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Early Start with John Berman and Zoraida Sambolin
Beto O'Rourke Enters Presidential Race 2020; Huge Winter Storm Slams Rockies; FAA Grounds All Boeing 737 MAX Planes; British Parliament Rejects No Deal Brexit; Aired 4-4:30a ET
Aired March 14, 2019 - 04:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[04:00:18] DAVE BRIGGS, CNN ANCHOR: Ready to run. Beto O'Rourke about to throw his hat into the 2020 race.
JESSICA DEAN, CNN ANCHOR: A bomb cyclone makes a big mess of the Rockies. The system is now moving to the east. A messy week in store.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Hopefully they'll very quickly come up with the answer. But until they do, the planes are grounded.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BRIGGS: Concerning similarities found in data on two separate plane crashes. The U.S. now grounding the Boeing Max 8 after days of resisting.
DEAN: And the Republican Senate poised to rebuke the president on his national emergency. A last-minute compromise effort on presidential powers falls apart.
Good morning to you. Welcome to EARLY START. I'm Jessica Dean.
BRIGGS: Good to see you.
DEAN: Hi.
BRIGGS: That is a crucial vote on Capitol Hill. And I'm Dave Briggs. It is Thursday, March 14th, 4:00 a.m. in the East or almost Friday.
We start with the 2020 field expanding this morning. Beto O'Rourke ready to run. The former Texas congressman in Iowa for three days of events and he already confirmed he is entering the race for president.
In a text message to CNN affiliate KTSM in El Paso, O'Rourke telling the station, "I'm really proud of what El Paso did and what El Paso represents. It's a big part of why I'm running." Before that, O'Rourke told "Vanity Fair," quote, "You can probably tell that I want to run. I do. I think I'll be good at it. This is the fight of our lives, not the fight of my political life." Kind of crap. "I want to be in it, man. I'm just born to be in it." Sounds like Springsteen there almost.
(LAUGHTER)
DEAN: Yes. O'Rourke is a red-state Democrat. He lost a tight race to Senator Ted Cruz in November but that election launched him into the national spotlight. He raised a whopping $80 million, shattering previous Senate records. 44 percent of that money came from out of state. O'Rourke joins a primary field of more than a dozen Democratic candidates and he says there is an overrepresentation of white men in government and he will have a campaign and eventual administration that reflects the nation's diversity.
BRIGGS: A ferocious so-called bomb cyclone leaving behind a major mess on the Rockies and plains this morning. About 1100 motorists stranded in Colorado. One official saying the heavy snow driven by hurricane force winds had emergency personnel in, quote, "full saving lives" mode. Conditions so severe officers were forced to abandon their vehicles and take shelter instead of responding to many accidents.
DEAN: In Weld County, north of Denver, State Patrol Corporal Daniel Groves was hit and killed by a car while assisting a driver whose car slid off the interstate. Near Wellington in northern Colorado, the blizzard triggered this huge 100-car pile-up on I-25.
Denver International Airport providing blankets to hundreds of passengers stranded when all the runways were closed due to low visibility.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm trying to get to the hotel downtown and I can't get an Uber, so it's pretty difficult.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We have a hotel but we can't get there because of the blizzard. So we're just going to camp down here.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We ended up waiting three hours. And then finally, we came back and now we're waiting for our baggage, but it's still on the plane so we can't really get it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BRIGGS: Overnight four of the six runways were reopened. In weather, though -- this is a tough question. Who rescues the rescuers? Well, the answer in Parker, Colorado, was firefighters who freed this police vehicle that got stuck.
Over in New Mexico, high winds helped derail a 26 car freight train near the town of Logan. Amazingly no injuries were reported there. The storm is heading east, expect a messy rest of the week.
Here's meteorologist Derek Van Dam.
DEREK VAN DAM, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Good morning, Jessica and Dave. This bomb cyclone has it all, from a full-on blizzard across the northern and central plains with a flood threat across the Great Lakes and windy conditions throughout the Ohio and Mississippi River Valley. This storm system has covered all the potential weather hazards one could imagine.
Now you can see just how expansive it is on our satellite imagery. Looks like someone placed a hurricane right in the middle of the central U.S. And look at these winds. They totaled over 100 miles per hour in parts of Texas with gusts in the 90-mile-per-hour range across northeastern Colorado.
The storm system continues to move east where we get a lot of warm air drifting in from the south and that's going to fire off a few severe thunderstorms later today. Some of which could produce isolated tornadoes. Indianapolis, Nashville, all the way to Huntsville, keep an eye to the sky. 55 in the big apple today, 72 for the nation's capital. 62 for Chicago.
[04:05:05] The seven-day forecast shows a cool-down for the big apple next week.
Back to you.
DEAN: Derek, thanks.
A sudden reversal by the Trump administration ordering the immediate grounding of all Boeing 737 MAX planes while information is gathered about the crash of an Ethiopian Airlines jet.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: We didn't have to make this decision today. We could have delayed it. We maybe didn't have to make it at all but I felt -- I felt it was important, both psychologically and in a lot of other ways.
