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Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA) Interviewed Regarding Worker Payr; An Arrest Has Been Made In Connection With A String Of Fires Over A Ten- Day Period In Three Black Churches In Louisiana; CEO Of Boeing Providing An Update On The Software Fixes To Its 737 Max Jets That Have Been Grounded For Almost A Month. Aired 3:30-4p ET

Aired April 11, 2019 - 15:30   ET

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

[15:30:00] SARA SIDNER, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Michael should have read through the indictment because that piece of paper is also part of this case he says that Mr. Avenatti went to the client, asked him to sign something recently because this idea that he may have defrauded the claim of $4 million who is paraplegic cape up in another lawsuit between him and his partner and he knew that the media would get hold of it. He went to his person's house, got his signature according to the attorney for this paraplegic man and at that point the man had no idea that the $4 million had already been paid many years ago. He thought that he had just gotten the money and he was very happy to hear that a settlement had been had -- Brooke.

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN HOST: Wow, again we showed the tweet, what Michael Avenatti is saying. If convicted he could face a maximum of 333 years in prison.

Sara Sidner.

SIDNER: And we should mention, Brooke.

BALDWIN: Yes.

SIDNER: We should mention, he has said he will be exonerated. He has said he is innocent until proven guilty which is how our court system works.

BALDWIN: Absolutely.

SIDNER: He has been very clear that he is going to fight these charges.

BALDWIN: Sara Sidner, thank you very much.

Coming up next, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase confronted on Capitol Hill on the story of one of his entry level employees who just make ends meet on her salary. The freshman Democrat who challenged him joins me live.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. KATIE PORTER (D-CA): Well I appreciate your desire to be helpful but what I would like you to do is provide a way for families to make ends meet so that little kids who are six years old living with a one bedroom apartment with their mother aren't going hungry at night because they are $567 short.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:35:50] BALDWIN: She is serving her first term as U.S. congresswoman. A single mom of three school-age children and she just stumped a millionaire bank CEO with a simple math lesson at a house hearing.

Congresswoman Katie Porter confronted JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon about the starting salary for a bank teller, woman by the name of Patricia in her district of Irvine, California.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

PORTER: She had $2,425 a month. She rents a one bedroom apartment. She and her daughter sleep together in the same room in Irvine, California. That average one-bedroom apartment is going to be $1,600. She spends $100 on utilities, takeaway the $1700 and she has net $725. She is like me. She drives a 2008 minivan and has $400 for car expenses and gas net $325. The department of agriculture said that a low cost food budget that is ramen, noodles. A low food budget is $400. That leaves her $77 in the red. She has a cricket cell phone, the cheapest cell phone she can get for $40. She is in the red $117 a month. She has after school childcare because the bank is open during normal business hours. That is $450 a month. That takes her down to negative $567 per month.

My question for you, Mr. Dimon, is how should she manage this budget shortfall while she is working full time at your bank?

JAMIE DIMON, CEO, JPMORGAN CHASE: I don't know that all of your numbers are accurate. That number is a -- a generally a starter job.

PORTER: She is a starting employee. She has a 6-year-old child. This is her first job.

DIMON: You get those jobs out of high school and she may have my job one day.

PORTER: She may Mr. Dimon. She doesn't have the ability right now to spend your $31 million.

DIMON: I'm always sympathetic.

PORTER: She is short $567. What would you suggest she do?

DIMON: I don't know. I have to think about that.

PORTER: Would you recommend that she take out a JPMorgan chase credit card and run a deficit?

DIMON: I don't know. I have to think about it. PORTER: Would you recommend that she overdraft at your bank and be

charged overdraft fees.

DIMON: I don't know. I would have to think about it.

PORTER: So, I know you have a lot --.

DIMON: I love to call up and have a conversation about her financial affairs and see if we could be helpful.

PORTER: See if you can find a way for her to live on less than the minimum that I have described.

DIMON: Just be helpful.

PORTER: Well I appreciate your desire to be helpful but what I would like you to do is provide a way for families to make ends meet so that little kids who are six years old living with a one bedroom apartment with their mother aren't going hungry at night because they are $567 short from feeding themselves, clothing. That we allowed o money for clothing. We allowed no money for school lunches. We allowed no money for field trips. No money for medical. No money prescription drugs, nothing and she's short $567 already.

Mr. Dimon, you know how to spend $31 million a year in salary and you can't figure out how to make up a $567 a month shortfall. This is a budget problem you cannot solve.

DIMON: But with us, she does get full medical. We pay 90 percent of it. And also give --.

PORTER: No deductible.

DIMON: There is a deductible. But for people doing their wellness program, OK, we give the people making under $60,000 a year a $750 account and effectively they have no deductible.

