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Early Start with John Berman and Zoraida Sambolin
Democrats At a Turning Point on Mueller Report; DOJ Urges Court to End All of Obamacare; Avenatti Charged in $20 Million Plot; Duke Settles for $112 Million Over Fake Science; Apple Unveils Its Venture Into Streaming Video. Aired 4:30-5a ET
Aired March 26, 2019 - 04:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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[04:31:15] MANU RAJU, CNN SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Speaker Pelosi, are you ready to say that there was no collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia in light of the Mueller finding?
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DAVE BRIGGS, CNN ANCHOR: Democrats facing a hard choice post-Mueller report, keep investigating Trump, focus on their agenda, can they do both?
CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: The president promised to protect people with pre-existing conditions, but the Justice Department says otherwise, now backing a full repeal of Obamacare.
BRIGGS: A $20 million extortion plot, serious charges against the lawyer who helped expose the hush money payments from Donald Trump.
ROMANS: And Duke University used fake science to get real federal money and now the school is paying up.
Welcome back to EARLY START. I'm Christine Romans.
BRIGGS: I'm Dave Briggs, 4:31 Eastern Time.
So now that the Mueller report is out, they can get back to governing and uniting the country by ripping out health care for millions of Americans. Breaking overnight, a major reversal by the Trump administration on Obamacare.
In a Monday court filing, the administration said the entire Affordable Care Act, all of it, should be struck down. The Justice Department says it now agrees with the federal judge in Texas who invalidated the ACA in a December ruling. At the time, the administration said that it would not defend certain Obamacare provisions including pre-existing condition protections covering 52 million Americans, but it argued the rest of the law could stand.
ROMANS: The president has repeatedly promised to protect people with pre-existing conditions, but today, his administration doubling down, wants to strip away those and all other protections. The case is currently before a federal appeals court. Constant questions about the future of Obamacare did not hurt signups too much for 2019, 11.4 million Americans signed last year, down 300,000 from the year before.
BRIGGS: Democrats at a critical juncture this morning after President Trump is effectively cleared by special counsel on collusion. For 22 months, many Democrats all but guaranteed Mueller would find the president or his campaign had conspired with Russians. When he did not, even Nancy Pelosi was caught short.
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RAJU: Speaker Pelosi, are you ready to say that there was no collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia in light of the Mueller finding?
REPORTER: Does this exonerate the president?
REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA), SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE: I think that the Mueller report was clear. The president is not exonerated.
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ROMANS: Not exonerated. The speaker is right. Mueller said he did not exonerate the president on obstruction of justice. Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani complained about that to our Chris Cuomo.
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RUDY GIULIANI, PRESIDENT TRUMP'S ATTORNEY: This was a cheap shot.
CHRIS CUOMO, CNN HOST, "CUOMO PRIME TIME": Then I don't know why Mueller said it.
GIULIANI: It was a cheap shot.
CUOMO: He either makes a decision to prosecute or not.
GIULIANI: For a prosecutor, this is unprofessional. If people get prosecuted for what they're thinking -- if somebody says oh, I think I'm going to -- I might want to kill that guy because he was mean to me --
CUOMO: But doesn't he need formulation of intent?
GIULIANI: No. That's what he says --
CUOMO: Corrupt intent?
GIULIANI: No. That's why he says there is no obstructive conduct.
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BRIGGS: While everyone haggles over obstruction, Democrats are still not ready to conclude that there was no Russia conspiracy. They say they will continue to investigate ties between the campaign and Russians, but that strategy risks a political backlash if voters think Democrats are grasping for evidence where Mueller already investigated.
It's a point 2020 hopeful Elizabeth Warren made last night.
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SEN. ELIZABETH WARREN (D-MA), 2020 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I spent the last couple of days in New Hampshire. I did a bunch of big public events.
Altogether over the weekend, I got maybe 100 questions. And do you know the number that were about the Mueller report? Zero, because what people were talking about -- what they're asking about are the things that touch their lives every day.
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[04:35:04] ROMANS: Speaker Pelosi already moving past Mueller, telling her leadership team House Democrats should focus on their agenda, their message, not Russia interference. Still, the calls to release the full Mueller report are growing louder by the hour. Even the president seems OK with it.
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DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: It's up to the attorney general, but it wouldn't bother me at all. Up to the attorney general. Wouldn't bother me at all.
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BRIGGS: On the Senate side, Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell blocked efforts by Democrats to make Mueller's report public. McConnell saying Attorney General Bill Barr should not be rushed as he reviews the report to determine how much to release. A CNN poll conducted by SSRS finds 87 percent of Americans across party lines believe Mueller's team should produce a full public report of their findings. Even the president is seeming to back Mueller with a major about-face in his rhetoric.
