where he tried to explain away or talk about his role in the crime bill of 1994, and he's not in the race yet. So he thinks he is going to be held to account if he does get in that race.

Joe, I'm fascinated by the size of the field here, when you have so many potential candidates and so many potential candidates who may be on a somewhat equal plane here. How do you run? What's the right way to navigate waters that can be very complicated?

TRIPPI: Well, I mean, one, it's going to be very difficult for any of them to stand out. That's going to encourage some of them to take sort of more, you know, positions to get traction. You're starting to see that, you know, who can take on Trump the hardest, that kind of thing.

But, look, I think the fact is, all these candidates are going to get in. They're going to get hammered. This is going to be the largest field Democrats have had in history. I mean we haven't had -- I look at it, we haven't had a field like this, of this size, since the 1980s. '84 and '88. I mean that's how long it's been.

Republicans had that in 2016 and it produced Donald Trump. But to stand out, I think it's going to make Iowa and New Hampshire even more important. I know a lot of people in the business don't think that. They think they're going to be less important. I think, you know, it's going to be a long time before someone emerges from this field.

But the other thing that's going to happen is, they're all going to get hammered. They're all going to have big ups and downs. It's better to get some of them out of the way two years out, answer the questions, take them on, but there are going to be ups and downs. The only thing you don't want is to have one of them happen on -- on a -- when you take third in Iowa, and then you're kind of -- like with my boss, Howard Dean and us, we -- we had some --

BERMAN: OK.

[06:45:09] TRIPPI: That moment is a bad one. You don't want it to happen then. You want them to happen now.

BERMAN: So bad you're still talking about it, unprompted, 14 years later.

TRIPPI: Yes.

CAMEROTA: From where you sit, and I know, obviously, you were in a different camp than Bernie Sanders.

MCINTOSH: I was.

CAMEROTA: But Bernie Sanders is still debating whether or not to get in. Do you think that he should? Do you think he will?

MCINTOSH: I think he's -- he's obviously a voice within the party that -- well, he's not a Democrat, but he is a voice within the progressive movement that is certainly very interesting and galvanized a lot of people, which I think is important in 2016.

I hope if he does get in, he spends -- he's done his homework. And I hope that we see a staff that includes a lot of women and people of color in positions of power. He kind of continues to show this blind spot when he talks about issues of race and gender. And that really -- that's tripped him up a lot in the past and it very much undercuts this economic message that he's otherwise so strong on if he can't understand that those lenses play a really large, economic role in the realities of a lot of Americans.

So I was heartened when I read on CNN over the weekend that he was trying to put those issues front and center. He was in South Carolina. So if he does it again, and I think it could be good for a lot of folks to get excited if he did, I would hope that he had learned those lessons.

BERMAN: So it's interesting, you talk about Bernie Sanders and the issue of race because he talked about it in very strong terms yesterday. Let's listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (I), VERMONT: Today we talked about justice and today we talk about racism. And I must tell you it gives me no pleasure to tell you that we now have a president of the United States who is a racist.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: So he's used that type of language before, Joe. When you say it on Martin Luther King Junior Day, I think it holds a different weight. It was interesting to hear that from Bernie Sanders on the same day that Hakeem Jeffries, who is in the House leadership, not running for president though, called Donald Trump the grand wizard of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. This type of language here, is it appropriate? Is it effective?

TRIPPI: Well, look, Bernie Sanders got to where he is because he's so outspoken. I mean a lot -- he has a very loyal following. And I think this is what they like about him. You know, there are plenty of people who liked other candidates in this race, and we're going to have a big field, but this is why -- why Bernie Sanders is who he is, and why he has a following in the party. It wasn't big enough in 2016 to take the nomination away from Hillary Clinton, although these people that are still loyal to him will still dispute that.

But, in the end, I still think -- I mean just looking at it from my experience over the last couple of years here, I actually think the American people are looking for more -- somebody looking for -- trying to bring us together to find common ground. I think this kind of language may help you stand out in the Democratic primary. Not sure it's going to be what the American people want to turn to after Donald Trump.

