Return to Transcripts main page

The Lead with Jake Tapper

Snow and Ice Warnings in 22 States; Survivor Describes Seeing Bomber in the Crowd; Clinton: "I Want The Public to See My E-mail; Feds Warn About ISIS Recruiting Teens; Ringling Bros Say Bye to Elephants

Aired March 05, 2015 - 16:30   ET

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

JENNIFER GRAY, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Yes, really the hardest hit. We set records in Kentucky. And you can see this band of purple that stretches all the way through the state.

This is where we had the highest numbers and you can see, I-65 right there, right where all of those people got stuck. We had 23 inches of snowfall in portions of Kentucky and areas of Missouri.

We had about 15 and just very impressive numbers measured in feet. Of course, Lexington set a record. It was the snowiest two-day storm ever in Lexington, coming in at about 17.1 inches.

Here's your radar. It is pushing out, of course, all the way finished in Kentucky, Tennessee and now it's impacting portions of Virginia, D.C., New York, and just on the south side of Boston.

I don't think Boston's going to get the two inches they needed to break that record, but still snowing from New York City all the way down to D.C. Now this will continue to push out.

We should have one last push right around the 7:00 hour and then wrapping up for everyone, of course, a little bit of mix of rain and ice for northern portions of North Carolina, including Raleigh.

But then all of this will push out and very, very cold temperatures will come behind it. We could see an additional one to two inches of snow in D.C. -- Jake.

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: These cold temperatures in the south, a big concern down there, of course.

GRAY: Yes, huge concern, especially for tonight. Temperatures are going to be in the teens and 20s, in the teens across New England, 14 in New York, 13 in D.C. for tonight, and Nashville at 21.

TAPPER: All right, Jennifer Gray, thank you so much. Appreciate it.

In other national news, they go out of their way to showcase their savagery, even killing those who believe in their cause with no hesitation. Yet ISIS is attracting teen groupies right here in America. It's prompting a disturbing new warning from the FBI. That's next. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TAPPER: Welcome back to THE LEAD. It was another emotional, heart- wrenching day of testimony today at the trial of admitted Boston marathon bomber terrorist, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

Jeff Bowman, who lost both legs in the attack and has been a guest on this show, he described seeing Tamerlan Tsarnaev's face in the crowd as he dropped the bag filled with a pressure cooker bomb, and then walked away before detonating it.

CNN national correspondent, Deb Feyerick was in court all day today. She filed this report.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DEBORAH FEYERICK, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): In the days following the marathon bombings, this photograph showed the carnage at the finish line. Jeff Bowman was standing next to one of the bombs when it detonated, obliterating his legs.

Bowman testified in court today, pointing at a man in aviator glasses and black hat standing next to him under the red and white flag. He looked suspicious. He was alone. Bowman looked towards the race and when he looked back, he saw the bag unattended.

Moments later, it exploded. When he heard the second explosion, bowman testified, it clicked. I knew we were under attack. A day later from his hospital bed, bowman scribbled a note. I know what happened.

He helped the FBI identify Tamerlan Tsarnaev, Dzhokhar's older brother. New video entered into evidence shows the immediate impact and heart of the devastation, which has been described in emotional detail by the people who lived through it.

Inside the courtroom, jurors and others could be seen fighting back tears. Tsarnaev sat slouched in his seat, rarely turning to make eye contact with the witnesses he's accused of trying to kill.

Colton Kilgore was cheering at the finish line when the first bomb exploded. He left his camera running, showing his extended family absorbing the brunt of the blast. The 5-year-old, Noah, was calling out, mommy, mommy, mommy, to Rebecca Gregory, who could not stand up.

Quote, "My bones were literally laying next to me on the sidewalk, testified the young mom. Ball bearings from the pressure cooker device can be seen littering the ground along with shards of burning metal, either shrapnel or bomb remnants.