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REPORTER: Did Robert Mueller act honorably?
TRUMP: Yes, he did. Yes, he did.
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ROMANS: He acted honorably.
We will hear publicly from Attorney General Barr on April 9th. He is set to testify before a House committee on the DOJ budget, but expect a lot of questions about Mueller and his report. BRIGGS: Some Republicans are calling on House Intel Chairman Adam
Schiff to resign in the wake of Mueller's findings. Schiff has been outspoken for two years about alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.
Kellyanne Conway says he should step down for, quote, peddling lies. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy is calling on Schiff to step aside from his chairmanship and apologize to the American people. But the chairman is standing firm.
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RAJU: Will you drop your investigation into Russian interference now that this exhaustive investigation is over and that the conclusion is that there was no Trump/Russia conspiracy?
REP. ADAM SCHIFF (D-CA), CHAIRMAN, HOUSE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE: Our investigation has focused on counterintelligence issues, that is the president or anyone around him compromised in some way. That work has to go on. We have yet to be briefed on the counterintelligence findings of Bob Mueller. That was not a part of his memo or report and certainly not mentioned even at all by Attorney General Barr.
As you know, this began as a counterintelligence investigation not only by the FBI, but by our committee as well. Those issues go to whether people are acting as an agent of a foreign power either wittingly or unwittingly. We need to look at the financial issues, was the president driven during this campaign and to this day by financial interests, and consummating a lucrative real estate deal, Moscow Trump Tower, or for any other illicit purpose. That work has to go on. And we're committed to doing our oversight until we get answers.
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BRIGGS: Schiff says he accepts Mueller's prosecutorial decision, but stresses there is a big difference between whether there was evidence of collusion and being able to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt.
ROMANS: All right. Pilots may have had less than a minute to override a system suspected of failing in at least one crash of the Boeing 737 MAX. "The New York Times" spoke to two unnamed pilots who recently conducted flight simulations. The point was to recreate a crisis situation similar to what investigators suspect went wrong on the doomed Lion Air flight last October. Now, they discovered, those pilots discovered they had less than 40 seconds to override the automated system on Boeing's new jets and avoid disaster.
BRIGGS: The pilots reportedly did not fully understand just how powerful the system was until they flew the plane on a 737 MAX simulator. The MCAS system is the focus of the investigations into the Lion Air disaster and the Ethiopian Airlines crash this month. Boeing expected to propose a software update that would give pilots more control over the system.
ROMANS: Duke University agreeing to pay a $112 million settlement to the U.S. government after it was accused of falsifying scientific data to win federal research grants. The school allegedly submitted bogus data to the National Institutes of Health and EPA from 2006 to 2018. A former Duke employee who filed a whistle blower suit against Duke will receive nearly $34 million as part of that settlement. The university president says, quote, we expect Duke researchers to adhere always to the highest standards of integrity. When individuals fail to uphold those standards, we must accept responsibility.
BRIGGS: A federal ban on bump stocks begins today. The devices enable semiautomatic rifles to fire continue police like machine guns. Bump stocks came under scrutiny after the Las Vegas massacre in 2017 when a gunman killed 58 people and wounded hundreds more.
After the shooting, President Trump vowed to outlaw bump stocks. The Justice Department calling on bump stock owners to destroy the devices or turn them into an ATF field office.
[04:40:01] ROMANS: The Green New Deal backed by many Democrats is expected to be blocked in the Senate today by Democrats. They believe Republicans are trying to score political points by having a quick vote. Mitch McConnell says he is pushing for a vote to put the opposition on the record, but Democrats plan to counter McConnell by voting present instead of for or against the deal. They will argue the "Green New Deal" is more of an aspirational document than a piece of legislation.
BRIGGS: High profile lawyer Michael Avenatti arrested in New York for allegedly trying to extort more than $20 million from Nike. He was released last night on $300,000 bond and claims he is innocent.
According to the criminal complaint, Avenatti met last week with attorneys for Nike and threatened to release allegations of misconduct.
ROMANS: That was on the eve of the company's quarterly earnings call, start of the NCAA tournament. Avenatti allegedly telling Nike's lawyers: I'll go take $10 billion off your client's market cap. I'm not F-ing around.
The charges against Avenatti coming minutes after he announced a press conference for today to disclose a major -- a supposed major scandal perpetrated by Nike.
