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Early Start with John Berman and Zoraida Sambolin

Redacted Mueller Report Due In Just Hours; North Korea Demands Pompeo Be Replaced In Future Talks; Feds Charge Doctors In 8-State Opioid Bust. Aired 5:30-6a ET

Aired April 18, 2019 - 05:30   ET

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


(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[05:30:18] BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN ANCHOR: Are you ready for redactions? Bill Barr's version of the Mueller report goes public today. The attorney general will face the media, but only before the report is actually released.

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: Breaking overnight, North Korea demands Mike Pompeo be replaced as top diplomat to restart nuclear talks.

SANCHEZ: Plus, a man is arrested in New York for bringing gas cans and a lighter into St. Patrick's Cathedral just days after the inferno at Notre Dame in Paris.

ROMANS: And the biggest opioid bust in history. Sixty medical professionals, eight states, 32 million pills. The Justice Department says these were drug dealers in white coats.

Welcome back to EARLY START. I'm Christine Romans.

SANCHEZ: Great to be here with you, Christine. I'm Boris Sanchez in for Dave Briggs. We are half past the hour.

And we start with what we've been waiting for, for almost two years. Today, the world will learn what Robert Mueller found in his investigation -- most of what he found, anyway. Attorney General Bill Barr's redacted version of the special counsel's report goes public this morning.

CNN has learned the section on obstruction of justice is expected to have relatively few redactions. That's because the obstruction probe is based on investigative work. And unlike the Russian interference probe, that one relied on secret grand jury testimony.

ROMANS: All right. "The Washington Post" reports the obstruction section will also detail analysis of tweets, private threats, and other incidents.

A White House official tells us the president is, quote, "Not worried, not fuming, and that any attacks on Barr will backfire."

Here's the president.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: You'll see a lot of very strong things come out tomorrow. Attorney General Barr is going to be giving a press conference and maybe I'll do one after that -- we'll see. But he's done -- he's been a fantastic attorney general. He's grabbed it by the horn.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SANCHEZ: As you might expect, in the end, the public will likely see less of the report than Congress. There are going to be two versions. One for all of us and one that will eventually go to select members of Congress with fewer redactions.

And in a curious move, Attorney General Bill Barr will hold a news conference today before the report becomes public.

ROMANS: He'll be joined by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein whose letter firing FBI director James Comey famously made this accusation.

"The director ignored another longstanding principle. We do not hold press conferences to release derogatory information about the subject of a declined criminal investigation."

Senior White House correspondent Pamela Brown starts our coverage from Washington.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

PAMELA BROWN, SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, good morning, Christine and Boris.

It is a very busy day ahead with the impending release of the redacted version of Robert Mueller's report.

But before that happens, the Attorney General Bill Barr is expected to hold a press conference at 9:30 this morning -- a couple of hours before the report goes to Capitol Hill around 11:00 a.m. Eastern time -- raising the question of why the attorney general is holding this press conference with reporters who haven't even seen the report yet.

Now, a person familiar with the matter says that the attorney general will be answering reporter's questions about his thinking, why he made certain redactions, and overview of the report, and so forth. But certainly, the reporters who will be asking him the questions won't be informed on what's actually in the report because that comes later.

The report is expected to be released around 11:00 a.m. Eastern time, 400 pages with redactions. And we could certainly learn a lot in this because more than two dozen current and former White House officials were interviewed by Robert Mueller and their names could very well be revealed in this report.

Some are even concerned that this could hurt their business -- some of these former aides who are now out of the White House but able -- but their business model is about influence and access to the White House are concerned that they're going to be on the outs because of this report. So there is a lot of anticipation and anxiousness to learn more about it.

"The New York Times" also reporting that there has been back-and-forth in the last several days between the White House and the Department of Justice about some of the report's findings and that has helped the White House and the president's legal team prepare for a rebuttal. Rudy Giuliani has said that he is expected to come out with a rebuttal after the report is released.

So we'll have to wait and see how this day unfolds. Back to you, Christine and Boris.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ROMANS: Yes, it certainly promises to be interesting. Thank you so much for that, Pamela.

Let's bring in Elaina Plott, White House correspondent for "The Atlantic" and a CNN political analyst. Good morning.