Inside the marathon sports store just south of the finish line, employees heard the blast and smelled the smoke. Video from inside shows some of the wounded covered in blood, seeking shelter.

While store manager, Shane O'Hara, grabs clothing from the racks to take outside to use as tourniquets. His voice choked with emotion as he testified what haunts me, making decisions on who needed help first, who needed it more.

The young mom, Rebecca Gregory, sat less than 5 feet away from the accused bomber, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. She later wrote on her Facebook page, quote, "Today I looked at you right in the face and realized I wasn't afraid anymore." Deborah Feyerick, CNN, Boston.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

TAPPER: Up next on THE LEAD, he's a southern Democrat who says Hillary Clinton's e-mail controversy will be part of what kills her presidential aspirations. Death by a thousand cuts. Does he really think this will derail her potential campaign? I will ask him next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TAPPER: Welcome back to THE LEAD. Time now for the Politics Lead, it used to be the Friday news dump, now it's the tweet just before midnight. Hillary Clinton letting all her 2.9 million followers know or at least the ones still awake at 11:35 p.m. Eastern that she wants the public to see her e-mail.

To be more accurate, she wants the public to see some of them, not all of them. A senior State Department official told CNN it would be a few months until that happens, but is there a double standard about the acceptability of using personal e-mail accounts for State Department officials not named Hillary Clinton?

In 2012, the department's inspector general hammered the then ambassador to Kenya for, among other things, using his personal e-mail for official business against department protocol.

Let's bring in CNN senior political correspondent, Brianna Keilar. Brianna, that ambassador submitted his resignation to his boss, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. He was apparently doing the same thing when it came to the use of personal e-mail for the business of the people.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: It's curious because a Clinton aide does indeed say she was within the guidelines here. So we don't have the reaction to this yet, Jake. But you said she wants some of her e-mails to be handed over, not all of them. She is certainly trying to dampen some of the criticism about her personal e-mail use while she was the secretary of state.

But it's important to note that the e-mails she's talking about releasing or having the State Department review and release are the e- mails that she and her team, and/or her team, turned over to the State Department using their discretion in 2014.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KEILAR (voice-over): As the controversy over the private e-mail address Hillary Clinton used while secretary of state moved into day three with no sign of letting up, she finally weighed in, tweeting shortly before midnight on Tuesday, "I want the public to see my e- mail. I ask state to release them. They said they will review them for release as soon as possible."

There are tens of thousands of e-mails Clinton turned over to the State Department last year, e-mails her team deemed relevant that remain hidden from public view. Aside from her tweet, Clinton has remained mum on the issue.

TMZ tracked her down at the airport as she left Washington Wednesday morning, but Clinton dodged the cameraman's question which wasn't exactly intelligible anyway.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hillary with the blunder in the e-mails, was that a generalization gap or can that be corrected?

KEILAR: The controversy has kept the White House and the State Department occupied this week. Secretary of State John Kerry in Saudi Arabia brushed off questions.

JOHN KERRY, SECRETARY OF STATE: I think we have all the ones at state.gov which are appropriately the ones in the purview of the department. Let me check on that when I actually have time to pay attention to such an important issue when I get home.

KEILAR: It could be months before the State Department releases the e-mails, but the political ramifications are playing out now. Republicans painting Clinton as secretive and a hypocrite, circulating clips like this one from 2007 when she blasted the Bush administration.

HILLARY CLINTON, FORMER SECRETARY OF STATE: We know about the secret wiretaps. We know about the secret military tribunals, the secret White House e-mail accounts. It is a stunning record of secrecy and corruption.

KEILAR: But many political observers say this won't jeopardize her run for the White House.

STEVE MCMAHON, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: She probably would be handling this a little bit better if the campaign had already been formed and she had some staff to help her deal with this. I think it's a tempest in a teapot. It will be gone before the snow in Washington melts.

