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New Day

Turkish Plane Skids Off Runway; Tsarnaev Faces 30 Federal Charges; Should Putin Opponents Be Concerned?; Clinton Defends Using Personal Email Account; U.S.-Israeli Relations Hit Rock Bottom

Aired March 04, 2015 - 06:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: Some breaking news this morning: amazing pictures taken immediately after a Turkish airlines flight skidded off a fog-covered runway in Nepal. There were more than 200 people on board.

CNN's Sumnina Udas is live in New Delhi following the very latest for us -- Sumnina.

SUMNINA UDAS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: A crash-landing, Michaela, something so many of us fear, especially when landing in an airport like that of Kathmandu, which is surrounded by very, very high mountains. This is, of course, the Himalayas. So, eight of the ten highest mountains in the world are in Nepal. This is the beginning of the climbing and trekking season. So, a lot of foreign tourists, climbers, trekkers would be headed to Nepal. It's considered the best time to view the Himalayas.

But some unusual weather patterns in recent days, it's been raining nonstop, so officials in Nepal are blaming the visibility there, the Turkish airline official saying there could have been a technical problem as well. But they're all investigating all of this. One of the passengers on the plane did say that the plane had to circle the Kathmandu Valley area for about an hour and a half and in the second attempt to land skidded off the runway and into the grassy area. That you are seeing in the pictures, but incredible evacuation, all the passengers there were rescued safely and no reports of injuries.

PEREIRA: Incredible. We see this happen from time to time, but to see those pictures like that. Extraordinary.

Thanks so much, Sumnina.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: Things happen to planes, but when everybody makes it out alive, it's something worth covering, just for that reason at all.

So, President Obama firing back after Prime Minister Netenyahu's fiery speech to Congress, calling the Israeli leader's warnings about nuclear talks with Iran, quote, "nothing new", slamming the prime minister for not bringing a plan of his own, even though he did use the word "alternative" a lot.

Meanwhile, in Switzerland, the talks with Iran keep rolling on, Secretary of State Kerry meeting with Iran's foreign minister in hopes of ironing out a deal. Kerry plans to fly to Riyadh this week to convince Saudi Arabian leaders a nuclear deal with Iran would be in their best interests, too.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Well, after all the excitement of the last two weeks, it turns out the Department of Homeland Security will stay up and running through the end of September. The House quietly passed that highly anticipated measure Tuesday, just 75 GOP lawmakers, along with 182 Democrats pushed it across the finish line. The legislation does not touch the president's immigration executive orders, which had been a major sticking point for conservatives.

PEREIRA: The Justice Department is set to release a scathing report on racial bias in the Ferguson, Missouri Police Department. That report details systemic discrimination by police against African- American in Ferguson, including excessive use of force and baseless traffic stops and citations. The federal investigation was prompted by the shooting of unarmed teenager Michael Brown last summer.

CUOMO: So, it's been two years, but now, it's going to happen -- a long-awaited trial of the surviving Boston bombing suspect under way today.

We have CNN's Deb Feyerick joining us from the federal court in Boston.

Deb, how is it setting up?

DEBORAH FEYERICK, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well we can tell you that it took 21 days over two months, Chris, to select a jury. Some 1,200 people, prospective jurors called, half of them questioned, many dismissed. The majority of those chosen say they can keep an open mind when it comes to the issue of guilt. Some though say that they believe that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev did have something to do it with it. A number said they can open a mind when it comes to the death penalty. Though there was one woman wasn't sure she could vote for it, but it would depend on the evidence now.

Tsarnaev's lawyers have been aggressive, trying to get the venue change moved several times, getting it move out of Boston. They also tried to suspend jury selection during the "Charlie Hebdo" attacks in Paris saying there were too many comparisons between the Tsarnaev brothers as well as the Kouachi brothers.

Now, prosecutors and defense today expected to lay out their opening statements, in terms of the prosecution, they're really going to sort of weave together the narrative of how all of this came to be. How they got the devices, how they got the materials to make the weapons of mass destruction that they're accused of using -- Chris.

CUOMO: All right. Deb, thank you very much. We look forward to those opening statements, the case will be a little bit trickier than people think coming into it. Alisyn?

CAMEROTA: Well, still no suspects in the assassination of a top Russian opposition leader. Did Boris Nemtsov pay the ultimate price for crossing Vladimir Putin? A man who knows firsthand what can happen to Kremlin critics joins us next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CAMEROTA: New this morning, reports that the investigation into the murder of Boris Nemtsov, a critic of President Vladimir Putin, has identified several suspects. Our next guest knows firsthand how dangerous it is to be an enemy of Putin's, which he details in his book, "Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder and One Man's Fight for Justice." Bill Browder, CEO of Hermitage Capital Management joins us now.

Mr. Browder, thanks for being with us.

BILL BROWDER, HERMITAGE CAPITAL MANAGEMENT CEO: Thank you.

CAMEROTA: I want to get your response to this breaking news crossing "Reuters" news wire. It says Russia's foreign security service has identified several suspects in the murder of Boris Nemtsov.

Do you put much stock into these suspects who they claim they've identified?

BROWDER: Well, I don't know who they've identified, but what I can say is that the motive for the killing and who ordered it is the key question. Not who carried it out.

And I very much doubt, since the government of Russia and Vladimir Putin are on my list, anyway as the prime suspects, whether they can carry out any type of credible independent investigation.

