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Harold Schultz Won't Say If He'll Sell Starbucks Stocks If Elected President; Ocasio-Cortez Highlights Flaws With Campaign Finance Laws; Dick Cheney's Doctor On Trump's Physical: "What Are They Hiding?"; DEA's Ray Donovan Talks El Chapo Arrest And Trial; It Appears A Deal To Avoid Shutdown Will Pass, Trump Expected to Sign. Aired 2:30-3p ET

Aired February 13, 2019 - 14:30   ET

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


[14:30:00] BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: First, just refresher course. What are the ethics laws of this in terms of being president?

WALTER SHAUB, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: First, there's no way to do this. There are laws that control setting up a blind trust. And if you take a bunch of publicly traded stock and stuff it into a blind trust, it's not blind, you know what you've put in there. The law provides for the trustee to send you a letter when they've sold it off. Then they know it's blind but they don't tell you what they've bought as a replacement asset.

So a blind trust won't work. And Starbucks is a publicly traded stock so it's one phone call and gone. If he holds too much of it, he can do a rule 144 transaction with the FEC's oversight. But it's not hard to sell a publicly traded stock. And if the past two years of the Trump administration have taught us one thing ,it's that I was right when I said the president needs to divest. And I hold that position for all future presidents, too.

BALDWIN: I was right when I said. Do you think the Trump era has totally changed -- the fact he hedged on that question, I don't know if -- do you think he would have in the pre-Trump era four years ago?

SHAUB: I think if he had done that four years ago it would have been a shocking news story. Now we've been numbed by two years of this is that it's bad to have a president doing that. But if the next president does it, it sets a precedent forever. It looks like maybe I've underestimated how much it set a precedent now. His words sounded almost exactly like some tweets the president issued on November 30, 2016 when he said he would have no conflict of interest with his assets. Well he has a conflict of interest.

BALDWIN: That's the danger there some of the Trump comparisons.

I have to ask you lastly about, you are up an other this crazy viral video of freshman Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's lightning round game where she's asking ethics experts like you some questions on money and politics. So here's a clip.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) REP. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ (D), NEW YORK: One last thing, Mr. Schaub. In relation to congressional oversight that we have, the limits that are placed on me, as a congresswoman, compared to the executive branch and compared to, say, the president of the United States, would you say that Congress has the same sort of standard of accountability? Are there -- is there more teeth in that regulation in Congress on the president or would you say it's about even or more so on the federal?

SHAUB: In terms of laws that apply to the president, yes, there's almost no laws at all that apply to the president.

OCASIO-CORTEZ: So I'm being held, and every person in this body, is being held to a higher ethical standard than the president of the United States?

SHAUB: That's right. Because there are some ethic committee rules that apply to you.

OCASIO-CORTEZ: And it's already super legal, as we've seen, for me to be a pretty bad guy. So it's even easier for the president of the United States to be one, I would assume?

SHAUB: That's right.

OCASIO-CORTEZ: Thank you very much.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: That's the end of the windup she does. So you have to watch the whole clip. But you were sitting there, what did you think of that?

SHAUB: You know, I've spent almost 15 years in my life trying to communicate with the public about government ethics and about why it matters. And in five minutes, she nailed it in a way that makes the public care and the public can understand. And I think that was absolutely a brilliant bit of communication of a very hard topic.

It was all I could do to not smile from ear to ear because I was so impressed with her. I was really impressed with two of the other freshmen, a Rashida Tlaib and Ayanna Pressley. They were so prepared and they got the nuances right in a way members of Congress generally don't. She put information within five minutes that's in the public's attention span. And I've watched that video a dozen times.

BALDWIN: It's an extraordinary piece of tape to take something so complicated and you get it.

Walter Shaub, thank you very much.

SHAUB: Thanks.

BALDWIN: It's only been a couple days but there are already questions about the president's annual physical. Dr. Sanjay Gupta will join me after Dick Cheney's cardiologist says something's not quite right about this.

[14:34:43] And breaking news involving a former U.S. service-member who has been missing for quite some time. Why she's now being accused of being a spy for Iran.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: It's been five days since the president's physical, and despite his doctor declaring Trump in very good health following his medical exam, the lack of detailed information is prompting some to kind of wonder. Vice President Dick Cheney's long-time cardiologist, Jonathan Reiner, tweeted this yesterday: "It has been four days since the president underwent his physical exam and still no data has been released. What are they hiding?"

Dr. Sanjay Gupta is our chief medical correspondent.

Sanjay, you were in front of the White House on Friday reporting about this physical. The White House released this brief statement saying the exam went well. Do you have similar questions on anything being hidden?

