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At This Hour
D.A. Said Didn't Have Evidence to Charge Cosby; U.S. Markets Down Sharply. Aired 11:30a-12p ET
Aired July 08, 2015 - 11:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[11:32:26] KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: This morning, Disney and at least two tv networks are distancing themselves from Bill Cosby after stunning revelations that he acquired a powerful sedative to give to women he wanted to have sex with. Now, Cosby admitted that while under oath in a 2005 -- admitted that while under oath in a 2005 deposition. But the details are just now coming out. He settled that sexual assault case.
The former district attorney who handled it, he wanted to charge Cosby 10 years ago but he said this morning he didn't have the evidence.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BRUCE CASTOR, FORMER MONTGOMERY COUNTY DISTRICT ATTORNEY: The basic problem always remained that we didn't have any forensics or anything to tell us what had happened because of the delay of a year between when the event occurred and when Andrea Constand came to the police.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BOLDUAN: HLN legal analyst, Joey Jackson, is here to discuss.
He says the basic problem always remained, we didn't have anything to tell us what happened. What do you make of the D.A.'s comments?
JOEY JACKSON, HLN LEGAL ANALYST: A couple of things. What goes on, as a former prosecutor, you always bring a case unless you cannot prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt. That's the standard. Do you believe you can --
(CROSSTALK)
BOLDUAN: You always bring a case unless you cannot prove it beyond a reasonable doubt?
JACKSON: Absolutely. In other words, someone comes to you -- you never know precisely what happened but if you feel there's credibility there and you believe that you could move forward and prove it, then you bring the case.
Now, let's talk about forensics. Obviously what happens, Kate, is it makes a case very easy if you have forensic evidence. If you have DNA evidence, if you have anything else to subject something was amiss there. But what you're seeing more and more in rape cases, no matter how old they are, often -- you have experts that testify in court to this -- oftentimes either rape victims or sexual abuse or assault victims don't come forward for a variety of reasons, whether it's embarrassment, they just are not ready to come forward, whether you suppress or repress the feeling about it. So often what a district attorney does, a prosecutor, is they rely upon recent outcry evidence. What is that? That's evidence where, for example, there's no forensics but I told a friend. After it happened, "I said, oh, my god, I can't believe what he did to me. I can't believe what happened." And those people are brought into court. And it's not hearsay. It's an exception to the hearsay rule. And it's compelling for a jury to hear what you said to a friend or family member thereafter. Apparently, this district attorney felt that he just did not have the goods to move forward.
BOLDUAN: But he does say that he did think that Cosby was guilty, though. This is an interesting part of the interview. I want you to listen to this, where he still says he thinks Cosby was guilty. Listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
[11:35:05] CASTOR: You get a gut instinct about these things. And my people and I thought he was guilty and it was one of those things that I decided that the best approach when we didn't have enough evidence to arrest was to try to get half a loaf by making the civil case as good as possible. And it appears as though that worked.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BOLDUAN: Is that a strategy?
JACKSON: No, it really is not. A couple of things I would take him to task on. The first thing I would say is if you feel someone is guilty, you move forward and you build a case on whatever strategy you need to make it happen. In the event you believe your victim is credible. That's evidence. It's evidence to have someone testify as to what occurred. And then you try to build it. Was he there? Where was Cosby that day? Can we get receipts or records? Him merely being there is not suggesting he did anything wrong. But it places him there. And then you can talk about, if you're a prosecutor, other people who saw her that day. What was her demeanor like? Did it change? What was her comportment? Was she acting differently? That's number one. Number two is, as a former prosecutor, my job was never, ever -- and you're instructed of this. I'm not concerned about the civil aspects of any case.
BOLDUAN: That's what struck me. That's he --
(CROSSTALK)
JACKSON: No. That's not your job. Most respectfully, your job is to do the justice for the people of whatever state you're in. My job as a prosecutor was to do whatever that justice is. If it means I have to prosecute, I do. But you're not worried about a civil case and whether somebody can pursue it and make money. You're worried about whether or not --
(CROSSTALK)
BOLDUAN: It's totally out of your hands.