Boeing is an incredible company. They are working very, very hard right now and hopefully they'll very quickly come up with the answer. But until they do, the planes are grounded.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DEAN: The decision affecting thousands of travelers all across the U.S. There were long lines at airports Wednesday as people scrambled to find new flights. The president says new information concerning that Ethiopian crash led to the grounding of the MAX 8 and MAX 9 aircrafts. That includes disturbing similarities between two deadly crashes in the last five months.
We get more now from CNN's Martin Savidge at Hartsfield, Jackson, airport in Atlanta.
MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Dave. Good morning, Jessica.
The FAA had been under increasing pressure, especially after nation after nation had begun grounding the MAX 8 aircraft. And it was increasingly clear that the United States was finding itself more and more isolated in its decision to allow the aircraft to continue to fly.
Now we've been getting clarification from the FAA as to what exactly went into this abrupt about-face and now they are saying the agency made this decision as a result of the data gathering process and new evidence collected at the site and analyzed. And they also say that this evidence, together with newly-refined satellite data available to the FAA, led to the decision.
We don't know what the new evidence was that was gathered at the crash site in Ethiopia, but we do know that new satellite data because the Canadians referred to it as well when they grounded the aircraft. And it's essentially, they took the trajectory of the Ethiopian Airliner that crashed on the weekend and matched it up against the trajectory of the Lion Air flight that crashed in October, and they found a disturbing number of similarities.
The FAA says that combined with some other information they received was what led to them saying, finally, that the aircraft should be grounded while the investigation continues -- Dave and Jessica.
BRIGGS: Martin Savidge, thanks.
Boeing's MAX 8 issue is having an effect on Wall Street as well. The crisis has wiped down more than $25 billion off of Boeing's market value. The company's stock immediately fell after President Trump announced the U.S. was grounding the MAX 8 and 9 planes. Shares ended up, though, up just under 0.5 percent, but the stock is still down 10 percent since Sunday's crash.
Estimates show grounding the planes for three months could cost Boeing between $1 billion and $5 billion. Shares of the airlines using the planes -- American, Southwest and United -- briefly dipped on the news and quickly rebounded. It is possible Boeing will compensate the three carriers for lost revenue. The company has a history of paying airlines if planes they are grounded because of safety orders. It did so after grounding the 787 Dreamliner jet in 2013.
Soon travel Web site Kayak will allow flyers to filter by plane model. That includes this 737 jet. The Web site already allows travelers to sort by plane type, but it hasn't been possible to search and filter by a specific model before now.
DEAN: Paul Manafort facing 7 1/2 years behind bars and a new set of criminal charges. President Trump's former campaign chairman appearing at his second sentencing in as many weeks. He apologized for his actions and asked for leniency so he could take care of his wife, but the judge made him pay for his public posturing and his crimes.
Judge Amy Berman Jackson ordering Manafort to serve an additional 43 months on federal conspiracy and obstruction charges. That's on top of the 47-month sentence he already received in Virginia for financial crimes. BRIGGS: With credit for time served and good behavior, Manafort could
be released in about six years. Even after the judge criticized the defense for arguing there was no collusion, Manafort's lawyer said this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KEVIN DOWNING, PAUL MANAFORT'S ATTORNEY: Judge Jackson conceded that there was absolutely no evidence of any Russian collusion in this case. So that makes two courts --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Manafort is a traitor.
DOWNING: Two courts --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He's a traitor.
DOWNING: Have ruled no evidence --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Traitor.
DOWNING: -- of any collusion with any Russian.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Liar.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BRIGGS: Credit the heckler there. Moments after the hearing adjourned, the Manhattan district attorney unveiled a new case against Manafort alleging business and mortgage fraud offenses that violate New York state law. President Trump cannot pardon him on those charges.
DEAN: The Senate is poised to rebuke President Trump over his national emergency declaration on the southern border.
[04:10:03] Utah Senator Mike Lee was leading a compromise attempt among Senate Republicans but announced that effort was dead after hearing directly from the president that his compromise was not acceptable. The deal would have curtailed presidential emergency powers going forward.
BRIGGS: Lee is one of five Republicans to publicly say he will vote against the national emergency declaration. The number, though, could end up higher, but the Senate would still need two-thirds to overturn Trump's promised veto. It would be the second rebuke in as many days from the Republican-led Senate which voted Wednesday to curtail U.S. military support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen.
DEAN: So the measure now goes to the House and the vote marks the disapproval of Trump's Mideast policies, including his support for Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman who has been implicated in the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi..
The college admissions scandal renewing claims rich students get elite spots over more deserving students. Overnight one college saying it's ready to turn away students linked to cheating.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[04:15:07] DEAN: New fallout from the college admissions scandal. The University of Southern California announcing all applicants linked to the cheating scheme will be denied admission and a case by case review will be conducted for students who are already enrolled.
BRIGGS: One of those students is the daughter of Lori Loughlin. The actress and her husband designer Mossimo Giannulli are charged with felony conspiracy to commit mail fraud. Loughlin appearing in federal court in Los Angeles after turning herself in. Judge Steve Kim setting bond at $1 million. Federal prosecutors described a corrupt exchange of wealth, fame and influence for student admissions to the nation's most elite universities.