SANCHEZ: Good morning.

ROMANS: Nice to see you.

ELAINA PLOTT, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, THE ATLANTIC: Hi, guys. Good morning.

ROMANS: Did you get a good night's sleep? Did you eat your Wheaties? I could say the same thing --

PLOTT: You all, it's going to be a long day.

SANCHEZ: It will, yes.

ROMANS: I hope Bill Barr got a good, solid eight hours of sleep last night.

Look, there's already been no question that Barr has, as the president says, taken this by the horn, right?

I mean, he's got the 4-page summary of the Mueller report. He used the word "spying" and that got a lot of attention -- how he was using the word "spying." How he is crafting the narrative, really, with this press conference this morning.

[05:35:07] Here's how Jerry Nadler, the Democratic chairman of House Judiciary Committee -- here's how he's concerned that this is spinning -- listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. JERRY NADLER (D-NY): It now appears the attorney general intends to, once again, put his own spin on the investigative work completed by the special counsel and his team. The fact that the attorney general is not releasing even the redacted reports to Congress until after his press conference will again result in the report being presented through his own words rather than through the words of special counsel Mueller.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMANS: What do you make of that? The president says that he's taking it by the horns. You know, Democrats, of course, are going to be unhappy. They're going to say that he is crafting and framing all of this.

PLOTT: Look, you really could not have a starker contrast between Attorney General Bill Barr and someone like Jeff Sessions. Sessions, of course, immediately recused himself from this investigation --

ROMANS: Yes.

PLOTT: -- whereas, Barr jumped in immediately.

And I do think that there was a lot of reason, as reporters, to give him the benefit of the doubt with that summary, especially when you saw Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein sign onto and endorse his summary.

At the same time, though, as you mentioned, when he made that spying comment, I think that is what raised alarm for many across Washington as to what his political motivations might be. And in many ways, those concerns were cemented when he announced that he would be giving a press conference about this report when reporters would not have even been briefed on the report at that point.

SANCHEZ: Now, Elaina, you actually write in "The Atlantic" about who's afraid of the Mueller report, saying that some of Trump's aides are serenely confident about what is in this report. I have to ask, though, because CNN has spoken to a number of sources who say that they're dreading the release of the Mueller report.

"The New York Times," yesterday, wrote something interesting about it potentially being a roadmap to retaliation for the president. If he sees something in it that he doesn't like --

ROMANS: Right.

SANCHEZ: -- he can point to a name and say these are the people in the administration that are providing negative information about me and everybody around me and putting it out there publicly.

Do you think it's a roadmap to retaliation?

PLOTT: Boris, I'm glad you asked that. I do think it's important to delineate between former officials and current officials because when we look at the list of who actually cooperated with Mueller and who testified, most of those officials are gone.

So, as you noted in the intro to this segment, there are a lot of sources I've spoken to -- former senior officials who are quite anxious, who are in the influence business now. Who are making money now by virtue of their access to this president.

If the president finds, based on this report if it's not redacted, the fact that they did, indeed, cooperate with the special counsel, they do have a reason to be worried.

However, at this point, the current ranks of this administration are so thin. As you know, Boris, it's a constant --

ROMANS: Yes.

PLOTT: -- revolving door. The senior officials in there, at this point, the majority of which did not cooperate and did not have involved in this. And for that reason, they don't have much reason to fear for their job security.

And I was speaking to a campaign adviser the other day who told me ultimately, their view is that there was no collusion. So no matter what unsavory details come out --

ROMANS: Right.

PLOTT: -- about this president, that is the line they will continue to hammer.

SANCHEZ: Just say it wasn't illegal.

ROMANS: Right. It wasn't illegal but look, maybe there's some embarrassing stuff that comes out, maybe not. But let's step back for a minute --

PLOTT: Yes.

ROMANS: -- because just because it wasn't illegal doesn't mean maybe the American people deserve to know what was happening, right?

PLOTT: Of course.

ROMANS: I mean, there's a reason this probe happened in the first place and that is because there was some really unusual stuff happening, right?

SANCHEZ: Yes, to say the least, yes.

