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Early Start with John Berman and Zoraida Sambolin
Attorney General William Barr Rejects House Hearing; Republicans Continue to Focus on Clinton E-mail; Joe Biden Gets Pushback for China Remarks; Anti-Government Protests Rage in Venezuela. Aired 4:30-5a ET
Aired May 02, 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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[04:31:23] REP. JERRY NADLER (D-NY): He's trying to blackmail the committee.
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DAVE BRIGGS, CNN ANCHOR: Democrats could hold the attorney general in contempt. Bill Barr refusing to testify today a day after some testy testimony on Capitol Hill.
CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: All right. And there is Bill Barr after that testimony yesterday. He's not going to be testifying today which is a fascinating development.
BRIGGS: We have an interesting story for you also ahead about why $6.5 million was paid as part of that college admission scandal by a Chinese family. A fascinating story. All that and much more straight ahead.
ROMANS: All right. Good morning and welcome to EARLY START. I'm Christine Romans.
BRIGGS: I'm Dave Briggs.
One day on the hot seat was apparently enough for the attorney general. William Barr informing a House panel he will not testify today as scheduled. Barr's move raises the prospect Democrats will hold the nation's top law enforcement official in contempt of Congress. He had been scheduled to testify to the House Judiciary Committee about his handling of the Mueller report. But Barr rejected the committee's plan to have one of its staff lawyers question him alongside lawmakers. That angered committee chairman Jerry Nadler.
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NADLER: He is trying to blackmail the committee into not following what we think is the most effective means of eliciting the information we need. And the Congress cannot permit the executive branch, we cannot permit the administration to dictate to Congress how we operate.
(END VIDEO CLIP) ROMANS: Nadler says the panel will meet today as planned and Nadler says he'll give Barr a day or two to comply with his subpoena for the full unredacted Mueller report. Information that was actually due Wednesday morning. Chairman Nadler says the committee is looking at May 15th as a possible date for Special Counsel Robert Mueller to testify.
BRIGGS: Excuse me.
ROMANS: I'll take it. How about I take it, Dave?
BRIGGS: Sure. Thank you.
ROMANS: It's a Thursday morning, folks. Now as for the testimony Barr did give before the Senate Judiciary Committee, the attorney general made no apology for his handling of the Mueller report. This just a day after it was revealed Mueller told Barr he did not think Barr's four-page summary properly characterized the full report.
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WILLIAM BARR, ATTORNEY GENERAL: The letter is a bit snitty and I think it was probably written by one of his staff. His work concluded when he sent his report to the attorney general. At that point, it was my baby, and it was my decision how and when to make it public, not Bob Mueller's.
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ROMANS: Speaking of snitty, that line even got Merriam-Webster's attention. Their definition, to be disagreeably ill-tempered. Got it? As for Barr, he tried to recast some of Mueller's findings including that President Trump told then White House counsel Don McGahn to get rid of Mueller.
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BARR: The president never directed him to fire, and there is a distinction between saying to someone, go fire him, go fire Mueller, and saying, have him removed based on conflict. The difference between them is if you remove someone for a conflict of interest, then there would be another -- presumably another person appointed.
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ROMANS: Important to note that in May 2017, before the McGahn incident, the Justice Department made clear Mueller had no ethical conflicts.
Republicans on the panel kept a sharp focus where the president would want it, on the origin of the Mueller probe and its connection to the Clinton campaign.
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[04:35:05] SEN. JOHN CORNYN (R-TX): We've heard a lot about the Steele dossier. Mr. Steele, of course, is a former British intelligence officer hired by -- to do opposition research by the Hillary Clinton campaign.
SEN. CHUCK GRASSLEY (R-IA): The investigation of Hillary Clinton.
CORNYN: Secretary Clinton.
SEN. MIKE LEE (R-UT): Involving Hillary Clinton, against Hillary Clinton.
SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC): Strzok, Strzok, Strzok, the Clinton e- mail situation.
GRASSLEY: The Steele dossier was central to the now debunked collusion narrative.
GRAHAM: Do you share my concerns about the counter intelligence investigation, how it was opened and why it was opened?
BARR: Yes.
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ROMANS: That last part actually puts Barr at odds with the FBI and the Mueller report. Both say the probe actually began after a series of events that began with the release of hacked DNC e-mails. The focus on Hillary Clinton led to this surprising exchange.
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GRAHAM: Did you have a problem with the way Comey handled the Clinton e-mail investigation?
BARR: Yes, I said so at the time.