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, I think it's safe to say this, that probably the results -- the vast majority of the results are probably back. Some of the blood work may have been done at the White House residence so my guess is many of these results are back. When they'll release them is still an open question.

But a little context, Brooke. You remember last year he had the exam done on Friday. It wasn't until Tuesday when the results were released through the press conference, which was remarkable. But if you go back to President Obama's presidency, it could take a couple weeks. Sometimes you wouldn't know he had a physical exam, you would just get a one sheet. It's all over the map. There's no set protocol. But I think the results are probably back and, hopefully, they'll be forthcoming soon.

[14:40:42] BALDWIN: So what are the results you're most anticipating?

GUPTA: The thing I'm most focused on has to do with his heart. He has a common form of heart disease. There's a test known as a coronary calcium scan and I want to show you. He's had this test done a few times. Last time was last year and his score was 133. Let me tell you what those numbers mean, if I can through another graphic, because this is important.

Obviously, doctors were worried enough to order these tests. If you're getting into the 100 to 300 range, which is where the president is, there's a relatively high risk of having a heart attack over the next several years. So that's something doctors need to be mindful of and control those risk factors. You get over 300, and it's considered severe disease of the heart.

So this is something, I think, the area where they'll focus most of their attention on, what's going on with all the risk factors, cholesterol, how do things with regard to life-style feed into that. Diet, exercise, has he been following doctor's orders, Brooke, over the last year, or not?

BALDWIN: Let's go back to that. You were in the briefing room last year for that extraordinary Q&A with Trump's former physician, Dr. Ronnie Jackson. What did he say at the time about the president's health?

GUPTA: I had never seen a press conference like that. I've been doing this job a long time. That was an unusual event. I asked a few questions specifically around some of this, such as this one.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GUPTA: Just to be clear, Dr. Jackson, he is taking cholesterol- lowering medication? He has evidence of heart disease and he's borderline obese. Can you characterize that as excellent health?

DR. RONNY JACKSON, FORMER WHITE HOUSE PHYSICIANA: I mean, I think, based on his current cardiac study, his heart is very healthy. I think we're doing a decent job with his cholesterol. I would say his -- the dose of his cholesterol medicine is very low. He takes a very low dose of his cholesterol medicine. So we have a lot of room to increase that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GUPTA: In addition to increasing his cholesterol medication, they also said the president needed to lose 10 to 15 pounds, change his diet dramatically, lower carbs, lower fat, things a lot of people hear often when they go to the doctor, but more serious, if you have results, test results regarding your heart that do show evidence of disease and increased risk of heart attack. So these are recommendations everyone gets, but in his case, more serious recommendations.

BALDWIN: OK. Dr. Gupta, I know you're standing by for those results. Maybe we'll get them by the end of the week.

Thank you very much. Good to see you.

GUPTA: Thank you. You, too.

BALDWIN: In the meantime, Michael Cohen ditching testimony for a third time before he goes to prison. And now committee members aren't totally buying it. Is Cohen playing games? Is it strategy?

Plus, we'll talk live with one of the DEA agents who took down El Chapo. He'll reveal everything from safe houses to tunnels to laundry carts. Don't miss this conversation.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:48:08] BALDWIN: Republican Senator Ted Cruz says he knows how to get the $5 billion President Trump wants to build his wall. This is what Cruz tweeted, "Let's pass the El Chapo Act and make El Chapo pay to secure our border."

El Chapo is an infamous Mexican drug lord convicted on 10 federal charges in the U.S. Guilty on all counts. Cruz is pushing his bill to use $14 billion in El Chapo's property to pay for the wall.

Ray Donovan is a DEA special agent who helped lead this multi-agency effort to capture Joaquin Guzman, otherwise. known as El Chapo.

So congratulations. That everybody the right -- this is 25 years you have known of him, trying to capture him. He has alluded you for that long until just a few months ago. So let's start with, so many people have been watching much of this, but the shower cave, the laundry cart, the safe houses, the taxicab. Everything led to, finally, they find him. He's extradited to New York. You finally lay eyes on this guy.

RAY DONOVAN, SPECIAL AGENT, DEA: That's right.

BALDWIN: Please describe that.

DONOVAN: That's decades of pursuing him. All the different agencies, all of our partners, the agents and analysts that dedicated their lives in pursuing El Chapo finally culminated in that arrival from Mexico in Long Island, New York. It was a tremendous occasion for all of us.

BALDWIN: Did you look him in the eye?

DONOVAN: I did. Not at that point. Once he was driven downtown to Manhattan, I got a good look at him and it was really just the back of his head. I didn't see him until I sat in court across from him and he was staring at me. I was staring at him as well.

BALDWIN: So no words -- I'm sure you had words in your thought bubble you would like to say to him. But no words were exchanged between the two of you?

