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Sources Say Chicago Police Believe Empire Actor Jussie Smollett Orchestrated Attack; Hate Crimes; U.S. and North Korea Discuss Exchanging Diplomats; Violent Protests Continue To Grip Haiti; Southern Baptist Convention President On Recent Abuse Findings. Aired 7:30-8a ET

Aired February 18, 2019 - 07:30   ET

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


(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:31:02] ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Was it a hate crime or a hoax? Law enforcement sources tell CNN the Chicago police now believe that "EMPIRE" actor Jussie Smollett paid two men to orchestrate an attack on him. Smollett's attorneys deny that the actor played any role in his own attack.

So joining us now to talk about of this is Charles Blow. He's an opinion columnist for "The New York Times". And, Brian Stelter. He's CNN's chief media correspondent. Great to have both you here now.

Brian, I remember in the hours right after this happened --

BRIAN STELTER, CNN CHIEF MEDIA CORRESPONDENT, ANCHOR, "RELIABLE SOURCES": Yes.

CAMEROTA: -- that CNN -- that our bosses were advising to pump the brakes a little bit because there were some things already that didn't add up. I was, frankly, surprised how many people jumped on board to side with Jussie Smollett before there were photos, before there were --

STELTER: Right.

CAMEROTA: -- police statements -- before all that stuff.

And so, how do you think this all -- what was the trajectory of how this went wrong?

STELTER: Yes, the headline was so sensational and so disturbing.

It first came out on TMZ, not only that Smollett said he'd been attacked but that the attacker said this is MAGA country. Obviously, Chicago at two in the morning is not MAGA country, so that didn't make sense in the first place. Lots of parts of this story didn't make sense.

But activists, actors, Hollywood celebrities, friends of Smollett, Democratic presidential candidates -- they all wanted to sound like they were doing the right thing, saying the right thing -- standing up for a victim.

There's an inherent tension in this story between wanting and needing to believe victims and yet, knowing that people could take advantage of that. Taking advantage of the idea that it's important to believe victims. And that tension has been this story for weeks.

There was a rush to judgment. I think it was mostly in the celebrity press and among activists and among Twitter people. I think it was really careful reporting by news organizations.

But it all gets lumped in together at the end of the day. It all gets lumped in together in the minds of many people who now look at this and say what went wrong here? And obviously, at the end of the day, what went wrong is that he may have made it up and ultimately, that's his responsibility.

JOHN AVLON, CNN ANCHOR: Ultimately, that's right.

But, Charles -- I mean, it's understandable in a context to take a victim's word at first, but there does need to be due diligence.

And I want to do two things here. I want to -- I want to put this against the larger context of hate crimes in this country because in 2017, I believe it is, over 7,000 hate crimes in the United States. That was up 17 percent compared to 2016. So, it's important to keep that in mind as we confront the possibility that this was a hoax.

And it's not the only hoax of this kind of nature we've seen. We saw the UVA reporting around what "Rolling Stone" did. Questions -- stories out of the Air Force Academy, St. Olaf College. So this is not undiscovered territory but it raises the question against the backdrop of this being a real problem in the country.

What's the psychology of a hate crime hoax? Why would somebody do that because it diminishes the real instances so much?

CHARLES BLOW, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR, OP-ED COLUMNIST, THE NEW YORK TIMES: Well, every -- right. I'm not a psychologist but I'll take a stab at this, though.

AVLON: Sure.

BLOW: I mean, I think that if he did this -- and people who do this sort of -- I mean, I think you do have to find a villain who your target audience would believe. And I think that in this case, if this is true, it was very believable that a gay man who could be gay bashed.

If you take the celebrity out of this and if you dig down into your hate crime numbers, it is even more stark among people who are queer in this country.

AVLON: Yes.

BLOW: They are more likely to be assaulted, both sexually and not sexually and by everybody, including authorities. And they don't have the platform. Many of them are estranged from

family. Many of them experience kind of housing insecurity and food insecurity. They just don't have the voice.