JACKSON: -- holding someone accountable for what they did. Period.
BOLDUAN: This is an excellent point you're making. And this is also -- I don't know if it's a small portion, but at least only a part of a full deposition that was made.
JACKSON: Sure.
BOLDUAN: I wonder -- you've been involved with a lot of these. You understand what a deposition is. What more could come out in the full deposition? What else would be asked --
(CROSSTALK)
JACKSON: In a deposition, the way it works in a deposition, you're allowed to ask any question that could lead to admissible evidence. Whereas, at trial, there's limitations as to what you can ask. Objection, sustained. At a deposition, you can fish for information. And there's not a lot of objections the attorney on the other side could make. There's no judge there. So you use it as a discovery device. So you ask them about other people. What they've been doing? Where he was on certain days? And it's important to find out other information as to other cases. Why? Because you can bring in those other cases during trial as similar acts of misconduct that you engage in.
BOLDUAN: So a federal judge has released this portion.
JACKSON: Yes.
BOLDUAN: Interesting reasoning why he released it, because of this moralist argument, this dichotomy between there Bill Cosby and this Bill Cosby. Do you think that would suggest that more of the deposition should be released?
JACKSON: I think what the attorney who took the deposition is doing a very good thing by asking other women who came up during that deposition, are you OK with it?
(CROSSTALK)
BOLDUAN: We haven't confirmed that but I have been hearing that.
JACKSON: Exactly. Your privacy interests, what do you think about that? But I think it's important. At the end of the day, the victims certainly want justice. Of course, Kate, the problem with getting justice either from a civil perspective, that is, getting money, or from a criminal perspective is the statute of limitations. And we've seen the statute of limitations is gone. Very creative ways, this defamation. Quickly, about the defamation issues, Kate, what they're doing, these
other lawyers, they're saying, we can get you on defamation because you called us a liar. The big problem is twofold on that. Number one, Cosby himself, did he call these people a liar or was it his representative or attorneys, which in which case it's difficult to get to him. But from an attorney's perspective, I advocate all the time for my clients and I don't want them to be held liable for what I say. And the other issue is the issue of damages. Defamation goes to reputation. And I think the more that comes out, the more these victims are being believed. The person with the reputation problem is Bill Cosby. So I think these victims now are in large measure being vindicated. I also want to say, innocent until proven guilty. I get that. But the more that comes out, the more likely it seems that something went amiss, even though he's never been found guilty of anything or been held civilly accountable. Although he did settled this case.
BOLDUAN: He did settle in this case we're talking about.
Great to see you, Joey.
JACKSON: Thank you.
BOLDUAN: A programming note for all of you, tonight, a CNN special report, "No Laughing Matter, Inside the Cosby Allegations." That's tonight at 9:00 p.m. right here on CNN.
Still ahead for us, U.S. stocks are taking a dive today. If it's not the mess in Greece, then what is going on? We're going to talk about it coming up.
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[11:42:58] BOLDUAN: Happening right now, U.S. markets are down sharply this morning in response to serious problems in Greece and China. China's stock market is in a free fall. The Shanghai Composite plunging 8 percent today alone. The world's second largest economy has lost more than, listen to this, $3 trillion worth of investment in just a three weeks. How is this affecting your money?
Let's discuss all of this. We have CNN global economic analyst, Rana Foroohar; as well as CNN business correspondent, Alison Kosik.
Let's get to you, Alison, first, on what's happening in the market right now.
ALISON KOSIK, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Right now, here at the New York Stock Exchange, trading has suddenly been halted. It's been like this for, I'd say, about five minutes now. Everybody's sort of standing around, around their monitors, down on the floor. I'm above the stock exchange in this booth watching all the traders pile around their monitors trying to figure out what happened. One trader telling me this seems to be a technology problem within the New York Stock Exchange. Not getting an official word yet from the New York Stock Exchange as to what's happening but we do see trading halted right now at the New York Stock Exchange. Trading still is continuing at the NASDAQ, though. I do see the NASDAQ trading as we speak -- Kate?