ROMANS: I mean, you had the Russians trying to interfere in the American election. You had meetings between Russian officials and U.S. campaign officials, that then they lied about.

SANCHEZ: You had the president with two Russians in the Oval Office saying that firing Comey takes pressure off of him. There was so much going on.

ROMANS: There was just so -- I mean, in a way, it's almost like a probe of Trump's own making because of his own -- of his own behavior. I mean -- and in the end -- we showed the numbers -- there are 199 criminal counts here. PLOTT: I think, to me, the most important thing to remember as a reporter is that when you look at this from a 30,000-foot view you have to remember that the Trump era has in many ways numbed us to the true meaning of scandal and what unethical behavior looks like because we've never had quite an administration like this.

So all of these things you're pointing out in a past administration would just dominate the airwaves. Would immediately spark calls for impeachment. But Trump, in many ways, benefits by the sort of comparative continuum on the basis of his own unsavory behavior.

ROMANS: Right.

PLOTT: So the fact that we're still not sort of just in awe that the President of the United States may have violated campaign finance laws by paying off hush money to his --

SANCHEZ: Right.

PLOTT: -- porn star mistress -- I mean, it really is spectacular when you think about it.

So, yes, even if there are ultimately no charges against White House officials or the president when this comes out, the American people deserve to know that these are a lot of the things that are not great, likely unethical, that are going on within the West Wing.

[05:40:05] SANCHEZ: All right, Elaina Plott. Thank you so much for putting it all into context for us. Prepare your printers --

ROMANS: Yes.

SANCHEZ: -- just a couple of hours away from now.

ROMANS: Yes. Make sure you've got enough printer ink and coffee.

PLOTT: Thank you, guys.

ROMANS: Nice to see you, thanks.

PLOTT: You, too.

ROMANS: Breaking overnight, a big red flag in talks with North Korea. Pyongyang is demanding Secretary of State Mike Pompeo be replaced in any future talks.

CNN's Will Ripley monitoring developments. He is live in Hong Kong. What's going on here, Will?

WILL RIPLEY, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: You know, you have to wonder Christine if it is coincidental or not that North Korea starts turning up the pressure on President Trump on the eve of this major release of the redacted Mueller report.

We know they watch U.S. politics very closely because it was Secretary Pompeo's testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that infuriated the North Koreans and has now caused them to demand that he be taken off the spot as lead negotiator for the United States.

This is the Secretary of State of the United States. North Korea is saying he needs to be out and they want somebody who is more mature.

They say that Pompeo was mean and disrespected their supreme leader, Kim Jong Un, someone he has met with several times in Pyongyang. He's hosted North Korean delegations in the United States.

Think of the time and the energy and the hours that Secretary Pompeo has invested in building a relationship and building trust with the North Koreans to try to move diplomacy along and now, they're saying he needs to be out or they might not continue talking with the United States. What kind of a position does that put President Trump in?

And then, of course, at the same time, Kim Jong Un, just this week, has conducted two military tests. He oversaw pilot -- a fighter pilot combat readiness drill. And, state media says he oversaw the testing of a new kind of tactical weapon.

He hasn't launched a rocket or a missile or a satellite or conducted a nuclear test, at least not yet, but he is certainly sending a signal to President Trump about where things could go if diplomacy breaks down -- Christine.

ROMANS: He is flirting with that line there of no missiles, no launches, no missile tests. But, he is showing that his military readiness is there.

All right, thanks, Will Ripley. Nice to see you.

SANCHEZ: A 37-year-old man is in police custody for bringing gas cans into St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York. The suspect is described as emotionally disturbed. Media reports identify him as Marc Lamparello of Hasbrouck Heights, New Jersey.

Police say he was carrying two containers of gasoline, along with lighter fluid and lighters. Authorities tell us they're not sure what his intentions were but there was obviously great concern given the recent fire that devastated Notre Dame Cathedral.

ROMANS: Bells ringing across France yesterday afternoon, marking two days since the Notre Dame inferno.

French police are back at the iconic gothic cathedral. They're stepping up their investigation into the exact cause of the fire. The French media report investigators examining the electrical systems as a possible cause.

