Return to Transcripts main page
Early Start with John Berman and Zoraida Sambolin
The White House Efforts To Defend The President's Emergency Declaration To Build A Border Wall Will Escalate Today; FBI Putting New Context Around Why He Says Rosenstein Offered To Record The President; Trump's Own Words Led The FBI To Launch Counter Intelligence And Obstruction Probes Into The President. Aired 4-4:30a ET
Aired February 18, 2019 - 04:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[04:00:00]
STEPHEN MILLER, SENIOR ADVISOR TO THE PRESIDENT, TRUMP ADMINISTRATION: You don't know what you don't know, you don't catch what you don't catch.
CHRISTINE ROMANS, HOST, CNN NEWS: The White House's effort to defend the president's emergency declaration to build a border wall, and efforts to block the move will escalate today.
ANDREW MCCABE, FORMER DEPUTY DIRECTOR, FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION: He said I never get searched when I go into the White House, I can easily wear a recording device, they wouldn't know it was there.
BORIS SANCHEZ, CORRESPONDENT, CNN: Plus the former number two at the FBI putting new context around why he says Rod Rosenstein offered to record the president. Andrew McCabe says the president's own words were the reason for the investigations launched against him.
ROMANS: American aid has arrived at the Venezuelan border, now begins the struggle to get it to people who need it. The president will address the crisis today.
SANCHEZ: And did an actor stage an attack that he claimed was orchestrated by Trump supporters? Police sources in Chicago say they believe he did. The latest on that confusing and bizarre saga ahead.
Good morning and welcome to a special President's Day edition of EARLY START, I'm Boris Sanchez in for Dave Briggs.
ROMANS: Nice to see you, nice to have you hear this - today, this week. I'm Christine Romans, it is Monday, February 18th, it is 4:00 a.m. in the East. Let's begin at the White House, the White House going all out in defense of President Trump's national emergency declaration.
It is the opening roar of what's sure to be a prolonged battle over funding for a border wall involving fights in the courts and Congress. Today the progressive group MoveOn is sponsoring hundreds of protests nationwide. They're aimed at stopping what (inaudible) calls Trump's dangerous and illegal power grab.
SANCHEZ: Mean time, California's attorney general is working with at least six other states on a law suit to try and stop the declaration. They say it's going to be filed imminently.
In a combative Sunday interview on Fox News, White House aid and immigration hawk Stephen Miller insisted the emergency is real. The host, Chris Wallace, pushed back with government statistics that show otherwise.
This was Miller's countermove.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MILLER: The problem with the statement that you're apprehending 80 or 90 percent of drugs at ports of entry, that's like saying you apprehend most contraband at TSA checkpoints at airports.
You apprehend the contraband there because that's where you have the people, that's where you have the screeners. I assure you if we had people of that same density and screeners of that same density across every single inch and mile of the southern border, you would have more drugs interdicted in those areas.
You don't know what you don't know, you don't catch what you don't catch.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
Miller also seemed to struggle to name a precedent for diverting billions of dollars on funding that Congress previously denied.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHRIS WALLACE, HOST, FOX NEWS: Can you name one case where a president has asked Congress for money, Congress has refused and the president has then invoked national powers to get the money anyway?
MILLER: Well this current situation -
WALLACE: Just yes or no, sir.
MILLER: The current situation pertains specifically to the military construction authority.
WALLACE: I'm just asking has there been a separate (ph) case where Congress asked for money for military construction, Congress said no and he then -
MILLER: Listen, the meaning of the statute, Chris, is clear on its own terms. If you don't like the statute or members of Congress don't like the statute, they should have changed it (ph) -
WALLACE: But you agree the answer is no, there hasn't been a single case like this?
MILLER: -- they should have changed it a long time ago. But the premise of your question is also false because Congress has appropriated (ph) money for construction of border barriers consistently.
This is part of a national security mission -
WALLACE: But it has never done this under a national emergency where - president -
MILLER: But we've declared - but we've declared national emergencies to promote democracy in Belarus, to promote democracy in Zimbabwe, to -
WALLACE: But it didn't involve taking money that Congress refused to appropriate.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROMANS: Under the emergency declaration, a major source of money to be siphoned for building the wall is the Defense Department. Over the weekend, acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan said he will begin looking for military projects that could be delayed or cancelled to free up funds.