KEILAR: But privately, some Democrats say this controversy has them wishing the Democratic presidential field were broader than just Hillary Clinton.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KEILAR: This episode reminds Republicans, Democrats, the media, that Hillary Clinton, while she is so far ahead in the polls, she isn't invulnerable, she is very much. So you have some Democrats telling us they are kind of worried about having all their eggs in one basket.

TAPPER: Brianna Keilar, thank you so much. Let's talk to the former chairman of the South Carolina Democratic Party, Dick Harpootlian, who we should note is strongly urging Vice President Joe Biden to run in 2016. Mr. Harpootlian, good to see you. You have been critical of the Clintons for some time, but you seem to think this e-mail controversy plays into a real vulnerability for her as a candidate. Explain.

DICK HARPOOTLIAN, FORMER SOUTH CAROLINA DEMOCRATIC PARTY CHAIRMAN: I think one of the criticisms of Hillary Clinton is that she's secretive and that she plays by the rules, her own set of rules rather than the rules the rest of us have to play by. This typifies it. I think the big problem will be for her not this tempest in a teapot.

I don't think it will play out. What will play out is if she turns over thousands and thousands and thousands of e-mails, there is probably going to be a lawsuit about the e-mails she doesn't turn over. So it will be litigated.

You have Trey Gowdy at the Benghazi committee wanting all the e-mails during a certain period of time. So she is going to have to focus on this. The question is, do we want to be dealing with this as everyone assumes her to be the presumptive nominee, or do we want a competitive primary where she has to answer those questions to other people in a debate on the stage.

She just brushed off, I saw in your report, brushed off any questions about it, and tweets out something at 11:30 at night. Is that what we really want in a presidential candidate and is that really what we want in a president?

TAPPER: So are you calling for other candidates to come into the race because you don't think she should be the nominee or are you calling for other candidates to enter the race because you think a competitive primary will help her in perhaps the same way a competitive primary helped Barack Obama in 2008?

HARPOOTLIAN: Well, I mean, probably both. But the fact of the matter is that as a Democrat who wants to see a Democrat in the White House after next year's election, this is not good. It's not good for her, it's not good for the party and it's not good for the country.

TAPPER: But Dick, let's be honest here. Let's get real. What Democrat can beat Hillary Clinton for the nomination?

HARPOOTLIAN: You know, I sat in a hotel less than a mile from here in February or March of 2007 with this unknown African-American first term senator from Illinois, who had 2 percent in the polls and there was this inevitability of this candidate named Hillary Clinton in March of 2007.

I have heard this song before. If somebody out there that can compete, I have named a number of people in the media that could compete, Joe Biden being one of them, took her on and she continued to campaign like this, they would beat her. We did it in '08 and it will happen again in 2016.

TAPPER: What do you make of the argument from Clinton supporters who say that look, there are a lot of Republicans out there who have e- mail transparency issues. You got Scott Walker, the governor of Wisconsin. Mitt Romney's team wiped their hard drives before they left the governor's office. They say there's a double standard here for her.

HARPOOTLIAN: Well, the e-mail account -- is she going to lose over the e-mail account, absolutely not. What I'm saying is this is symptomatic of a larger problem. Just a few weeks ago, we heard foreign nationals were contributing to the Clinton Foundation while she's secretary of state. Now we get the e-mails. What's the next shoe to drop?

Again, we saw John Podesta leave the White House according to the Clinton folks to come into the campaign to be the adult in the room. What does that say about the rest of the people in the room? She's got to run the campaign.

I was around Bill Clinton in '92 with him in February '92 in New Hampshire. I was with Barack Obama here and in Virginia in '08. I tell you who ran those campaigns, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. Who the hell's running this campaign?

TAPPER: All right, Dick Harpootlian, the former chair of the South Carolina Democratic Party, thank you so much. Appreciate it. Talk to you soon.

HARPOOTLIAN: Thank you.