BOLDUAN: What would a technical glitch mean? The fact that trading has been halted for five minutes is potentially very significant. What's the mood there? What are folks telling you?
KOSIK: It is extremely significant. There's a lot of confusion. I do see a lot of people looking bewildered as to what's happening. And it comes on a crazy market day. We are seeing the Dow before trading was halted fall 175 points. This is as we're seeing the markets in China also tank with their own concerns. This going on with, of course, all the tumult in Greece as well -- Kate?
[11:44:50] BOLDUAN: Alison, you keep working on that. We'll get back to you in one second.
Let's bring in Rana Foroohar.
Rana --
(LAUGHTER)
-- that may be unrelated to the China issue but amazing nonetheless. This has happened before.
RANA FOROOHAR, CNN GLOBAL ECONOMIC ANALYST: It could be a flash crash. We don't know. Interesting it's happening at the same time you're seeing this free fall in China. Markets there in the last few days have been down a total of 35 percent.
(CROSSTALK)
BOLDUAN: Let's talk about this. We'll keep monitoring what's going on at the U.S. stock exchange. Alison will get back to us when we learn more about this.
But let's focus on what is a free fall in China. Markets down 30 percent-plus in three weeks. What would that look like here?
FOROOHAR: It would look like the lead-up to the 1929 crash. This is an amazing, amazing event. It's not totally unexpected, I will tell you. I've actually been thinking the markets were due for a major correction in China for some time because they're having their own debt crisis. What's happening in China is a lot like what happened in the U.S. in the subprime crisis. There's been a tripling of debt in China over the last few years. An example, the debt-to-GDP ratio in China is 300 percent, more than triple what it is in America.
BOLDUAN: Put it in comparison within Greece. Greece pales in comparison.
FOROOHAR: Greece is a sideshow. China creates a new Greece every six weeks.
(LAUGHTER)
China is 30 percent of the world's growth. And the stock market situation is totally out of control. Stock markets in China are kind of a new thing to start with. There are 90 million mom-and-pop investors in China. Two-thirds of them don't have a high school degree. We're not talking about a sophisticated investor base. We're talking about a very volatile, nascent market here.
BOLDUAN: Is there a kind of one view of how this all happened? We're looking at a bubble here.
FOROOHAR: Totally looking at a bubble. It's something we know has been building. When Lehman Brothers crashed and we had our financial crisis, China went down the tubes, too. The Chinese government started pumping money into the markets. The stock market is one thing they wanted to buoy. They wanted companies to use that money to continue to grow. If China doesn't grow fast, they get protests in the street. They get social instability. It actually challenges the government, the communist party. They want to keep those markets up and keep the economy growing. But it is a bubble. Growth has been slowing in China. The big question now is can the government manage this?
BOLDUAN: Absolutely. I want to get back to that in just one second.
Let's get back to Alison Kosik, who's at the stock exchange.
Alison, what's the very latest? Is trading still halted there?
KOSIK: We are seeing that trading is still halting. Still waiting on a comment from the New York Stock Exchange. The NIE, they have suspended all trading. I'm hearing from a trader which could be a technology glitch and not necessarily something that happened intentionally, meaning the NYSE putting a halt. It could be a technology glitch. Interesting because the New York Stock Exchange prides itself on technology. You think about how the trading has changed here at the stock exchange. It's gone from more than 1,000, if not 1,500 many more on the floor in the old days, now much of the trading that goes on here at the New York Stock Exchange is purely electronic. It goes through these algorithms and the people on the floor here -- the number has certainly diminished as time has gone on. The New York Stock Exchange, once again, has gone through a series of new owners as well. And these owners pride themselves on this technology, on the strength of this technology of the New York Stock Exchange. And obviously according to one trader, the technology giving the New York Stock Exchange a problem today, reason trading was halted.
BOLDUAN: Alison, stick with us.
Rana, you were just saying, the volume of trading because of technology, this is where we --
(CROSSTALK)
FOROOHAR: There's been an exponential increase in the amount of shares that are moving around every day. The entire value of the market now flips over about once every 10 months. It used to be years and years. What's interesting, let's assume this was a computerized trading problem, a flash crash as they call it. It wouldn't be such a big deal if people were buying and holding stocks like they used to. It's a much bigger deal because the volumes are so great. Then you get a lot of turbulence from an event like this.