PORTER: That is why I didn't put any medical in this, Mr. Dimon. I read that in your shareholder report. That is why I didn't include any medical expenses but she still is short $567. As are all of your employees in Irvine, California. Any ideas? OK, moving on.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BALDWIN: Again, this is Congresswoman Katie Porter. And so she tweeted after the hearing, "Jamie Dimon said he didn't know if all of my numbers were accurate. Here is the math. So he can check."

Congresswoman Porter is with me now.

Congresswoman Katie Porter, a pleasure, welcome.

PORTER: Thank you so much.

BALDWIN: So, oh, boy, I have a lot four. So let's start with the constituent who you are referencing, Patricia, we heard Jamie Dimon saying he would like to call her. He has sympathy for her. Do you think she would want to talk to him?

PORTER: So Patricia is a representative of a number of constituents that we heard from. We took the stories of a lot of people who wrote to us and people who I met during my campaign for Congress and we made a kind of hypothetical situation to reflect the realities of all the stories that we heard.

So there is no Patricia out there but in one way but there are thousands and thousands and tens of thousands of Patricias out there. So there are a lot of employees at Mr. Dimon's bank. He said yesterday that he would think about it. And I hope very much that that is what he is doing today. That he is thinking about what can and should a bank do -- a bank that is saying we have so much capital. We don't know what to do with it. I think the obvious answer is to raise the starting pay at their bank to $20 an hour which is what the competitor bank of America has done.

[15:40:45] BALDWIN: I want to ask you more about that. But if this is -- let me just go back. If this is a hypothetical Patricia, where did you or your team get those numbers?

PORTER: We went to monster.com and found a job advertisement. A current job advertisement for JPMorgan Chase and that starting pay was $16.50. We went to the apartment websites. We went to cost of living calculator, the food budget for instance and took from the U.S. department of agriculture. They have a low cost kind of minimum subsistence budget.

And look, I live in Irvine. I am a single mom in Irvine. I know what it takes to make ends meet there. I know what it takes to pay for gas. And then we created a very, very modest budget for her. In fact, most of the feedback we have gotten from folks around the country and from folks in the home district of the 45th is that these numbers are too conservative. I had people calling my office and asking if they news where she rented from so they wanted to get a one bedroom apartment for $1,600.

BALDWIN: No kidding. No kidding.

Let me ask you back to your point about minimum wage, right. So some of your colleagues are calling for a $15 minimum wage. They call it a living wage and yet the starting salary and you were critiquing at JPMorgan was actually $16.50 which is above the Democrat's target. Do you think the living wage proposal should be higher?

PORTER: I think $15 is a really appropriate minimum for us to have nationally. Because costs do vary around the country. And I think the real issue is if a business is experiencing record profits and paying record salaries to their CEO and their leadership, they should also be paying record salaries to their starting employees. And that is the situation that JPMorgan and these other large financial institutions are in. And so, this is a capitalist system and when business is booming as it has been for the large banks in part because of President Trump tax cuts then that bank, she has the duty to pass along some of the benefits of the profits of its company to the employees that are making those profits possible. BALDWIN: So what do you think it will take to have a Jamie Dimon

raise that wage?

PORTER: Well, he promised me that he would think about it. He repeated that answer several times. And Mr. Dimon is a role leader in the business community. He is the chair of the business round table, the nation's largest CEOs. And I took him at his word. And I expect him to be thoughtful about it and to think about what he can do to make sure that everybody who is working full time at his $2.9 trillion bank is able to put food on the table and able make sure that they have an apartment and they could afford medical. They can take care of their children.

That's -- I expect him to show leadership that he said he is a leader in the business community and I'm looking for him to show leadership in this issue.

BALDWIN: And as you were going through the math, I just want to -- did you explain to Jamie Dimon that Patricia was a hypothetical, Patricia, was he clear on that?

PORTER: I don't know if he was clear or not. I actually wasn't able to use the whiteboard in the hearing which is what I wanted to do but it was determined that that would somehow break a rule which I find a little humorous since one of my colleagues used an air horn recently in the congressional hearing.

I think it would have been really helpful for Mr. Dimon and for the American people to have the whiteboard there and to be able to really see how it was coming down. So, you know, the point was to give him a problem to solve, that was the set-up of the clip and that part of it got cut because there was a discussion about whether I could or could not use a whiteboard. But I want to illustrate to Mr. Dimon and to the leaders of the country what kind of hardships regular American families are facing.

BALDWIN: Well, he said he will think about it. Let us know when he gets back to you.

All right. Congresswoman Katie Porter, thank you so much.

PORTER: Thank you.

BALDWIN: Nice to have you on.