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MICHAEL AVENATTI, ATTORNEY: I have fought against the powerful -- powerful people and powerful corporations. I will never stop fighting that good fight.
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BRIGGS: Celebrity attorney Mark Geragos is an unnamed co-conspirator in the case. He was a CNN contributor, but is no longer as of Monday.
Minutes after news about the New York charges broke, federal prosecutors in California charged Avenatti in a separate case, a separate case involving wire and bank fraud. Those charges could bring a maximum sentence of 50 years in federal prison.
ROMANS: Global and domestic growth concerns are having an effect on mortgage rates. The latest data from Freddie Mac shows 15-year fixed rate mortgage fell to 3.71 percent, 30 year slipped to 4.28 percent. That is the more popular one. The rates following after the Federal Reserve announced it will not raise interest rates this year.
Now, the Central Bank does not set mortgage rates, but its decisions influence them and economists worry rates will keep falling. Seventy- one percent told Bankrate.com, rates will go down in the coming weeks. One expert noted rates will fall over trade agreement depresses the market at least until exuberance over the trade agreement reverses the decline.
The Commerce Department is set to release data before the opening bell today. Falling mortgage rates are a sign frankly that there are something amiss in economic expectations, that there are worries about slowing down. Amid, people rushing out of the stock market and other areas into the bond market. That is affecting rates. But it could be good for home buyers.
BRIGGS: A lot of signs though of a global slowdown.
ROMANS: And maybe we'll get a bounce, but we shall see.
BRIGGS: All right. Ahead the first all female spacewalk is on hold. You might not believe why.
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[04:47:13] BRIGGS: Authorities now investigating a third suicide in the past week linked to school massacres.
Jeremy Richman was found dead in his Connecticut office building Monday morning in what police are calling an apparent suicide. His 6- year-old daughter Avielle Richman was among those 20 children and six adults killed in the Sandy Hook shooting back in 2012.
ROMANS: The news comes as the Parkland, Florida community mourns the death of Sydney Aiello, a Parkland school shooting survivor, who killed herself last week. Then on Saturday, a second Parkland survivor died in what police described as an apparent suicide. Just tragic.
If you or someone you know might be at risk of suicide, call the National Suicide Prevention hotline, here's the number, 1-800-273- 8255.
BRIGGS: Get that number out there. Please spread it around.
Senator Lindsey Graham says he encouraged his Senate colleague and good friend, the late senator John McCain to turn over the dossier of Trump-Russia allegations to the FBI. The revelation pushing back against claims by President Trump that McCain helped fan the flames of the Russia investigation. Graham says, quote: John McCain showed me the dossier and I told him
the only thing I knew to do with it, it could be a bunch of garbage, it could be true, who knows? Turn it over to somebody whose job it is to find these things out and John McCain acted appropriately.
Graham says he told President Trump in Florida over the weekend that the late senator and war hero deserves better than the way the president has publicly disparaged him in the past week.
ROMANS: All right. Can President Trump block people on Twitter? The Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York is holding a hearing this afternoon to decide. Last May, a federal judge ruled president Trump was violating the Constitution by blocking Twitter users because his feed is a public forum. She ruled Mr. Trump was in violation of the First Amendment for blocking seven plaintiffs from viewing or replying to his posts.
BRIGGS: The Pentagon says it has successfully test launched two ground-based missile interceptors from Brandenburg Air Force Base in California. They were set up against a simulated intercontinental ballistic missile. It was a critical test to prepare against potential attacks from adversaries like North Korea.
Defense officials wanted to make sure that if multiple missiles were in the air, the sensors on ground based interceptors would be able to distinguish the incoming missiles from other missiles and the electronic clutter in the environment.
ROMANS: All right. NASA forced to scrap what would have been the first all female spacewalk scheduled to take place on Friday. And the reason turns out there is only one spacesuit on board the International Space Station that best fits both female astronauts, Christina Koch and Anne McClain.
So, Friday's spacewalk will now be conducted by a man and a woman, Koch and astronaut Nick Hague.
[04:50:01] And if everything goes according to plan, Christina Koch will become the 14th woman to perform a spacewalk.
BRIGGS: While you were sleeping, late night hosts had their first chance to weigh in on the now completed Mueller report that found no collusion with the Russians.
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JAMES CORDEN, HOST, "THE LATE NIGHT SHOW WITH JAMES CORDEN": This completely wrecks my bracket. I had Donald Trump going all the way to impeachment. I did. The news caught many people by surprise. It is never a good sign when after two years as president the whole world is shocked because you didn't do something illegally.