Now all eyes are on the president's Republican allies in Congress. Many spoke out against the emergency declaration before the president signed. Now they'll have to turn around and defend it, promote bipartisan effort to stop it.
House Democrats already working on a resolution of disapproval.
SANCHEZ: Former FBI Chief Andrew McCabe says Trump's own words led the FBI to launch counter intelligence and obstruction probes into the president. The bureau's former acting director telling "60 Minutes" that FBI officials took note of the derogatory way the president had been speaking about the Russia probe.
He said they viewed that as an attempt to, quote, "publicly undermine the investigation".
ROMANS: McCabe said officials weighed a series of dubious events, many have been publicly reported including the president asking James Comey to drop the FBI investigation into Michael Flynn, the president publicly linking the Comey firing to the Russia probe and the president meeting in the Oval Office with Russian officials, telling them it relieved great pressure to fire Comey.
SANCHEZ: McCabe told CBS that Rosenstein was absolutely on board with launching investigations into the president. McCabe also added details to the claims that Rosenstein offered to wear a wire into the White House. Listen to this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) MCCABE: We talked about why the president had insisted on firing the director and whether or not he was thinking about the Russia investigation and did that impact his decision. And in the context of that conversation, the deputy attorney general offered to wear a wire into the White House.
[04:05:00}
He said I never get searched when I go into the White House, I could easily wear a recording device, they wouldn't know it was there.
Now he was not joking, he was absolutely serious and in fact he brought it up in the next meeting we had.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
As CNN has already reported, Rosenstein denies that he pursued any recording, and a source that was in the room for the conversation says that Rosenstein was being sarcastic. There's also this, Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham says that his panel is going to investigate McCabe's claim that Rosenstein raised the possibility of ousting the president through the 25th Amendment.
The Senator from South Carolina calls the statement, quote, "beyond stunning".
ROMANS: The Trump administration is looking for a new U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. The State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert pulling her name from consideration, before she joined the State Department in 2017, Nauert employed a nanny who was in the U.S. legally but was not legally allowed to work.
The Nanny was not paying taxes while she worked and when it became apparent in the past week this would be an issue, Nauert decided not to move forward. Administration officials believed they could get her through the controversy since the back taxes were paid, but Nauert ultimately agreed it was best to withdraw.
SANCHEZ: Disgraced former U.S. Congressman Anthony Weiner has been released from federal prison. He will serve out his time at a halfway house in Brooklyn. Weiner was sentenced back in 2017 for 21 months for sexting with a minor.
He served about 15 months in prison before his transfer, his sentence had already included time reduced for good behavior. The former congressman is set for a full release on May 14th.
He's going to be subject to three years of supervised released and he's also going to have to register as a sex offender.
ROMANS: The alleged hate crime attack against "Empire" actor Jussie Smollett is looking more and more like a hoax. Two law enforcement forces tell CNN Chicago police believe the actor paid two men to orchestrate an assault.
Smollett's attorneys deny that claim, but two brothers arrested last week were released two days later with police citing new evidence in the case. Here's Ryan Young in Chicago.
RYAN YOUNG, NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT, CNN: According to a source familiar with the investigation, we now know detectives have obtained and are examining the cell phones of the two brothers they suspect that Smollett paid to orchestrate the attack.
The source also tells us that the two men are now cooperating fully with law enforcement. In a statement to CNN Saturday, Smollett's attorneys wrote in part as a victim of a hate crime who has cooperated with the police investigation, Jussie Smollett is angered and devastated by the recent reports that the perpetrators are individuals he is familiar with.
He has now been further victimized by claims attributed to these alleged perpetrators that say Jussie played a role in his own attack. Nothing is further from the truth and anyone claiming otherwise is lying.
As a group of detectives continue to work the case, Chicago police did confirm to us that information received from the brothers has in fact shifted the trajectory of the investigation, adding that they have reached out to the actor's attorney to request a follow up interview.
They would not comment if they still considered the actor a victim at this point. Boris and Christine.
SANCHEZ: Ryan Young, thanks for that. Claims that Jussie Smollett may have orchestrated the attack has Democratic presidential hopefuls facing questions, many were quick to respond when it appeared that the actor may have been the victim of a hate crime.