There is now a suspect in custody for a series of fires at black churches in Louisiana. And officials say he is the son of a sheriff's deputy. The pastor from one of the churches will join me live with his reaction next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:49:10] BALDWIN: An arrest has been made in connection with a string of fires over a ten-day period in three black churches in Louisiana. Investigators say the suspect is this man, 21-year-old Holden Matthews. He is the son of a sheriff's deputy in the St. Landry Parish where all of three of this fires took place.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BUTCH BROWNING, LOUISIANA FIRE MARSHAL: This community is safe again. We are extremely unequivocally confident that we have the person who is responsible for these tragic crimes on these three churches. And I have to tell you, this investigation is probably one of the most unique arson investigations that I have been involved in, in my 33 years. And that -- this was an attack on a house of God.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: And after looking over the suspect's Facebook posts, Louisiana fire officials released a statement saying the fires may have a possible connection with the genre of music called Black Metal. Black Metal, according to officials, has a history associated with church burnings in other parts of the world.

So I want to go straight to Louisiana to Reverend Gerald Toussaint. He is the pastor at one of these churches that's been lost, Mt. Pleasant Baptist Church.

So revered Toussaint is with me now.

Reverend, thank you so much for spending time with us. And just, how are you? How is your congregation?

[15:50:31] REV. GERALD TOUSSAINT. PASTOR, MOUNT PLEASANT BAPTIST CHURCH: We are good now. We are better off now that the light has been shined on this thing and it's come to an end. I feel much better. Now we can get some rest.

BALDWIN: Reverend, what do you make of the fact that this suspect, this young man is the son of a sheriff's deputy?

TOUSSAINT: Well, you can get all kind of stuff in family. It's just surprising. You know, with having the law enforcement in the same home with the person that's burning churches, it's kind of unique.

BALDWIN: Unique is one way to put it. I mean, apparently this young man, according to --

TOUSSAINT: Yes, it's puzzling.

BALDWIN: Yes, sir. I mean, apparently he had white supremacy tendencies. And the sheriff's department says the father was entirely shocked. He had no idea. He wasn't the one who turned him in. Do you believe that the father would not have known that there wouldn't have been warning signs?

TOUSSAINT: Well, we -- in today's society, I'll tell you that a lot of parents do not check their children's email or their social media. They just allow them to have their secrecies. And it's time that we start doing those things because sometimes we can prevent some of these things from happening if we get a little nosy as parents. BALDWIN: What -- these churches, these historic black churches not

only like yours and others are gone, but a lot of the folks, ancestors in the community. They were buried in the back. What has this done to your community?

TOUSSAINT: Well, I just come from some of the congregations' home and they were so happy to know that the person who burnt their church down, the building down, was caught. But it's still -- you can still feel the pain and the hurt from them being there because they have a lot of history in the church. And not just some of the ones who are elderly. Their mothers and their fathers are still buried in the back because you're talking about 145 years of history. So it's painful to know that as I look at the church, the different layers of the walls that people tried to add to the church and make it look better time after time after time. And all of that has been destroyed.

BALDWIN: Reverend Toussaint, will you rebuild?

TOUSSAINT: Yes, ma'am, I have to rebuild because I have to -- I cannot let the wiles of Satan defeat us. We have to rebuild because we have to show that we serve a mighty God. And we have -- we serve a God of restoration. So we have to show that we cannot be defeated by these type of things.

BALDWIN: Reverend Gerald Toussaint, I appreciate you. We are thinking about you and your congregation, and thank you for the time. Good luck.

TOUSSAINT: We will continue to pray for our country. God bless you.

BALDWIN: Thank you. Thank you very much.

Moments ago, Boeing's CEO speaking out about their plans to fix their 737 max jets. What they said about when they could be back in the air.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:58:24] BALDWIN: Just in to CNN, the CEO of Boeing providing an update on the software fixes to its 737 Max jets that have been grounded for almost a month.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DENNIS MUILENBURG, CEO, BOEING: The update will make the 737 max even safer by preventing erroneous angle of attacks sensor readings from triggering the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System or MCAS, something that initial investigation reports indicate occurred in both max accidents as one link in a longer chain of events. We know we can break this chain link. It's our responsibility to eliminate this risk.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Tom Foreman is with me now.

And Tom, he also talked about they have been running test flights with the new system?

TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, they have. Really simply, Brooke. What they are trying to do is fix the thing they think drove the plane into the ground, make it harder for it to come on and easier for it to be shut off. And so, they have done 96 flights with this updated software, 159 hours. It's performed as designed. And they say they have additional tests planned with the production run as they actually turn it out as a matter of course to make sure that works well.

And one more thing that's really important here, Brooke. They say that 67 percent of their customers around the world that buy these planes, airlines around the world, 67 percent of them have had leaders or pilots in simulators with this new software now. That's been a sticking point all along that they have had simulator time to know how it works and to know how to control it if it runs amok - Brooke.

BALDWIN: Tom Foreman, thank you so much for the update there from the head of Boeing on those jets.

I'm Brooke Baldwin. Thank you so much for being with me. We will see you back here tomorrow.

In the meantime, "THE LEAD with Jake Tapper" starts right now.