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ROMANS: All right. The problem with that claim is that actually Barr said the opposite at the time. In a "Washington Post" op-ed, he wrote, "Comey had no choice but to issue the statement he did. Indeed, it would have violated policy had he not done so."
Democrats meantime raised concerns about Barr's role overseeing more than a dozen spinoff investigations from the special counsel's probe. The attorney general says he has no plans to recuse himself.
BRIGGS: Apparently nobody interested about Russian interference in the 2016 election. But anyway, let's move to 2020 where Joe Biden does not believe the United States should be worried about China as a geopolitical rival. During a stop in Iowa Biden was discussing his experience as vice president and his time as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Here's what he said about other world leaders.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) BIDEN: I don't know a single solitary one who would not change places with the problems the president of the United States has versus the problems they have. China is going to eat our lunch -- come on, man. They can't figure out how they're going to deal with the corruption that exists within the system. I mean, you know, they're not bad folks, folks, but guess what, they're not competition for us.
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BRIGGS: Wow. For the record, China is accused of stealing billions of dollars worth of intellectual property through cyber and other methods, and the Trump administration's ongoing trade war with China is hurting farmers in places like Iowa.
ROMANS: You know, Biden has downplayed the China threat before, this time he's getting pushback from both parties. Republican Senator Mitt Romney of Utah tweeting, "This will not age well." And Democratic rival Bernie Sanders adding, "Since the China trade deal I voted against, America has lost over three million manufacturing jobs. It's wrong to pretend that China isn't one of our major economic competitors."
All right. Why did a Chinese family pay $6.5 million to the mastermind behind the college admission scandal? A source confirms these payments from the family of a Stanford student, $6.5 million, no definitive word why the payment was made but we do know the parents were referred to Rick Singer by a Morgan Stanley adviser named Michael Wu. He has been fired by Morgan Stanley for not cooperating with an internal investigation into that scandal.
No charges have been filed against the student, her parents or Wu. Meantime, federal prosecutors in Boston have subpoenaed other parents now who were not originally charged. An official tells us prosecutors are looking for financial records and call logs related to those parents.
BRIGGS: The Trump administration formally declaring its opposition to the entire Affordable Care Act calling it unconstitutional in a federal appeals court. If Obamacare is struck down, 21 million Americans could lose their health insurance and millions more could lose protections for preexisting conditions as well as required coverage for pregnancies, prescription drugs and mental health.
ROMANS: Assistant Attorney General Joseph Hunt acknowledges the administration previously argued that parts of the law could remain in effect but now he says the administration believes it could no longer defend that position. He claims rewriting the statute by picking and choosing provisions would interfere with the role of Congress. The brief was filed with the conservative-leaning Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Arguments will be heard in July.
All right. More Republican senators now are making their concerns heard about Fed pick Stephen Moore. Several are predicting his nomination could be dead by the end of the week. Senator John Thune told reporters there are, quote, "ongoing discussions and conversations" with the White House about Moore, adding, "We'll know more about that before long."
Senator Richard Shelby said Wednesday he thought that the nomination was in trouble. Shelby, a current member of the Senate Banking Committee, added, "You should not have controversy following you in or out of the job."
A White House source told CNN that Moore is being encouraged to keep a low profile after the West Wing cancelled his visit to Capitol Hill.
[04:40:05] Moore has been under scrutiny over writings that seem to disparage women, his personal financial issues, and his views about the Fed. Earlier this week, Moore suggested the decline in men's earnings is the biggest problem facing the economy. Fed chair Jerome Powell was asked about wages Wednesday.
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JEROME POWELL, FEDERAL RESERVE CHAIRMAN: I think men and women should make the same for the same work by and large.
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ROMANS: He declined to comment directly on Moore's remarks.
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POWELL: Not my role to engage with potential nominees to the Fed so I'm really not going to -- not going to go there.
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ROMANS: Yes, you know, that was our own Donna Borak who was there at that press conference. He was trying to see what he thought about wages and whether --
BRIGGS: Yes.
ROMANS: And whether Stephen Moore is right, that the biggest problem in the economy is that -- is not income inequality, it's not pay disparity between men and women, but that men's earnings are not rising as quickly as women.
BRIGGS: Right. Moore looking wobbly, though, at this point.
ROMANS: At this point, yes.
BRIGGS: All right. Would you pay a little extra to eat out if it helped fight climate change? This fall restaurants across California have the option to join a program that adds 1 percent to your bill. Funds from the initiative will go to farmers to help them make changes in their fields that help capture carbon dioxide.