Remember what Cory Booker said last week on the Senate floor?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. CORY BOOKER (D), N.J.: Less than two weeks ago an actor and activist was brutally attacked in Chicago. Two men yelling racial and homophobic epithets.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
On Sunday, though, Booker didn't have much to say about it.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BOOKER: Well the information is still coming out, I'm going to withhold until all the information actually comes out from on the record sources. I'm following this news as you are and we'll see what happens.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
We do have another programming note on the 2020 Democratic race, Amy Klobuchar is going to field questions tonight from New Hampshire voters and moderator Don Lemon at a CNN presidential town hall.
Don't miss it, that's tonight at 10 o'clock Eastern, only on CNN.
ROMANS: All right, nine minutes past the hour, hundreds of people attending vigils this weekend in Aurora, Illinois for the victims of a workplace shooting on Friday. Five people gunned down, including an intern on his first day, five police officers were injured.
A group of Aurora residents and supporters from nearby towns held a prayer service Sunday outside the manufacturing company where that shooting took place, then they carried crosses for the victims to the Aurora Police Department.
Police say the gunman, Gary Martin, brought a pistol to his termination meeting Friday. He worked at the company for 15 years, after learning he had been fired he opened fire on coworkers. He was killed by police.
SANCHEZ: Is he following in the steps of Colin Kaepernick? An 11 year old in Florida calls the Pledge of Allegiance racist and he has a fight with his teachers that escalates and now he is facing charges, details ahead.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[04:10:00]
ROMANS: All right, Amazon making record profits, but did not pay any federal income tax the past two years. Instead, Amazon received hundreds of millions of dollars in federal tax credits in 2017 and 2018.
How is that possible? Well even though Amazon is the third most valuable company in the world and earned a record $10 billion last year, it has piled up billions of dollars in losses over its two decade history, and the tax code allows money losing companies to reduce their future taxable income.
Amazon posted $3 billion worth of losses during its first eight years as a public company, it now has swung between profit and loss since 2003. Its most recent annual loss was $241 million, that was back in 2014.
And while Amazon's total earnings have exceeded its losses, some of its earnings came from sales outside the U.S. on which it paid either lower or no U.S. taxes. And last year, Amazon benefitted from an accelerated tax credit for equipment purchases, which was part of the corporate tax reform bill passed at the end of 2017.
[04:15:00]
Amazon declined to comment on its federal tax payments.
SANCHEZ: A Florida 6th grader is facing misdemeanor charges, and it all started after the 11 year old refused to cite the pledge of allegiance. The child attends Lawton Chiles Middle Academy in Lakeland, Florida. He told his teacher he did not want to stand for the pledge because he
thinks the flag and the national anthem are racist against black people. School officials say the situation escalated with the student yelling at the dean and a resource officer who came into the classroom.
ROMANS: According to the affidavit, the student accused them of being racist and refused to leave the room. Here's the child's mother.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DHAKIRA TALBOT, STUDENT'S MOTHER: I want the charges dropped and I want the school to be held accountable and the officer for what happened, because it shouldn't have been handled the way that it was handled.
My son has never been through anything like this and I feel like they should have handled this differently.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
Lakeland police are making it clear the student was not arrested for refusing to recite the pledge of allegiance, that was based on the 11 year old's choice to disrupt the classroom.
SANCHEZ: More Florida news, some work release inmates there putting their skill set to good use after a couple accidentally locked their baby inside their SUV. The couple told police they couldn't afford to hire a locksmith and were about to break the driver side window.
Before they did that, some of these low risk offenders, five of them and a sheriff's deputy supervising them, came to the rescue.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes, thank god, thank you so much, I appreciate.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thank you.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
You never know when those skills are going to come in handy. The baby was fine. Afterwards the sheriff joked that people can break into vehicles only when a deputy is around and we give permission.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (Inaudible) and everybody (ph).
(CROSS TALK)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Are you kidding me?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROMANS: Chaos rules the Daytona 500, NASCAR's opening - season opening and biggest event. The race was marked by a series of late wrecks, including the big one that took out 21 cars and caused a 25 minute delay to clean up the track.
The crash packed final stage forced the race into overtime. It was eventually won by Denny Hamlin, collecting his second Daytona victory in four years. Sunday's chaos resulted in the fewest number of cars finishing the Daytona 500 since 1985.