BOLDUAN: If it's a technical glitch, talk to me about the difference -- technical glitch halting trading versus the stock exchange itself forcing the trading to stop.
FOROOHAR: If the stock exchange made a call to halt trading and it wasn't for technical reasons, I would be curious if there was major market manipulation going on or another bigger issue. No evidence of that yet. But even a technical glitch really upsets people and draws attention to this issue that a lot of what's going on in the markets right now has nothing to do with the real economy, has nothing to do with what you and I are doing.
[11:49:54] BOLDUAN: And uncertainty is the worst thing for the market. This is certainly a technical glitch to halt trading.
FOROOHAR: I'll draw a comparison between what happens here and what happens in China. If you think volumes are bad here, in China, the market turns over once a month. It's just amazing the amount of speculative trading that goes on in those markets.
BOLDUAN: Absolutely.
Let's get back to Alison real quick.
A final note for you, Alison, what's going on?
KOSIK: I want to confirm that the New York Stock Exchange is telling us this is a technical issue on the floor. No one is certain what happened here. The New York Stock Exchange has been experiencing system problems this morning. This is not a flash crash, this is a technical issue. Once again, the irony of this is that the technology that the New York Stock Exchange prides itself upon, it's what it pitches out in markets when it tries to get IPOs to come here as opposed to NASDAQ, which has had its own huge glitches with technology. We think about the IPO of Facebook.
BOLDUAN: The Facebook IPO, yes, exactly.
KOSIK: Now you have the New York Stock Exchange, business has stopped here at the New York Stock Exchange. You look on the floor here, we have traders just sitting around on the floor, around their monitors wondering when trading will resume.
BOLDUAN: Let's read -- I was just handed the statement from the New York Stock Exchange spokesperson. Let me read it for all of you. It said -- just like Alison was just citing, "We're currently experiencing a technical issue that we're working to resolve as quickly as possible. We will be providing further updates as soon as we can and are doing our utmost to produce a swift resolution, communicate thoroughly and transparently and ensure timely and orderly market reopen."
Rana, to me, the fact that they're putting out the statement means it doesn't sound like it will be quick to reopen.
FOROOHAR: I hope it's very quick. Right now, you have three legs of the global stool that are wobbly, right? You have China, Europe, and now our markets are shut.
BOLDUAN: It's crazy.
FOROOHAR: It is crazy. This is a very sensitive period.
BOLDUAN: If it -- we can speculate for days right now what exactly it is.
FOROOHAR: Is, and we won't.
BOLDUAN: We don't know. We are figuring this out as we speak.
Alison, are you hearing anything more?
KOSIK: I am seeing the numbers moving, not hearing officially that trading has started but I see numbers moving. I also see the Dow dropping even more. Now the Dow falling 215 points, but nevertheless, trading has resumed at the New York Stock Exchange after a major technical glitch halted bids for several minutes here.
BOLDUAN: They call these after-action reviews. There's going to be a serious after-action review.
We'll get back to you. Alison will work on -- to get confirmation from the New York Stock Exchange itself. The numbers can probably tell us that, but we'll wait to see if there's confirmation of that.
What does a technical glitch -- let's say it lasted five, ten minutes. Do you have any idea what that would mean in dollars? What that could mean for investors?
FOROOHAR: Billions, as Alison was saying, about 80 percent of trading is done via computer programs, so these computer programs kick in based on what the market is doing. You don't have someone necessarily saying, oh, this could be a technical problem, let's change our algorithm. So all of this happens within seconds and it goes to how volatile the markets are.
BOLDUAN: In less than seconds.
FOROOHAR: Less than.
We've seen the stories of the servers, them wanting them to be as close in New Jersey as possible to the New York Stock Exchange, so they can move a millisecond off.
(CROSSTALK)
FOROOHAR: And a millisecond can mean millions and billions of dollars in trading.
