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Early Start with John Berman and Zoraida Sambolin
Ethiopia 737 MAX Pilots Followed Procedure; House Democrats Voting on Subpoena for Full Mueller Report; Aired 4-4:30a ET
Aired April 03, 2019 - 04:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[04:00:19] DAVE BRIGGS, CNN ANCHOR: Breaking overnight, pilots on that doomed Boeing flight in Ethiopia last month knew the exact procedures Boeing recommends, but still couldn't keep the plane in the air.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Anything we give them will never be enough.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: House Democrats will vote to authorize a subpoena for the full Mueller support. But will the Judiciary chairman see it through?
BRIGGS: An historic night in Chicago as the city elects its first mayor who is black, who identifies as gay.
ROMANS: And another case of a fake ride share driver. Police are looking for a man in Washington state who raped a woman who got in his car.
Good morning, everyone, and welcome to EARLY START. I'm Christine Romans.
BRIGGS: Good morning. I'm Dave Briggs. Wednesday, April 3rd, 4:00 a.m. in the East. We start with breaking news this morning regarding that crash.
Pilots flying the Boeing 737 MAX that crashed in Ethiopia last month initially followed Boeing's recommended emergency procedures but were still unable to recover control of the jet. That report coming from the "Wall Street Journal" citing people briefed on preliminary findings from the plane's black boxes.
For the latest let's welcome in Robyn Kriel live in Ethiopia this morning. Robyn, good morning.
ROBYN KRIEL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Dave. Well, the scenario that the "Wall Street Journal" is reporting states that this MCAS anti- stall systems failed and the pilots, as you said, of ET Flight 302 did follow the emergency procedures to shut it down. So they then went to shut it down, from what I can understand, the pilots recognized this problem with the automatic trim that then deactivated it. But still could not regain, from what we understand from the "Wall Street Journal," control of the aircraft. And they then went back and turned it back on again and we're not sure exactly why they did that.
However, what we can tell you is that if this does turn out to be true, it indicates a deeper problem, and perhaps it could be the only worse thing for Boeing is that if the emergency procedures that they then put in place after the Lion Air crash failed, if this "Wall Street Journal" reporting turns out to be true, that the plane then continued to plunge to the ground, 157 people killed, Dave, in that flight, in that crash six minutes, six mere minutes for pilots, the two Ethiopian Airlines pilots, to try to fight that plane to keep it from going down into the ground.
And you can just imagine with all the emergency sirens and warnings going off in the cockpit how terrifying that would have been.
BRIGGS: Yes, 346 killed in the two combined crashes. A lot of questions ahead.
Robyn Kriel, live for us this morning. Thank you.
ROMANS: Meantime whistleblower reports are raising new questions about the FAA inspectors who reviewed the 737 MAX planes for certification and whether those inspectors were properly trained. According to information from whistleblowers and documents reviewed by the Senate Commerce Committee, the FAA may have been notified about training deficiencies as early as August of 2018. That's two months before the first of those two deadly Boeing crashes.
BRIGGS: An investigation is now under way to determine how the Boeing 737 MAX fleet was certified to fly. Justice Department prosecutors have also issued subpoenas as part of a grand jury criminal investigation. One former Boeing employee being asked to turn over all communications including drafts related to the Boeing 737 MAX.
ROMANS: All right. A significant security breach at the president's Mar-a-Lago resort to tell you about. Federal prosecutors filing charges against a woman carrying Chinese passports and malicious software who they say entered the facility illegally late last month. Now the president was staying there at the time, but was not on site when Yujing Zhang initially gained access through a miscommunication with members of the resort's security detail.
BRIGGS: Zhang was detained after telling a receptionist she was there to attend an event that simply did not exist. Secret Service agents found four cell phones, a laptop, an external hard drive device, and a thumb drive in her possession. Prosecutors say the thumb drive contained malware. The Secret Service says Mar-a-Lago management is responsible for deciding who is permitted access to the club but not who gets access or proximity to the president.