CO2 is considered one of the primary contributors to climate change. Full service restaurant prices in California are already skyrocketing, up 2.7 percent in the past year. So it's not clear how many customers will be willing to willingly get on board with extra money on that bill. We'll see.
ROMANS: All right. Both Nicolas Maduro and Juan Guaido trying to rally support to their sides in Venezuela. Plans to force Maduro from power are sputtering. CNN is in Caracas. We'll go there next.
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[04:46:06] Neither side backing down on the power struggle in Venezuela. Embattled President Nicolas Maduro blaming the U.S. directly for the turmoil as opposition leader Juan Guaido calling on government workers to go on permanent protest. Human Rights Watch says of the tens of thousands of demonstrators, 168 have been detained. The head of Venezuela's secret police has now broken from Maduro but Maduro is vowing to stay in control as the U.S. weighs its options.
Nick Paton Walsh is in Caracas.
NICK PATON WALSH, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Dave, Christine, on Wednesday, clashes kind of continued here in Central Caracas for the second day but not really with the scenes of intensity that have got much of the world shocked on Tuesday. And neither did we see really the number of protesters, the opposition had hoped to call to the streets on this sort of big 1st of May Day of National Insurrection.
And we heard signs of perhaps acceptance of weakness from both of the key leaders here. Juan Guaido, the opposition leader, who is interim president, recognized by dozens of countries outside of Venezuela, he stepped forward and said that maybe on Tuesday he simply didn't get enough of the military to appear alongside to defect, to affect a real change here inside of Venezuela but insisted what he called the final phase of the end of President Nicolas Maduro would continue.
Nicolas Maduro, well, he gave a fairly characteristic lengthy speech in front of quite a lackluster crowd but in that speech, too, he even suggested maybe he needed to rethink his government strategy in the days ahead. So clearly the sign we saw on early Tuesday morning of Juan Guaido standing there with a number of military who defected and saying they wanted more to change the government here has shaken people up here considerably as has the unexpected departure of Venezuela's intelligence chief.
But there's a gulf between what's happening here which seems to be feeling like it's slipping back into a bit of a stalemate and the enormous pressure the United States is putting on from outside. Acting Secretary of Defense Shanahan saying he was cancelling a trip to the Europe to focus partly on Venezuela and Mike Pompeo, the secretary of State, suggesting that in fact military action was possible if that was in fact what the U.S. decided it needed to do.
Has any of that radically changed what's happening inside Venezuela? Unclear at this point. And many are really asking what's next or is it more of the same stalemate -- Dave, Christine.
ROMANS: All right, Nick Paton Walsh for us in Caracas. Thanks, Nick. New concerns about exposure to measles in two very crowded places.
First, at the Port of St. Lucia, in the Caribbean where a crew member on a cruise ship has a confirmed case of the viral infection. Now that ship is now quarantined. 300 passengers and crew members cannot get off.
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DR. MERLENE FREDERICKS-JAMES, ST. LUCIA'S CHIEF MEDICAL OFFICER: Because of the risk of potential infection, not just from the confirmed measles case, but from other persons who may be on this -- on the boat at the time, we thought it prudent to make a decision not to allow anyone to disembark.
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ROMANS: In California, moviegoers who went to see "Avengers: End Game" and other films at an Orange County theater last Thursday may have been exposed to measles. Public health officials say a woman with measles attended a midnight screening of the "Avengers" at the AMC Dine-in Fullerton 20 on Thursday from 11:00 p.m. to 4:00 a.m. Measles cases in the U.S. have reached the highest level on record since the virus was declared eliminated in 2000. Health officials place some of the blame on anti-vaxx parents.
BRIGGS: Drinking the tap water in California can increase the risk of cancer. Researchers examined how pollutants in the water interact rather than studying them individually, and they concluded the water is responsible for 221 additional cancer cases a year. That's more than 15,000 cases over the course of a lifetime. The findings are published in the "Peer Review Journal Environmental Health."
[04:50:02] Small to midsized communities were found to face some of the greatest cancer risks.
ROMANS: All right, Google --
BRIGGS: That's terrible.
ROMANS: Sure is. All right. Google wants to give people an easier way to delete their personal data. CNN Business has the details on its newest features. That's next.
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ROMANS: All right. The threat of more severe weather across the central part of the country, folks, today, more than 30 million people from Texas to Illinois are under a flood watch. This is Davenport, Iowa, one day after the swollen Mississippi River broke through a temporary barrier and inundated downtown.