And so, the big concern for me is whether or not it impacts those genuine victims and their ability or their willingness to come forward and say something happened to me because very often, in cases of assault -- sexual and not -- there are no witnesses, there is no evidence to preserve.

And it is a question of character. And in this case, people were making a character judgment.

Jussie is very close to the character he plays on television. He is a musician, he is gay. He has -- in his personal life he has been involved in some very worthy kind of community actions, including most recently, trying to save a historically black women's college in the south -- Bennett College.

[07:35:15] He does that sort of thing. So if people were making a gut-level decision about is this a character who I believe, why would he -- the question of motive is still murky.

CAMEROTA: Yes, for sure.

STELTER: It's so confusing.

CAMEROTA: But, I mean, also the fact that they -- that the surveillance cameras haven't picked anything up and that place was lined with surveillance cameras. I mean, there were some things that aroused suspicion right away.

BLOW: Well, that -- right. That -- I think Brian made an important point about like the collision of healthy skepticism --

CAMEROTA: Yes.

BLOW: -- with the historical truth that people are not generally believed on the --

STELTER: And when it becomes Sinicism and when it becomes an excuse to ignore real crimes and real problems, then that's even worse.

CAMEROTA: Yes.

STELTER: This is a mystery still, though. Why would he do this if he did? What is the motive? That remains a mystery and the police say we just need to talk to him.

CAMEROTA: He sat down with Robin --

AVLON: Yes.

CAMEROTA: Roberts. I don't remember if it was last week --

STELTER: Yes, last week. CAMEROTA: Last week. And he -- you know, she pressed him on some of this. So watch this now.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JUSSIE SMOLLETT, ACTOR: Who the (bleep) could make something like this up or add something to it or whatever it may be? I can't -- I can't even -- I'm an advocate.

I'm pissed off.

ROBIN ROBERTS, ANCHOR, ABC "GOOD MORNING AMERICA": What is it that has you so angry? Is it the attackers? Is it --

SMOLLETT: It's the attackers, but it's also the attacks.

It feels like if I had said it was a Muslim or a Mexican or someone black -- I feel like the doubters would have supported me a lot much more -- a lot more. And that says a lot about the place that we are in our country right now.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: It's more uncomfortable to watch it now knowing all --

AVLON: Sure.

CAMEROTA: -- the questions that the Chicago police have gone public with now.

STELTER: Yes. I watched that last week viewing him as an activist. I view it now viewing him as an actor and wondering about whether acting is a part of this because it is if he did orchestrate this hoax.

You know, these two men who were in custody last week, they have cooperated. They have provided evidence to the police.

So it's now in his court and we do need to hear more of his side of the story. As of Saturday night, his lawyers were saying he is the victim of a hate crime, so he was not changing his tune.

AVLON: That's important to note.

STELTER: Yes.

AVLON: But, Charles, he also very quickly -- even in that interview -- is elevating it to an exemplar of a national conversation --

BLOW: Yes.

AVLON: -- saying this is about the ugliness of the national conversation. I'm the victim of that. And in that first performance back, I believe in West Hollywood, saying I'm going to come back from this.

So, by elevating it and making a national metaphor, what is he trying to communicate? If it's all the bottom of a hoax --

BLOW: Let me --

AVLON: Not that you can get inside his head, but he's the one raising this to a national element, which -- elevating it to a national conversation, which makes the possibility of it being a hoax that much more devastating.

BLOW: Well listen, if Jussie has done what the Chicago police say he has done, it's not just that he's an actor, Brian. This is an insane person. This is -- this is a psychopath -- like -- and there's nothing in his history that suggests that he's a psychopath.

CAMEROTA: Well, why --

BLOW: That's why it's so hard for everybody -- that's why people are waiting, trying to figure out like please go back and interview him Chicago P.D. --

AVLON: Yes, got to do it.