ROMANS: In a matter of hours House Democrats will vote to authorize a subpoena to get the full, unredacted Mueller report. That will give House Judiciary chairman Jerry Nadler the green light to issue a subpoena. Now he's not said whether he would do that before Attorney General Barr releases a redacted version sometime this month. The president still says release it, but he's clearly agitated.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
[04:05:06] TRUMP: I think it's ridiculous. Now we're going to start this process all over again? I think it's a disgrace. Anything we give them will never be enough.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: What about the --
TRUMP: We could give them -- it's a 400-page report, right? We could give them 800 pages and it wouldn't be enough. They'll always come back and say it's not enough, it's not enough.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BRIGGS: Democrats argue there's ample precedent for Barr to release to Congress the full report, including grand jury material. They point to investigations in the Watergate and former President Bill Clinton. Former FBI director James Comey says Barr deserves the benefit of the doubt on the report, but top Democrats, they don't see it that way.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. JERRY NADLER (D), CHAIRMAN, JUDICIARY COMMITTEE: Well, the attorney general is an agent of the president. He auditioned for his job by saying that this kind of investigation was wrong and that the president could not possibly commit obstruction of justice, which is a rather extreme legal view, and he got the job in order to protect the president.
REP. ADAM SCHIFF (D), INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: If he came to the job clean, without any history in this investigation, I would say yes, give him the benefit of the doubt. But he didn't. He wrote a 19-page legal memo, which was basically a job application, saying if you pick me for your AG, I will have your back on the obstruction of justice case. And that's exactly what he's done.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROMANS: The House Oversight Committee voted yesterday to authorize subpoenas in the White House security clearance probe. Among those targeted, Carl Kline, the former personnel security director at the Trump White House. But even though Kline -- he did agree to testify and he asked not to be subpoenaed.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. JIM JORDAN (R), OHIO: Today we're going to subpoena a guy who just sent us a letter saying he's willing to come here voluntarily. I have been on this committee 10 years, I've never seen anything like this.
REP. ELIJAH CUMMINGS (D), CHAIRMAN, OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE: Oh please.
JORDAN: Never seen anything like this. I haven't. CUMMINGS: Yes, you've done it.
JORDAN: I haven't.
REP. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ (D), NEW YORK: We are conducting foreign relations with folks with security clearances via WhatsApp. I mean, every day that we go on without getting to the bottom of this matter is a day that we are putting hundreds, if not potentially thousands of Americans at risk. I mean, really, what is next? Putting nuclear codes in Instagram DMs?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROMANS: The subpoena authorization comes after a White House whistleblower told the committee she kept a list of 25 instances -- 25 instances in which decisions to deny security clearances were reversed by the Trump administration.
BRIGGS: President Trump publicly welcoming the fight over healthcare reform even though he just did an about-face on that issue. He decided to delay the repeal of Obamacare until after the 2020 election. Listen to what he told the National Republican Congressional Committee last night.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: Republicans should not run away from healthcare. You can't do it. You're going to get clobbered. If we stay away from that subject, we're going to lose. We're going to lose. We have the crime. We have the police. We have the military. We have so much. They have healthcare right now. We have to take that away from them.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BRIGGS: We now have an idea why the president backed away from the healthcare fight after embracing it last week. Several lawmakers including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell confronted him directly.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL (R), MAJORITY LEADER: And I pointed out to him the Senate Republicans' view on dealing with comprehensive healthcare reform with a Democratic House of Representatives. I made it clear to him we were not going to be doing that in the Senate.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BRIGGS: Many Republicans would prefer to see the focus on prescription drug cost. They don't want to see a fight within the party over healthcare reform like the one that may have cost them control of the House last November.
ROMANS: All right. President Trump calling on fellow Republicans to be paranoid after falsely claiming Democratic victories in 2018 were the results of voter fraud. That's right. Listen to what the president is telling his supporters.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: We are going to watch those vote tallies. You know, I keep hearing about the election and the various counting measures that they have. There were a lot of close elections that were -- they seemed to -- every single one of them went Democrat. If it was close, they say the Democrat, well, there's something going on. You've got to -- hey, you've got to be a little bit more paranoid than you are. But we have to be a little bit careful because I don't like the way the votes are being tallied.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROMANS: That probably sounds familiar because the president also falsely claimed in 2016 that millions of illegal votes in California, that's what cost him the popular vote.