JIMMY KIMMEL, HOST, "JIMMY KIMMEL LIVE": We know Trump probably didn't collude with Russia because he could never pull that off. And even if he did collude, it probably would have been by accident. Putin wanted him in there and did what he had to do. Basically Trump got in the White House the same way Lori Loughlin got her kid into USC.
STEPHEN COLBERT, HOST, "THE LATE SHOW WITH STEPHEN COLBERT": This is shall we say anticlimactic. It's like saying guess what, kids, Santa came. And he brought mostly nothing. In fact, Santa took his sack of presents and handed them over to some guy named Bill and Bill is like I'll give you a summary of the gifts. Oh, and by the way, this Bill guy got his job by writing a 19 page memo about how Christmas is illegal.
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ROMANS: All right.
BRIGGS: Couldn't help but notice, both Colbert and Kimmel watched the whole thing, compared to the finale of "Lost". Was that like the worst finale of all time?
ROMANS: Yes, yes.
BRIGGS: I didn't catch that one. I thought it was "Seinfeld".
ROMANS: All right. Fifty-one minutes past the hour.
A win for Nike in the lawsuits over the logo for its Air Jordan brand. CNN business has the details, next.
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[04:56:09] BRIGGS: Apple is making big moves as it looks towards the future. CEO Tim Cook and a roster of big name celebrities, including Oprah, announcing the tech company's much anticipated entrance into the crowded video screaming market.
CNN's Brian Stelter has more from Cupertino, California.
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BRIAN STELTER, CNN CHIEF MEDIA CORRESPONDENT: Hey, Christine. Hey, Dave.
Apple has been facing slowing iPhone sales, some challenges in the hardware business. So, right now, the company is talking all about something else, what it calls the services business. That is what this event here was all about. It is about the apps on your phone, the news app, the game apps, the television app. Apple says that it will make those apps a whole lot better.
So it announced a bunch of new services all of these are subscription based. So, you are paying let's say $10 a month for a news app with access to a lot of magazines and a few newspapers. There is also a gaming app where you can access lots of different games for one monthly price.
Perhaps the most interesting news here though is about Apple TV and how the company is once again trying to revolutionize the TV viewing experience. The company is previewing two new versions of this, one is a storefront where you can go on and buy subscriptions to HBO and CBS and lots of other channels, but the most tantalizing part of the big announcement here is about Apple's slate of original TV shows and movies.
This has been in the works secretly for a while. And now, Apple is starting to preview them. Full disclosure, I'm a consultant on one of those shows, it is about morning TV. But up until now, I had now idea when it was going to launch.
Apple says they will start to premiere in the fall, but they are not revealing how much it will cost to access the shows. They have lots of big names helping out, people like Steven Spielberg and Oprah Winfrey were on stage, previewing what they're working on, but it's going to be at least few months before we can watch the shows and we don't know how much it will cost.
But Apple's future it says is partly in these is services that allow you to do more with your phones and your devices. You can see in the future the idea of a bundle emerging where you get games, you get news, you get TV shows from Apple or maybe from its rivals like Google and Netflix and others.
Christine, Dave, back to you.
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ROMANS: Fascinating, new frontier, a new frontier. All right. Thanks, Brian.
Global stock markets rebounding from yesterday's decline, but the main story line remains global growth concerns. You have Tokyo with the bounce back of about 2 percent, Shanghai down and mixed performance in Europe. Futures slightly higher here in the U.S., but I wouldn't call that barn burner of an advance.
U.S. markets were essentially unchanged at the end of trading Monday. The Dow closed up just 14 points helped by a bounce in Boeing shares. The S&P 500, Nasdaq down slightly.
And the top brain trust for business economists forecast slowing economic growth. A survey of NABE economists found U.S. growth below White House targets from 2.9 percent last year to 2.4 percent this year and just 2 percent in 2020.
With Boeing in crisis, its rival Airbus just announced a huge order from China. The European manufacturer said it has reached a deal to sell 300 passenger jets to Chinese airlines. China was the first country to ground the 737 MAX earlier this month following the Ethiopian Airlines crash.
China a giant market for both Airbus and Boeing and its importance is increasing every day. According to Airbus's latest forecast, China will need around 7,400 new passenger and cargo aircraft through the year 2037. Airbus did not specify the total value of the deal and did not respond to a request from us for further comment. A win for Nike in a lawsuit every on the "Jumpman" logo for its Air
Jordan bland. The Supreme Court declined to hear a case brought by a photographer who sued Nike for copyright infringement. In 1984, photographer Jacobus Rentmeester took a photo of Michael Jordan before he joined the NBA and signed a deal with Nike.
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