SANCHEZ: Drug dealers in white coats. Sixty people, including doctors, pharmacists, and nurses, were busted in the largest illegal opioid operation ever conducted by the Justice Department. The crackdown taking place across eight states.

All the medical professionals were charged with illegally prescribing and disturbing opioids and other dangerous narcotics.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BRIAN BENCZKOWSKI, ASSISTANT ATTORNEY GENERAL, CRIMINAL DIVISION, DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE: As charged, these cases involve approximately 350,000 opioid prescriptions and more than 32 million pills.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SANCHEZ: The Justice Department says one physician who branded himself the "Rock Doc" prescribed powerful and dangerous combinations of opioids and other drugs in exchange for sexual favors.

ROMANS: Yes, the long list of things some of these doctors did. Leaving prescriptions signed at the front desk ready to be purchased by their patients.

SANCHEZ: Yes, disturbing.

ROMANS: Concierge fees so that you could be ready to get drugs at any moment.

Forty-three minutes past the hour.

He helped save an entire youth soccer team stuck in a cave. Now, one of those rescuers needed help, himself.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[05:48:21] ROMANS: Let's get a check on "CNN Business" this morning.

Global markets are lower amid some weak factory data from the Eurozone's two largest economies, Germany and France.

On Wall Street, you've got futures leaning a little bit lower here, down slightly ahead of some fresh economic data today. Not a big move at all.

U.S. stocks edged lower yesterday, too, but barely. The Dow closed down three points. The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq both finished slightly lower but those are not numbers to be concerned about.

A new read on the U.S. economy is in just a few hours. Weekly jobless claims and retail sales are due at 8:30 a.m.

The latest in the unicorn parade on Wall Street, Pinterest makes its public debut today, pricing its IPO at $19.00, $2.00 above its original proposed price. Pinterest is valued at roughly $12.6 billion. The strong demand for Pinterest, maybe it will ease investor concerns about these tech companies going public.

This year, we had Lyft's lackluster Wall Street debut last month. We'll see maybe if this eases concern.

There's another coming -- Zoom -- a videoconference company that makes it public debut today.

All right. Last week, America's bank CEOs, at a congressional hearing, were asked whether women or a person of color would likely succeed them. All lined up there -- none of them raised their hands.

Now, this. A big promotion at JPMorgan Chase puts a woman in contention to succeed Jamie Dimon. Its CFO Marianne Lake is leaving her post to lead the bank's consumer lending business. She's already one of the most powerful women in banking.

Her new portfolio puts her in charge of JPMorgan's card services, home lending, and auto finance divisions.

Now, Dimon declined to comment about his succession during the bank's earnings call last week. He is 63 and he has given no indication he plans to step down anytime soon.

[05:50:02] SANCHEZ: About half a million students in and around Denver will finally go back to school with heightened security this morning.

Sol Pais, that Florida 18-year-old who was said to be infatuated with the Columbine massacre, was found dead yesterday. Officials say she shot herself with the gun that she bought when she arrived in Colorado.

ROMANS: Now, the FBI is looking into a Web site they believe is connected to her. This Web site -- we're not identifying it here at CNN, but it had scanned handwritten journals, entries signed Sol Pais. The entries included crude drawings of firearms and knives, and a person in a trench coat holding what appears to be a weapon.

So there will be heightened security for these students today around Denver, but they will be going back to school.

We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[05:55:23] SANCHEZ: Severe weather will not stop battering the middle of the country. Take a look at this tornado spotted in Oklahoma. The threat is now moving to the Deep South where there were storms just a couple of days ago.

Here's meteorologist Pedram Javaheri.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

PEDRAM JAVAHERI, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Yes, Boris and Christine, the severe weather threat is shifting right along the Gulf Coast here.

And already into the early-morning hours seeing plenty of thunderstorms and plenty of lightning strikes from San Antonio and points eastward. We'll expect some of the activity to push right through Houston in the next couple of hours. Dallas certainly getting the thunderstorms this morning and they expand on towards the north.

Little Rock toward St. Louis, plenty of activity as well. And, in fact, seven reports of tornadoes in the past 24 hours. But the vast majority of the activity here related to large hail and certainly some damaging winds.