Today the threat of more severe storms in Texas and parts of the Ohio River Valley and an early tropical disturbance could bring heavy rain to Florida.
[04:55:09] BRIGGS: The betting favorite in Saturday's Kentucky Derby Omaha Beach has been scratched from the Run for the Roses. He was diagnosed with entrapped epiglottis, a respiratory issue that compromises a horse's ability to breathe during exercise. The horse had already been recovering from a crack in his front left hoof. With Omaha Beach out, a field of 20 all set for the derby, the first leg of horse racing's Triple Crown.
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ALEX TREBEK, HOST, "JEOPARDY": Let's see if you came up with the correct response. Of course you did, and your wager substantial? Of course it was. $40,784. $101,682 today. And now let's take a look at that total, shall we, folks? A 20-day total of $1,528,012.
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ROMANS: Just another day at the office for James Holzhauer. With that victory he's tied for the second longest winning streak in "Jeopardy" history. Host Alex Trebek thinks Holzhauer has a shot of breaking Ken Jennings' record run of 74 straight wins.
Trebek in an ABC interview also opening up about his battle with pancreatic cancer.
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TREBEK: I'm used to dealing with pain, but what I'm not used to dealing with is the surges that come on suddenly of deep, deep sadness, and it brings tears to my eyes. I've discovered in this whole episode, ladies and gentlemen, that I'm a bit of a wuss.
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BRIGGS: No, you're not. You're tougher than all of us.
ROMANS: He's so great. Yes. The 78-year-old Trebek says he's fighting through it and his cancer lab tests are improving. He also says the thoughts and prayers from all of his fans have made a positive difference in his journey.
BRIGGS: So how do you really get to "Sesame Street"? Probably the number one Broadway local train. The intersection of West 63rd Street and Broadway in Manhattan has been permanently renamed Sesame Street. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio made the announcement with a little help from his big friends, Big Bird, Elmo and Cookie Monster, the real thing, not the fake ones you see around here in New York.
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BRIGGS: The renaming is in honor of the 50th anniversary of the iconic children's program.
A Rhode Island's hospice patient's final request was to watch the big "Battle of Winterfell" on "Game of Thrones," her favorite show. Well, the "Throne's" cast did 88-year-old Claire Walton one better. She watched the episode accompanied by video greetings from 10 cast members. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MILTOS YEROLEMOU, ACTOR: I know you can't be here today but I just want to say hello, and that you are with us in spirit.
LIAM CUNNINGHAM, ACTOR: It's Liam here. You might know me as Sir Davos Seaworth. I hope you're fit enough to watch the battle which is tonight. I wish you the very best.
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BRIGGS: The episode aired Sunday on HBO. Claire Walton sadly died the next day.
ROMANS: All right, 57 minutes past the hour. Let's get a check on CNN Business this Thursday morning. Wall Street futures barely moving right now as investors digest the Federal Reserve's latest interest rate decision. The Fed left interest rates unchanged and reiterated that patient approach to monetary policy. The Dow closed 164 points lower Wednesday. Just a little over half a percent lower. The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq closed down just under 1 percent.
The big event tomorrow, the April jobs report, remember in March hiring rebounded, the U.S. economy added 196,000 jobs. Unemployment held steady at 3.8 percent. Investors wanted to see if that pace continued or if hiring is beginning to slow.
Hulu's subscriber base is growing but Hulu said Wednesday it now has 26.8 million paid subscribers on its service. Still lags far behind Netflix which has nearly 150 million subscribers globally, 60 million of those are from the United States. Hulu available only in the U.S. Hulu CEO said their growth and its lineup of content reflect our deep investment in product, programming brand, customer experience and business strategy.
People are increasingly concerned about their privacy online. Now Google wants to make it easier for users to delete your personal data. Google announced Wednesday it's adding auto delete tools for location history data as well as Web browsing and app activity. The new feature lets users select how long they want their activity data to be stored, three months or 18 months. Google already offered tools to delete all or part of user's location history or Web and app activity data, but it had to be done manually. The feature will be available in the coming weeks.
How do you feel about privacy? Is there such a thing as privacy anymore online?
BRIGGS: No, it's gone, and to protect it, you have to go to extraordinary lengths. Something our kids need to know a little bit about.
ROMANS: Yes.
BRIGGS: EARLY START continues right now.
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NADLER: He is trying to blackmail the committee.
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BRIGGS: Democrats could hold the attorney general in contempt. Bill Barr refusing to testify today, a day after some --
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