BOLDUAN: Amazing. We'll continue to watch this. And back to China, for a quick second. We're watching volatility here
and volatility there. As we're watching volatility in both places, one thing we haven't gotten to is with all the volatility, the crisis China is facing, what is the fix there?
FOROOHAR: Well, the fix is not an easy one. They need to move to becoming a consumer-driven society. Right now the government is basically pumping all the money into the economy. You've probably heard of ghost cities in China. Buildings standing empty because the government builds them and nobody buys the apartments. China is trying to make this great leap forward, if you will, to being a middle-class consumption economy similar to what the U.S. Or Europe is. But it's a very hard transition to make. Not many countries make it. A lot of people think they can't make it with their political system being the autocracy it is right now.
BOLDUAN: So what should the U.S. -- is the U.S. investor -- is the U.S. investor protected from the technical glitches of the New York Stock Exchange?
(LAUGHTER)
Probably not, is the U.S. investor by the crisis in China? China largely limits foreign investment. Does that mean the U.S. investor is --
(CROSSTALK)
FOROOHAR: It's an interesting question. We're protected in the sense that this isn't a Lehman Brother's-style event where there's a lot of interconnections between banks that will collapse off the base of this, because China has a ring-fenced state-owned banking system. Kate, where it can affect U.S. investors and already is that China's growth has slowed down. China has been the biggest contributor to global growth in the last decade. When they slow down, it's a head wind for all of us.
BOLDUAN: What does it mean in terms of China's large owner of U.S. debt? What does that also mean?
FOROOHAR: Right. So our financial crisis happened, there was this sort of big worry they were going to sell all their T-bills, dump that debt. That's not going to happen because that would hurt them more than it would hurt us. But there is a worry, frankly, Kate, if they can't make this bigger transition that I talked about that over the next few years they simply won't be able to have the cash to keep funneling debt into their own economy. At that point you can be looking at a bigger crash.
[11:55:17] BOLDUAN: We're also not looking at a country that's very transparent in terms of how --
(CROSSTALK)
FOROOHAR: That's an understatement. BOLDUAN: -- how it operates. What are you looking for in terms of
when it could be affecting the United States? What are you looking for now? This has been going on for three weeks and it continues.
FOROOHAR: Exactly. Here's what I think is possible could happen. I think the government is going to come and put more money into the market. They're telling banks and state-owned funds not to sell. They're telling these state-owned companies to buy shares to put a ceiling under the market.
(CROSSTALK)
BOLDUAN: Which would not be able to happen here.
FOROOHAR: Absolutely. It would be totally illegal in the U.S. Lots of things happen in China that couldn't happen here. And it's very dodgy. You could see the market go back up and crash again because until they get this bigger economic issue solved of how to be a modern market economy, you're going to keep seeing what's happened again.
BOLDUAN: Speaking of a modern market economy --
(LAUGHTER)
-- let's end this with Alison Kosik, still working the phones to figure out what is going on, on the New York Stock Exchange.
Just to update our viewers, there was a halt in trading and the New York Stock Exchange saying that it as a technical issue that they're trying to resolve. We're trying to get confirmation if trading has begun yet again. It seems unclear at this moment and unclear what could happen.
Let me ask you, we've seen the technical glitch. It's very publicly happening at the NASDAQ with the Facebook IPO.
FOROOHAR: Right.
BOLDUAN: What was the fallout there? I'm trying to understand what the fallout could be here.
FOROOHAR: Well, I think there was the immediate market drop, but there was a loss of trust, you know? People need to have trust in these markets. Alison made the point that people come to the U.S. And list their companies and do IPOs because they think our markets work, that they're transparent unlike China --
(CROSSTALK)
FOROOHAR: -- that they have technology we can trust so when things like this happen it makes people feel insecure.
BOLDUAN: I think there's a bit of "insecurity," a good word for what we're looking at in the New York Stock Exchange.
Rana, thank you so much for being here. FOROOHAR: Thank you.
BOLDUAN: Alison Kosik is still working the phones.
We'll take a quick break with more news on this, what is going on, on the New York Stock Exchange today, as trading halted there. We'll have more news on that right after a break.
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