SANCHEZ: The winner of the NBA All-Star Game slash dunk fest, team Lebron for a second straight year. Lebron's squad beating Team Giannis, 178, 164 in Charlotte. Kevin Durant was named All-Star MVP.
As usual, there were plenty of All-Star highlights, very little defense, but perhaps none more spectacular than this bounce pass from Steph Curry to team captain Giannis Antetokounmpo that stole the show.
ROMANS: All right, President Trump admits he has discovered collusion, he has found collusion, and the guilty party is the cast of SNL. It all started Saturday Night when the show opened with Alec Baldwin as the president, predicting how his national emergency declaration will turn out.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ALEC BALDWIN, ACTOR: I'm basically taking military money so I can has wall. So I'm going to sign these papers for emergency and then I'll immediately be sued and the ruling will not go in my favor and then I end up in the Supreme Court and then I'll call my buddy Kavanaugh and I'll say it's time to repay the Donnie, and he'll say new phone, who this?
And then (ph) the Mueller report will be released, crumbling my house of cards and I can just plead insanity and do a few months in The Postal Factory (ph) and my personal hell of playing president will finally be over.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
All right so maybe that got under the president's skin, the next morning he tweeted "nothing funny about tired Saturday Night Live. How do the networks get away with these total Republican hit jobs without retribution? Very unfair and should be looked into, this is the real collusion."
Baldwin firing back with this, "Trump whines, the parade moves on, #resignalready".
SANCHEZ: You have to wonder what he means by retribution, that's a good question to ask. Who knows what he'd say. A bit more serious topic, more than 1,000 ISIS fighters with $200 million in cash, even if the group is defeated in Syria, significant resources have poured into Western Iraq. More on that next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[04:20:00] SANCHEZ: In just a few hours, President Trump speaks at Florida International University about the ongoing turmoil in Venezuela. The U.S. has made it clear it recognizes Juan Guaido as interim president as pressure intensifies on embattled leader Nicolas Maduro.
More than a million people in Venezuela have already made their way to Columbia and this border town is feeling the strain. People are in desperate need of medical care and more.
ROMANS: On Saturday, a wave of U.S. aid arrived at the border, but Maduro resisted the international help. Republican U.S. Senator Marco Rubio visited the Venezuela Columbia border Sunday.
He said supplies would get in with or without Maduro's approval.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. MARCO RUBIO (R), FLORIDA: Well look, the aid is going to get through, and I think ultimately the question is whether it gets through in a way that he's cooperative with or in a way that he's not. But there's not way you're going to stand ultimately in the way of a people who's children are starving to death, who's families are dying in hospitals because of preventable diseases and they don't have the medicine for it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CNN's Nick Valencia has the latest from Miami.
NICK VALENCIA, CORRESPONDENT, CNN NEWS: Boris and Christine, U.S. officials say that this humanitarian aid is coming at the most critical time, a time when children in Venezuela are starving, children who don't have to, hospitals are struggling to stay open and according to the administrator for USAID Mark Green, this is now a regional crisis and it's become one of the largest displacements of people in the history of Latin America.
[04:25:00]
However, there is some concern now that the U.S. is involved in this crisis, that it could provoke an already unpredictable Venezuelan President in Nicolas Maduro to do something very drastic. It's something I posed to the State Department's Julie Chung who helped lead this mission.
JULIE CHUNG, PRINCIPAL DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY: If anyone's politicizing the crisis, it's Maduro. We are doing as - addressing the basic needs, the basic humanity needs that all the crisis is creating in Venezuela. So the whole world is watching, but not only watching. The whole world is going to act, and it's up to Maduro and his regime - and his illegitimate regime to really let the aid in.
VALENCIA: When and how this aid gets delivered will ultimately be left up to the Venezuelan military. Now, I spoke to a representative from interim president, Juan Guaido's government, who said that they believe that the Venezuelan military will do the right thing, the moral thing, and allow this aid in. They say those military families are affected by this crisis as well. Boris, Christine -
SANCHEZ: Thanks for that, Nick. The push to overturn President Trump's national emergency begins in earnest today. How Congress and the courts could try to stop the border wall.
ROMANS: And riveting details from the former FBI Deputy Director. How the president's own words prompted investigations and why Rod Rosenstein offered to wear a wire to the White House.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[04:30:00]