DEAN: The man who allegedly took admission tests for students or replaced their answers with his own to boost their scores says he's, quote, "profoundly sorry." Mark Riddell is now charged with conspiracy. He says he understands how his actions contributed to a loss of trust in the college admissions process.
This case is renewing concerns among parents and students that those who play by the rules are losing precious seats at elite universities to unqualified students from families with money and influence.
BRIGGS: New this morning, New York City Police investigating the fatal shooting of a high-ranking member of the Gambino crime family, Frank Cali. Police say officers responded to a 911 call Wednesday night at Cali's home on Staten Island. They found the 53-year-old with multiple gunshot wounds. Law enforcement officials say Cali was believed to be the acting boss of the Gambino family. Police have made no arrests so far.
DEAN: A body found on the side of the road in North Carolina has been identified as a missing mother. It's not the first time her husband has been widowed. Authorities say all signs point to foul play in Diana Alejandra Keel's death. A homicide investigation has now been launched. Keel's husband Lynn was questioned and released this week. And according to CNN affiliate WRAL, Lynn Keel's previous wife, Elizabeth, also died at the same home in January 2006. At the time of her death it was ruled an accident but expect that case to get a second look.
BRIGGS: March Madness is in full swing.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Rejected by Woolridge. At the buzzer. Got it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BRIGGS: Ryan Woolridge of North Texas locks the shot, beats the buzzer from a heave, from the opposite free-throw line. See it again. Unreal. First round of Conference USA Tournament there, North Texas beats Florida International 71-57. That is quite a heave by Woolridge. One he will not forget.
(LAUGHTER)
DEAN: Yes. Well, a partial worldwide outage for Facebook now in its second day. Facebook forced to turn to Twitter to keep users updated. Reports now emerging of a criminal investigation of the social network.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[04:22:31] DEAN: British lawmakers say a new deal Brexit is a no go. Parliament decisively rejecting the idea of leaving the European Union without a proper withdrawal. The U.K. is supposed to leave in 15 days.
We get the latest now from CNN's Hadas Gold who's live at 10 Downing Street in London.
Good morning, Hadas.
HADAS GOLD, CNN MONEY, POLITICS, MEDIA AND BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Jessica. Well, last night was a rather chaotic night in parliament here, but ultimately what the members voted for was telling their government they don't want to leave the European Union without a deal in place. However that is the legal default. So no matter how they voted last night is just considered to have been an advisory vote.
And right now the default is still March 29th. In two weeks the U.K. will crash out of the European Union because the members of parliament cannot agree to Theresa May's Brexit deal that she negotiated with the European Union.
What happens is tonight there will be another vote. Theresa May is going to put forward to the House of Commons a vote asking them to agree to vote to possibly once again to her withdrawal agreement so that then she can ask for an extension from the European Union. Ultimately it seems likely that there will be some sort of extension asked for from the European Union.
The question of course is whether the European Union will agree to it because they want the U.K. to come to them with some sort of reason why they're extending it because as of right now there does not seem to be a consensus in parliament on what sort of deal will move this forward.
We have to keep in mind, though, how this actually affects real people. Within two weeks if the U.K. crashes out, there could be lines at the border, trucks being held up, there could be medicine and food shortages, and U.K. citizens living in the European Union will be affected. They could lose things like their health insurance and as of right now we still have no idea how this is going forward, but tonight we might hear if there will be potentially an ask for an extension -- Jessica.
DEAN: Wow. All right, Hadas. Thanks so much.
BRIGGS: All right. No end in sight to the global outages plaguing Facebook. Analysts believe it could be the biggest interruption ever experienced by the social network and its apps including Instagram. Partial outages affect users in the U.S., Central and South America, Europe and Asia. Facebook forced to turn to its rival Twitter to explain that its collection of wildly popular apps are having issues.
DEAN: Also breaking overnight the "New York Times" reporting Facebook is under criminal investigation over its data sharing deals. The company had data sharing arrangements with more than 150 companies and its partners were able to access user data without getting consent. A Facebook spokesperson tells CNN Business the company is cooperating with investigators.
BRIGGS: With Facebook and Instagram out, yesterday must have been the most productive day for Americans in years.
DEAN: I know -- you actually had to do work.
[04:25:05] BRIGGS: Or God forbid read a book.
DEAN: Something, talk to somebody.
BRIGGS: Yes.
DEAN: Right. Right.
BRIGGS: Maybe talked to somebody.
All right. Ahead Beto O'Rourke ready to run for president. He is in Iowa for three days of events, but can he recapture that energy from the midterms and what does it all mean for the Democratic field?
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
DEAN: Ready to run. Beto O'Rourke is about to throw his hat into the 2020 race.
BRIGGS: A bomb cyclone makes a big mess of the Rockies. The system moving east. A messy rest of the week in store.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: Hopefully they will very quickly come up with the answer. But until they do, the planes are grounded.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DEAN: Concerning similarities found in data on two separate plane crashes. The U.S. now grounding all Boeing 737 MAX planes.
BRIGGS: And the Republican Senate poised to rebuke the president on his national emergency.