BRIGGS: President Trump appears to be backing off his threat to close the U.S. border with Mexico, at least for now. The president last night praised Mexico for doing more to stem migration from Central America. He implied Mexico's move could eliminate the need to close the border.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
[04:10:06] TRUMP: I really wanted to close it. But now Mexico says no, no, no, first time in decades. We will not let anybody get through. And they've apprehended over a thousand people today at the southern border. Their southern border. And they're bringing them back into the country. I said, why the hell didn't somebody do that in the first place?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BRIGGS: Not clear if those numbers are accurate. Yesterday the president called on Congress to take action on immigration, putting the burden on Democrats to come to the table and respond to his threats.
ROMANS: All right. President Trump knows that the economy will take a hit if he shut that border with Mexico.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: Sure, it's going to have a negative impact on the economy. Hey, all you hear me talking about is trade. But let me just give you a little secret. Security is more important to me than trade.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROMANS: On trade, though, here's what's at stake. The move would disrupt the flow of $1.7 billion of goods daily. The store shelves and factory floors supporting five million American jobs. Economists say the entire U.S. auto industry would shut down within one week. The Center for Automotive Research says every automaker depends on parts from Mexico. About 16 percent of all auto parts used at assembly plants and sold in stores originate in Mexico.
Grocery stores would take a hit. We get nearly 90 percent of avocado imports from Mexico. The U.S. could run out of avocados in just three weeks. Americans also buy more than $4.6 billion a year in beer, wine, and alcohol, that includes tequila. Border closure would squeeze U.S. corn, soybean and dairy farmers if they can't ship their produce into Mexico.
Meanwhile, Trump's USMCA is at stake, the new NAFTA. The president has signed the deal, but it hasn't been approved by Congress.
BRIGGS: History in Chicago. Lori Lightfoot elected mayor of the nation's third largest city. She becomes the first African-American woman to lead Chicago. She is the first to identify as gay. The 56- year-old former U.S. attorney vowing to remake the city by putting the interest of all the people over the powerful few.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
LORI LIGHTFOOT, MAYOR-ELECT OF CHICAGO: I remember something Martin Luther King said when I was very young. Faith, he said, is taking the first step when you can't see the staircase.
(CHEERS AND APPLAUSE)
LIGHTFOOT: Well, we couldn't see the whole staircase when we started this journey, but we had faith and abiding faith in the city, its people and its future.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BRIGGS: Lightfoot faces serious issues like crime and police community relations. She'll be sworn in next month replacing Rahm Emanuel who chose not to seek a third term.
ROMANS: All right. Today is a big day in the college admissions scandal known as Operation Varsity Blues. Thirteen people in total, including actresses Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin, along with Loughlin's husband, designer Mossimo Giannulli. They're all set to appear in a federal court in Boston. They're expected to enter pleas on charges of conspiracy to commit mail fraud and honest services mail fraud. The parents accused of paying a college prep business to cheat on standardized tests and/or bribe college coaches in order to get their children into competitive universities.
BRIGGS: In Washington state, authorities are looking for this man. They call him a person of interest in a reported rape of a passenger in a fake ride share. The woman told Kind County sheriff's detective she got into a car she thought was the ride share she'd ordered and was raped inside the vehicle.
Authorities say the man was seen near the victim's home the night of the reported rape last December. The sheriff's office not releasing the name of the ride share company because it has confirmed the woman never made contact with any of its drivers that night. ROMANS: Reminding about personal safety. So many of us just hop into
a car. There was that horrible murder in South Carolina just a few days ago. Just awful.
BRIGGS: Check the license plate. It appears on your ride share app.
ROMANS: Yes.
BRIGGS: And check the name of the driver.
ROMANS: Yes.
BRIGGS: It also appears on the app.
ROMANS: And ask the driver to tell you your name.