BLOW: -- because we need to understand what's the motive because nothing --

I've met him one time. He was the sweetest -- it was just in passing at Essence Fest and I was with a girl with a college -- she's a big fan. And he -- she had to have a picture. He was the most gracious person and I think that that's the kind of feeling that people have about him.

So if you did this, we need to know -- like, are you crazy? Like, are you -- did you like literally lose it because nothing is adding up about why he would do this?

AVLON: One thing's for certain. This story is not over yet.

CAMEROTA: Brian, Charles, thank you both --

STELTER: Thank you.

CAMEROTA: -- very much.

All right. A potential breakthrough in relations between the U.S. and North Korea. We have some exclusive details for you, next.

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[07:42:47] CAMEROTA: New this morning, CNN has exclusive details of a potential breakthrough in relations between the U.S. and North Korea ahead of the second Trump-Kim summit next week.

CNN's Michelle Kozinski is live in Washington with more. What have you learned, Michelle?

MICHELLE KOSINSKI, CNN SENIOR DIPLOMATIC CORRESPONDENT: Yes. Well, this has been a big question leading up this summit. What exactly is going to come out of it because North Korea has really made no moves towards real denuclearization other than saying that it wanted to, and there's so little confidence out there that North Korea will denuclearize anytime soon.

So where we are now is a stalemate. There has been lots of talking going on, especially since the last summit in Malaysia, but North Korea has been wanting the U.S. to make some kind of significant move before it did anything towards denuclearization.

So now, we're hearing from senior diplomatic sources that there are serious discussions going on to exchange diplomats between the two countries. This would be very, very preliminary, though. It wouldn't be a formal reestablishing of relations as we would normally expect to see between two countries that get along.

This would be an exchange of what's called liaison officers. So it would be several from each side going over and establishing an office in each other's countries. It would be several people on the U.S. side.

It would be led, for example, by a senior Foreign Service officer who would be fluent in Korean. So the establishment of a liaison office would be a very preliminary first step towards reestablishing relations, but this would be a big deal.

This was last discussed back in 1994 when there was another big attempt at getting North Korea to denuclearize. It went to the point that the U.S. actually signed a lease to rent space in the German mission in North Korea. This looked like it was going to happen but the following year, North Korea completely pulled the plug on it.

So this is something that is now being seriously discussed as an option to move something forward and could be announced at the summit in just a few days. Of course, a big question that remains is, is the U.S. requiring North Korea to show something or do something before this would happen -- John.

[07:45:08] AVLON: But still, a potentially small but significant step forward.

Thank you, Michelle.

Now, government officials in Haiti are calling for a return to normal after a week and a half of deadly riots put the country on the brink of a political crisis.

CNN's Sam Kiley live in Port-au-Prince with more.

SAM KILEY, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: John, it's first thing in the morning and there are no signs yet that the -- certainly, the pupil population of this country have answered the government's calls to go to school as normal.

This is a city, here in Port-au-Prince, but right across the country were really torn apart by nine days of very violent demonstrations calling for the resignation of both the president and the prime minister.

The prime minister here has moved in the last 48 hours to try to draw the sting from that process to try to say that they will move against corrupt officials. They will set up a government body to investigate and name those that they say are behind corruption and that was, in large part, what was behind these demonstrations.

But the opposition is beginning to lose momentum to some extent. Yesterday, they called for widespread demonstrations and that call wasn't answered. So there is I think at the moment after the government had deployed pretty much the whole police force -- 16,000 people right across the country.

And they've recently announced, John and Alisyn, a very weird element in this story that we're chasing down, which is that they claim to have arrested seven foreign nationals -- among them, five Americans who they allege -- this is the government -- may be part of some kind of conspiracy. A very strange aspect to that story. But again, something of a distraction from the real politics here -- Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: All right, Sam. Thank you for those developments. Come back to us when you hear any more.