[14:50:03] DONOVAN: That's correct. No words at that point. At no point had I spoken with El Chapo.

BALDWIN: Was he emotional at any point?

DONOVAN: Yes, once he arrived into New York, into Long Island, you can tell his emotions got the best of him. He was outside of Mexico on U.S. soil. He no longer had control is what happened. In Mexico, he felt strong and powerful. And here he is in New York and that was it.

BALDWIN: That's when he knew.

DONOVAN: That's when he -- that's the realization set in and he realized that this was it. He was never going back to Mexico.

BALDWIN: Emotional as in tears from this man?

DONOVAN: Sure, his eyes got watery, but you could tell that it just kind of overwhelmed him.

BALDWIN: Wow. Guilty on all counts, life in prison. And you make the point he's not in Mexico. He's a famous escape artist, had all these helping him elude law enforcement. No longer. For those wondering, is there any chance? No?

DONOVAN: No. There's no chance. We just know his capability, his resources. He's a very important prisoner. There will be a lot of focus on him, his movements and what he does going forward.

BALDWIN: Watching in the courtroom, you were there for a number of different days, 200 hours of testimony, 56 witnesses, lots of law enforcement agents. There was the wife, there was the mistress. Was there a moment for you that you will never forget?

DONOVAN: There is. The opening when I first saw him face to face, as well as the last part of the trial when they were talking about heinous crimes that he committed personally to some of his victims.

BALDWIN: Were you concerned about security at any point during that trial?

DONOVAN: We were always concerned from the beginning to end. We're still concerned. Chapo has a lot of resources and people that support him. And for us in the government and all the various agencies, we had to consider that and take that seriously.

BALDWIN: Just describe to people what it was like that's so different --

(CROSSTALK)

DONOVAN: There were multiple layers of security just getting into the courtroom. The U.S. Marshals, court police there. We had to do that not only the safeguard El Chapo but all the jurors and the people that work there, the witnesses.

BALDWIN: The witnesses? The witnesses?

DONOVAN: Sure.

BALDWIN: Prosecutors estimate his assets are in the $14 billion range.

DONOVAN: That's right.

BALDWIN: Now, we watch a lot of TV. No money for the walls down in Mexico but you were telling me before he left his gold-plated machine guns and diamond-encrusted --

DONOVAN: That's right. El Chapo invested his money into land so that he can continue to cultivate poppy and develop that into heroin, so that's where a lot of his income went to. But certainly, over 40 years of career of selling drugs, he made hundreds of billions of dollars.

BALDWIN: Hundreds of billions of dollars.

DONOVAN: Correct.

BALDWIN: This is so huge.

DONOVAN: Right.

BALDWIN: Congratulations. I'm only half joking in saying when you catch Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, do you retire?

DONOVAN: No.

BALDWIN: What's your next move?

DONOVAN: Not at all. This is only the beginning. The Sinaloa Cartel is all over the United States. We have a lot more work to do.

BALDWIN: Ray Donovan, let me shake your hand.

Thank you very much.

DONOVAN: Thanks, Brooke.

BALDWIN: Thank you for coming by.

Now to this CNN report. The president is expected to sign the deal to avoid a shutdown. But with two days remaining, he remains non- committal on it. So we're asking the question why.

Plus, two presidential contenders separating themselves from the Democratic pack over policies many call a fantasy.

And Senator Bernie Sanders with a new plan to save Social Security. What he wants richer Americans to do.

[14:54:05] We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: Just into CNN, the students involved in that high-profile encounter while attending the March for Life rally in Washington have been exonerated. The diocese of Covington says an investigation found that the students of Covington Catholic High School in Kentucky did not instigate that whole incident. Investigators also concluded the students did not chant "build the wall" and never responded to the Black Hebrew Israelites with racist or offensive statements. Investigators say they didn't speak with the young man at the center of the whole things and that they made several attempts to contact the Native American elder who said he felt threatened but never got a response.

We are back. You're watching CNN. I'm Brooke Baldwin, in Washington.

It appears avoiding shutdown 2.0 is a done deal. We have a proposal that has the blessing of top Republicans and Democrats. We have a vote on that proposal set for tomorrow night in the House. One that Speaker Pelosi seems confident that will get her chamber's approval.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA), SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE: As with all compromises, I say to people support the bill for what is in it. Don't judge it for what is not in it.

We can't pass the bill until it's ready. And when it's ready, we'll be ready to pass it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: And the president says he doesn't want the government to close its doors for a second time.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We're in very good shape and we'll take a look at it when it comes. I don't want to see a shutdown. A shutdown would be a terrible thing.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: On the other hand, we have these comments from White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SARAH SANDERS, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: We want to see what the final piece of legislation looks like.