All right. 14 minutes past the hour. Hidden cameras were used to record hundreds of patients in delivery rooms at a California hospital. Why the hospital says the cameras were installed in the first place.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[04:18:29] BRIGGS: The suspect in a hit-and-run crash that severely injured a 9-year-old girl is in custody this morning. According to the CNN affiliate WSB Gabriel Fordham turned himself into police. His attorney says he's apologetic and wants to help the family get closure. The attorney says Fordham was fighting off a carjacker in the car when the crash occurred. Surveillance video shows Laderihanna Holmes playing with a friend when the car plowed into her and then into her house. The 9-year-old suffered a fractured skull and a shattered pelvis.
ROMANS: All right. A California hospital facing a lawsuit for using hidden cameras to record hundreds of patients without their consent. Those cameras were located in three labor and delivery rooms at the Women's Center at Sharp Grossman Hospital in La Mesa. About 1800 patients were recorded over a period of more than 11 months beginning in the summer of 2012. Now among the secretly taped images partially robed women on operating tables and C-section procedures.
BRIGGS: The lawsuit states the recordings were stored on desktop computers and some could be viewed without the need for a password. Sharp Healthcare claimed it installed motion-detecting cameras because drugs were disappearing from operating rooms. In its attempt to catch the thief patients and medical personnel were sometimes recorded.
ROMANS: All right. If you subscribe to Netflix, get ready to pay more. Price hikes that were announced in January take effect on the next billing cycle. The price of a basic plan will rise from $8 to $9 a month. The standard plan that includes HD streaming on two devices will go from $11 to $13 a month. And a premium plan will increase from 14 to 16 bucks.
[04:20:06] Netflix has been investing heavily in original content. In 2018 it budgeted $8 billion for new shows and movies. It also faces a lot of new competition in 2019. You've got Apple, Disney, NBC Universal, Warner Media, that's CNN's parent company, all of them planning to launch streaming services.
Netflix members who joined after the increases were revealed have already been paying those higher rates.
BRIGGS: A lot of competition in that field.
OK. Hundreds of pairs of shoes, all for a good cause. Why one Kansas woman cleaned out her local shop, next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[04:25:07] ROMANS: President Trump made some bizarre claims in a free-wheeling speech before the National Republican Congressional Committee. He once again attacked wind energy and made this dubious claim about the damage wind causes.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: If you have any windmill anywhere near your house, congratulations, your house just went down 75 percent in value.
(LAUGHTER)
TRUMP: And they say the noise causes cancer. You tell me that one, OK.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROMANS: They say the noise causes cancer. That's not true. In fact, General Electric just announced its latest investment, the world's largest and most powerful offshore wind turbine. It could produce enough electricity to power 16,000 American homes.
The president also had this concern.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: Think of it. They put names in. You pick a name. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm proud to announce so and so. I don't want to use names because I'll get in trouble because it's always somebody is going to leak this whole damn speech to the media.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROMANS: Well, it doesn't need to be leaked. It was televised. He's talking in front of a camera and a microphone. The remarks were going to be seen across the U.S. because this was scheduled to be televised.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He gets the rebound.
(END VIDEO CLIP) BRIGGS: With that rebound, Oklahoma City star Russell Westbrook grabbed a piece of NBA history. He is the second player in league history to have 20 points, 20 rebounds and 20 assists in a single game. The other, the brilliant Oscar Roberts back in 1962.
Westbrook dedicating his historic achievement to the late rapper Nipsey Hussle who was fatally shot on Sunday.
ROMANS: All right. A Kansas woman walked out of her local Payless with hundreds of pairs of new shoes and none of them are for her. Addy Tritt says the shoes was closing and all the shoes were marked down a dollar a pair. The retail value was around $6,000. She paid only 100 bucks for this entire haul.
So who are all these little shoes for? Tritt donated all of the shoes to flood victims in Nebraska. Bravo to her.
BRIGGS: Nice.
Breaking overnight, the exact recommended emergency procedures were simply not enough to keep a doomed Boeing plane in the air last month. We are live in Ethiopia with the latest.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