Meanwhile, in just hours, President Trump will address the ongoing turmoil in Venezuela at a speech he gives in Miami. The U.S. has made it clear it recognizes Juan Guaido as interim president as pressure intensifies on embattled strongman Nicolas Maduro.

More than one million people in Venezuela have already made their way to Colombia. On Saturday, a wave of U.S. aid arrived at the border but Maduro resisted the international help.

Republican Sen. Marco Rubio visited the Venezuela-Colombia border on Sunday and he said the supplies will get in with or without Maduro's approval.

AVLON: British lawmakers are accusing Facebook of violating data privacy and competition laws. In a new report, a U.K. committee says documents reveal Facebook was quote "willing to override its users' privacy settings in order to transfer data to app developers. The report also rips into CEO Mark Zuckerberg for not appearing before Parliament.

For its part, Facebook says it does not breach data protection or competition laws. The company released a statement saying it quote "supports effective privacy legislation and is also open to meaningful legislation."

CAMEROTA: All right. Well, accusations of church sexual abuse go behind the Catholic Church. The allegations that have the head of the Southern Baptist Convention apologizing for quote "pure evil".

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[07:52:20] AVLON: A new revelation on the Catholic Church's sexual abuse epidemic. Over the weekend, the Vatican announced that one of the highest officials in America, former cardinal and Archbishop of Washington Theodore McCarrick, has been defrocked, just as the Diocese of Brooklyn publicly named 108 credibly accused living and deceased clergy members.

Now, Pope Francis is preparing for an unprecedented summit in Rome on Thursday to address the abuse crisis.

But this problem extends well beyond the Catholic Church. Earlier this month, two Texas newspapers revealed that more than 700 victims, most of them children, have accused more than 380 Southern Baptist leaders and volunteers of sexual misconduct since 1998. With about 15 million members, the Texas church is the largest protestant denomination in the United States.

And joining me now, exclusively in his first live interview since the scandal broke, is Pastor J.D. Greear. He is the president of the Southern Baptist Convention. Pastor Greear, thank you so much for joining us on NEW DAY.

When --

PASTOR J.D. GREEAR, PRESIDENT, SOUTHERN BAPTIST CONVENTION: John, thank you for having me.

AVLON: When you first read these stories in the "Houston Chronicle" what was your immediate visceral reaction?

GREEAR: Oh, it was one of absolute horror to think that this was happening in churches around the country. I mean, we've known that this has been an issue for decades. In fact, this past summer, the Southern Baptist Convention passed a resolution condemning abuse and calling churches to take this very seriously and take the precautions.

And so, I'd appointed a study group back in July of last year that was really going to study this issue from top to bottom to try to analyze like what are the -- what are the best practices? What are the places that we are missing the mark? How can we do better?

And so, this study group's been working for six or seven months on -- in fact, it was getting ready to issue a report on their findings tonight at a meeting of the executive committee of the Southern Baptist Convention. When this story came out a week or so ago it just made the urgency of this all that more pressing on us to be able to deal with this -- with this terrible and horrific problem in our churches.

AVLON: And, Pastor Greear, I mean, you described this out of the gate as pure evil, and reading through the specific instances there's really no other word for it. But because of the structure of your church, some of your predecessors have taken a more hands-off approach to this problem.

And I want to read you a quote from an affidavit by one your predecessors, Dr. Edwin Young, who said quote "I do not have an opinion as to the proper handling of any claims of sexual abuse by church members." But you have an opinion, correct? So what are you doing to do about it?

GREEAR: Yes, I mean -- so, the Baptist -- the Southern Baptist Convention is different than a lot of denominations in that it's not run from the top down. There's not an authority structure. We're a convention of churches that come together voluntarily and so that certainly affects how we approach a situation like this. But that cannot be used as a cover for a lack of accountability.

[07:55:11] Churches that show a wanton disregard of -- that allows abuse, that allows it to happen, that protects the abuser, they have no place in our Convention.