CAMEROTA: Jess, I just need one beat on the Congressman Jeffries, why go there? Why say a "grand wizard"? What -- how does that help?

MCINTOSH: I try not to use language that will make the language become the story. When I think that the story ought to be the president's embracing of a white supremacist agenda, which is a very, very valid and important thing to be discussing right now and I think should be a part of any campaign against him in 2020. So I'm glad that folks are going there. I hope that we can keep it to the substance of why they are going here.

CAMEROTA: Thank you both very much. Jess, Joe, great to talk to you.

All right, there's record cold that is keeping much of the northeast in a deep freeze right now. What does the forecast look like? That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:52:59] BERMAN: All right, it's going to get warmer in the northeast today. We need it. This is after record breaking cold kept temperatures in the single digits for much of New England on Monday. Wow, that's Niagara Falls here. Look at that. Dramatic. Frozen. The cold bringing the rushing water to a halt in some places.

Let's get right to CNN meteorologist Chad Myers.

Chad, what's in store for today?

CHAD MYERS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Well, we do warm up a little bit today compared to yesterday, but much warmer tomorrow and Thursday. So there's some good news. Temperatures right now are just ridiculous for pets and people out there. Temperatures, wind chill factors somewhere around zero all across the northeast right now.

This weather's brought to you by Zantac, eat your way, treat your way.

So temperatures warm up again for tomorrow because of a warm air mass trying to come up. Even today, we'll get to 30, where yesterday New York City's high was 14. It's a warm front. There will be some warm air. There will be some rain. Maybe wash away some of that muck on the roadways. But then right behind it, the cold air rushes right back in again for your Friday. Snow only in the mountain areas this time. No snow for New York City. In fact, look at that, New York City on Thursday, a high of 53. By the weekend, though, back in the 30s.

Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: Chad, thank you very much for that.

All right, late night comics had some fun with President Trump last night, but they also took some jabs at Rudy Giuliani's collusion comments. Here are your late night laughs.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JIMMY KIMMEL, HOST, "JIMMY KIMMEL LIVE": We are here tonight to celebrate the midway mark of Donald Trump's first term in office, because, let's be honest, this is a man who is far too humble to celebrate himself. And --

SETH MEYERS, HOST, "LATE NIGHT WITH SETH MEYERS": The second meeting between North Korea Leader Kim Jong-un and President Trump will reportedly take place in Vietnam at the end of February, unless, of course, it's like the last time Trump was supposed to go to Vietnam. Yes, no. No, my doctor said it's a no go.

JIMMY FALLON, HOST, "THE TONIGHT SHOW WITH JIMMY FALLON": It was freezing outside here in New York. Hey, you've got to be careful out there. If you start feeling symptoms of confusion or memory loss, you're either suffering from hypothermia or you're Rudy Giuliani. So just be careful.

[06:55:06] STEPHEN COLBERT, HOST, "THE LATE SHOW WITH STEPHEN COLBERT": In an interview with "The New York Times," Giuliani quoted Trump as saying, the Trump Tower Moscow discussions were going on from the day I announced to the day I won. Mr. President, you need to talk to a better lawyer. Maybe Robert Mueller. I hear he knows a lot about your case already. He'll cut you a good deal.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: You know there's a problem with what -- an interview you did if Stephen Colbert is just reading it verbatim and that's the joke.

CAMEROTA: Like we did.

BERMAN: Exactly.

CAMEROTA: All right, meanwhile --

BERMAN: The Senate expected to take up President Trump's proposal today to end the government shutdown. Doesn't look like it has anywhere near the votes it needs to pass. We'll give you the latest, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He is holding the American people hostage over a vanity project that he calls a wall.

[07:00:00] UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He's offering a good deal and I think it's getting some traction.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Everybody knows that this proposal will not pass the Senate.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I feel betrayed by him. I'm a federal law enforcement officer not receiving