That threat exists here and I think the increased nature of the tornado threat is going to be kind of seen right around the Jackson area and points southward towards Mobile. That's an area of the best bet here for severe weather to persist for Thursday morning and eventually into Thursday afternoon.

But again, this is a multi-day threat set-up so we'll see this want to shift farther towards the East. And then about 40-plus million people, come Friday, are going to be impacted by this across the Carolinas.

Portions of Northern Florida, same sort of a threat zone here with hail, wind, and a few tornadoes possible within that zone.

Rainfall, that can be a concern as far as flooding across portions of Mississippi and parts of the Gulf Coast states. As much as two to four inches of rainfall in the next couple of days -- guys.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ROMANS: All right, thank you so much for that.

Samsung's new Galaxy Fold is not living up to its name. The device is billed as a foldable smartphone that turns into a tablet.

But several reporters with early access to the device say the screen broke after a few days. Samsung says it will thoroughly review those devices and it warns buyers that the protective plastic is not supposed to be peeled off.

The Fold will be available starting April 26th. It will retail for just under $2,000.

SANCHEZ: A British diver who helped rescue a Thai youth soccer team from a cave last year needed a rescue of his own. Josh Bratchley went missing Tuesday in a cave in Tennessee.

Specialized divers were called in to help and one of them found Bratchley the next day. He was trapped in an air pocket in the flooded cave.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

EDD SORENSON, RESCUE DIVER: I came up to the air pocket and shockingly, there he was calm as could be. He just said, "Thank you, thank you. Who are you?"

DEREK WOOLBRIGHT, SPOKESMAN, JACKSON COUNTY EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY, JACKSON COUNTY, TENNESSEE: He was awake, alert, and oriented. His only request when he got to the surface was that the wanted some pizza.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SANCHEZ: Don't we all? The other cavers in Bratchley's group stayed behind to assist with

search and rescue efforts.

ROMANS: All right. You may have heard the redacted version of the Mueller report comes out this morning. Oh, you didn't know? It happens this morning.

While you were sleeping, comics offered their predictions.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE, CBS "THE LATE SHOW WITH STEPHEN COLBERT": In exchange for Hillary Clinton's e-mails, the Trump team agreed to --

GILBERT GOTTFRIED, COMEDIAN: Redacted, redacted, redacted.

STEPHEN COLBERT, HOST, CBS "THE LATE SHOW WITH STEPHEN COLBERT: Now, the comedy of Barr and Rosenstein have scheduled a 9:30 a.m. press conference to release the report tomorrow, OK, which will undoubtedly blow the lid off Donald Trump's corruption.

And until then, I will pass the time counting my chickens, which I will safely place in one basket.

There you go. Who wants an egg? There you go.

SETH MEYERS, HOST, NBC "LATE NIGHT WITH SETH MEYERS": A redacted version of special counsel Robert Mueller's report is expected to be released tomorrow morning. Right now, we don't know what's in it, but tomorrow won't be any different.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMANS: Redacted and color-coded, and two versions. Oh, it's going to be a great day.

SANCHEZ: It's going to be a long day.

ROMANS: Thanks for joining us. I'm Christine Romans.

SANCHEZ: And I'm Boris Sanchez. "NEW DAY" starts right now.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: Barr is giving a press conference. And he's been fantastic. He's grabbed it by the horn.

NADLER: The attorney general is trying to bake in the narrative for the benefit of the White House. This is wrong.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There should be as little reaction as possible. I suspect that if it is, he has very good legal reason to do so.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There's a big question about whether Barr's conduct entitles him to the benefit of the doubt. JIM ACOSTA, CNN CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: And the president is not worried. There's a sense of dread for people who have spoken to the Mueller team.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ANNOUNCER: This is NEW DAY with Alisyn Camerota and John Berman.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: We want to welcome our viewers in the United States and around the world. This is NEW DAY. It is Thursday, April 18th, 6:00 here in New York.

Don't adjust your sets. John Berman is off this week and Chris Cuomo is making a homecoming back here with me. Great to have you.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: Not enough steroids and plastic surgery in the world to change him overnight to look like this gorilla.

CAMEROTA: I thought you got out of this morning racket.

CUOMO: No, no, I came back.

CAMEROTA: That's so great.

END