And so, we definitely have an opinion on this and that is that our churches because of the God that we believe in and that we worship ought to be safe places for the vulnerable and predators ought to have no place in our midst. And so -- I mean, if that means that we are going to disfellowship churches that show this wanton disregard or that show a criminal negligence when it comes to these issues, then that's what we're going to do.

Our goal here is not simply to meet the minimum requirements of what ethics and the law require. Our goal here is to put on display what we believe about God. That our God is a God who gave his life to protect the vulnerable, to save them, and certainly not to put them in a place where they could into harm's way.

Jesus -- John, Jesus said that it would be better for one of us to have a millstone tied around our neck and cast into the sea than for us to allow a little one who believed in him to stumble. And what would make them stumble more than the ones that they're hearing about God from to be people that also are allowing them to be in situations where they can experience some of the worst kinds of abuse ever known to mankind.

AVLON: Well, in some of the -- in some of the testimony people say that their faith was murdered by these predators.

But I want to press you on this point because you do have some powers kicking churches out of the larger Convention because there are 10 churches, according to the "Houston Chronicle's" report that welcomed pastors, ministers, and volunteers since 1998 who had previously faced charges of sexual misconduct. Some of them were registered sex offenders. And 35 offenders have been able to find jobs at churches over the past 20 years.

Not to just explain how that happened, but what are you going to do about in the specific cases of those individuals who are still working in churches and those churches that have welcomed them in?

GREEAR: Well, let me just be clear. I'm not the one who can kick them out. The messengers of the Southern Baptist Convention, they're the ones that can disfellowship churches.

What I'm going to do this evening is going to call for some enhanced language that shows that this is something that is out of -- I'm out of faith -- out of step with what we call the Baptist faith and message. Already, you know, it is -- it is clear in our governing documents that this kind of thing is reason for disfellowship.

But I'm just going to say that listen, this is not an excuse. It's not something we can hide behind, and we've just got to be very clear that this has absolutely no place in our convention. And I'm going to call on churches to take those steps and to say that we cannot allow a place for predators to move from church to church.

And churches that will not -- will not respect that -- churches that will not go along with what we believe on this have to be removed as a part of who we are, and that's what I'll be calling for.

AVLON: And do you have confidence that if you call for it, it will occur? Should those individuals with child sex abuse charges and convictions against them be removed by these churches? Do you have the power to do that?

GREEAR: I do -- yes, so I do have confidence because of the conversations I'm having -- the conversations I've had with the study group that's comprised of -- you know, people like Rachael Denhollander and Andrea Munford that I believe you would be aware of with -- she was the lead detective on the Larry Nasser case.

As they have just been dialoguing with Southern Baptist pastors and churches the readiness of Southern Baptist to deal with this issue because we know that it is so out of faith -- so out of character with the message that we have and with the God that worship.

AVLON: For sure.

GREEAR: And so I think there is certainly a willingness that this cannot happen because it is evil and it is something that should break our hearts and something that should make us wonder why we weren't paying more attention when these reports of abuse were coming through. You know, why we allowed things to happen that created, intentionally or unintentionally, safe spaces for abusers.

AVLON: Pastor Greear, a final question. I mean, we're living in a time where trust in all institutions are being eroded -- the church, our government.

And with Donald Trump -- President Trump being very popular among many of your members, exhibiting behavior that is contrary to many teachings, do you think that's become kind of a thin edge of the wedge where there's a disconnect between the actions of leadership and the professions of faith and the faithful?

GREEAR: Yes. I mean, certainly, we have to ask is the life that we're living and the message we're preaching line up. And that's really kind of behind what I'm driving for here.

I think there's a temptation here to try to blame this problem, John, on certain other things besides really where it ought to be, and that is that anytime you have places where predators can hide -- predators count on a sense of invulnerability and they like for groups to assume well, it could never happen to me.

And there's a temptation to look out at some of the group and say well, I don't agree with them politically or I don't believe what they believe and therefore, that's their problem, not ours.

END