TAPPER: In other national news, a dire warning from U.S. intelligence officials about American boys and girls wanting to fight alongside ISIS. In a new bulletin, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security say they are tracking a number of cases of teens seemingly on the verge of trying to make the trek to Syria and fight in what ISIS calls its holy war.

More than 180 Americans have already traveled or attempted to travel to Syria and Iraq to join various militant groups including ISIS. Some are teens as young as 15. Law enforcement officials are even deploying undercover agents now to troll internet sites looking for any warning signs of those who could be the next terrorist recruits.

This comes of course on the heels of the news yesterday of a 17-year- old Virginia high school student taken into custody and accused of recruiting for the terrorist group.

TAPPER: Up next on THE LEAD, it is one of the world's most exotic travel destinations and it could be fading away, disappearing right before our very eyes. What's being done to save it? Is it too little, too late?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TAPPER: Welcome back to THE LEAD. I'm Jake Tapper. The Money Lead now, Ringling Brothers finally addressing the proverbial elephants in the room. The Circus Show's parent company now says it will phase out its famous Asian elephant shows by 2018 and bring the remaining endangered animals to the circus's Center for Elephant Conservation in Florida. See? Even elephants retire to Florida. Animal rights groups for years have been after the Ringling Brother, accusing them of mistreating their animals. The president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals says the move is a long time coming and wondered why it will take another three years to complete.

The Buried Lead now, he is literally spanning the world, traveling to five continents and some of the most visually stunning places on earth, places that may not look the same in a few years.

This week, this Sunday, Bill Weir and "THE WONDER LIST" will take us to the Galapagos Islands and he'll show us why Darwin's Paradise is vanishing. My friend, Bill Weir, joins us now.

Bill, first of all, I need to get a better agent. This is a really good gig you have.

BILL WEIR, CNN HOST, "THE WONDER LIST": I can hook you up.

TAPPER: But more importantly, tell us what you have in store this week.

WEIR: Well, with no offense to our former employer, Mickey Mouse, if you live animals, the Galapagos is really the happiest place on earth. It inspired Darwin. It is largely untouched. Ecuador has done a commendable job of trying to limit the human visit numbers and keep the island pristine.

This island in particular, I'm one of the first people to step foot on it in about a year and a half. We went to visit the Floriana mocking bird. There's about 90 left in the world. It has a lot to do with human encroachment and the things we bring with us like rats and feral cats and the steps they are taking to save this one species are mind- blowing.

I had no idea the stories I would find, but those along with the stunning visuals, the animals, I really hope you will check it out.

TAPPER: Well, I definitely will. I'm sure the viewers will, too. This place barely touched by humanity, yet as you noted, what humans are doing is having an impact but it's not just specifically bringing rats. It's more largely -- larger human issues, right?

WEIR: It's everything. In some cases it's overfishing, a lot of the same themes. But on islands especially, invasive species are a huge problem. For example, there's another finch that's endangered because in the 1950s, this certain kind of fly snuck in in cargo.

And this thing's larva climbs into the beaks of the hatchlings and eats from the inside these birds, so yes, we are living through the sixth mass extinction. The first five we can blame on giant asteroids and ice ages, but this is human activities fault.

Sometimes overhunting, it's deliberate, sometimes it's accidental. But the steps that have to be taken to bring them back, including the giant tortoise, it just takes a mind shift. Darwin when he was there, he noticed the giant tortoises were being overhunted and they still brought a couple dozen on board the beagle and ate them on the way back to England.

It just takes generations to understand, my gosh, this beautiful creature may be gone, but let's not let it happen on our watch. There's no better place to study that.

TAPPER: Can't wait to watch it. Again, my friend, Bill Weir, "THE WONDER LIST" airs Sunday at 10:00 p.m. on CNN. Bill, thanks so much for the great work you are doing.

That's it for THE LEAD. I'm Jake Tapper. I'm about to turn you over to Wolf Blitzer in a room called "THE SITUATION ROOM." That starts right now.