CAMEROTA: You have a fascinating personal history with Vladimir Putin. So let's just go through it in a nutshell.

You were once a supporter of his. You were a major foreign investor in Russia. That is until around 2006 when you became black-listed and you were expelled from the country for calling attention to corruption and tax evasion by government officials. You made it out. However, your lawyer was arrested, tortured and killed in jail.

How did you escape with your life?

BROWDER: Well, I was exposing corruption in the companies I was investing in. And at the time they were probably a little more not as brazen as they are right now. So, instead of killing me, they expelled me from the country. So, I was declared a threat to national security, persona non-grata and sent out of country.

My lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, he was in the one in the country. He discovered this massive corruption scheme that the government had engineered. He testified against the officials involved. And he was then arrested, tortured and killed.

What makes my story so heart-breaking was that after they killed him, we got to witness the whole regime, from the bottom right up to top, cover up his murder. And seeing that and seeing in granular detail how they this did that, and I documented it in my book, it gives me absolutely no confidence that the president and the law enforcement agencies of Russia will do anything other than cover up the murder of Boris Nemtsov, and we know all the techniques they use to cover these things up.

CAMEROTA: And, of course, your lawyer is just one of the stories. Many critics of Vladimir Putin have met with grisly and untimely deaths.

So, what do you think that Boris Nemtsov's murder now means for any opposition voice against Putin?

BROWDER: Well, I think as a high escalation of how they treat oppositionists. Now, they've killed a lot of people in the past, but what they have never done is killed a high-profile opposition politician of his stature. He was a deputy prime minister of Russia in the 1990s, and the fact that they killed him, raises the stakes entirely.

Basically, they're saying it doesn't matter how well known you are, how many heads of state you know in the West, how much people will be shocked by this. We will kill you.

And what it says to everybody else is -- the gloves are off. Anything can happen.

CAMEROTA: And so, do you see this escalation? If in fact Vladimir Putin is behind Boris Nemtsov's murder, do you see this escalation as Vladimir Putin becoming more iron-fisted, or do you think that he is somehow more insecure now?

BROWDER: Well, I think it's a bit of both. The more insecure he gets, the more iron-fisted he gets.

And so, what you have to understand is this is man who in my estimation has stolen an enormous amount of money from his country. He was getting away with it, when the economics were getting better for the Russian people, when people are apathetic.

But now that the economics are going into a crisis, he's scared, he's very scared. And what he does when he gets scared is he represses and he tries to repress in very highly symbolic ways. And so, one of the things he's most scared of is people rising up in the streets of Moscow, the way they did in Kiev last year and eventually having so many people demand his resignation that he ends up out of power. That's what he's most scared of.

And so, the best way to stop that is to take out people who are demanding, who are asking for change, who are asking for him to step down. And Boris Nemtsov was planning -- was out there saying three hours before he was killed, calling for people to go out into the streets and protest Vladimir Putin.

CAMEROTA: It's so interesting to get your perspective, Mr. Browder, we don't often hear how scared -- we don't often hear Vladimir Putin depicted as being scared. But you sure make a compelling case.

Mr. Bill Browder, thanks so much for sharing your story with us on NEW DAY.

BROWDER: Thank you.

CAMEROTA: Let's go over to Chris.

CUOMO: All right, Alisyn.

Republican presidential hopeful Dr. Ben Carson tells NEW DAY being gay is clearly a choice, because, quote, "a lot of people go into prison straight and come out gay." How will this affect his campaign?

PEREIRA: Another potential candidate, Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, coming under fire for using her personal email account to conduct business for the government while she was secretary of state. Some wondering if she had something to hide. Is this controversy about to become a full-blown scandal? We'll take a look.

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(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CUOMO: You think being gay is a choice?

DR. BEN CARSON, AUTHOR, "ONE NATION": Absolutely.

CUOMO: Why do you say that?

CARSON: Because a lot of people who go into prison go into prison straight and when they come out, they're gay.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: All right, that was Chris's sit-down interview with GOP presidential hopeful, Dr. Ben Carson, saying that he believes not only is being gay a choice, that prison can turn people gay.

How will these comments overshadow his campaign? Will they even do that?

Let's bring in John Avlon, CNN political analyst and editor in chief of "The Daily Beast", and Margaret Hoover, CNN political commentator, Republican consultant, and Sirius XM host.

Let me get your reaction.

MARGARET HOOVER, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Good morning.

CAMEROTA: John, let's start with you. AVLON: If there's one thing we like, it's when the presidential candidate surmises about prison and gayness. I think that right there is really good, important qualification for the office, he lost no opportunity to jump on that. Well done, Ben Carson.

HOOVER: It's hard to give a serious analysis of this. But we truth is, we know Ben Carson is sort of untethered to reality. No citizen has run for the U.S. presidency, not having served any other elected office, except for Herbert Hoover, by the way.

AVLON: She got that in.

CUOMO: Thirty-first president.

HOOVER: And he had been in the cabinet for 12 years and he had been an international war hero, all these other things.

So, there's no way he was going to be elected to the presidency anyway. But this --

AVLON: Not only for the past tense, I got to say. But yes.

HOOVER: But just demonstrates, first of all, there's no data on this. Secondly, this sinks any nomination if he has looked at any of the polling about where American attitudes are about homosexuality.

CUOMO: But you don't think there's a significant part of his party's base that believes -- do you think --

(CROSSTALK)

HOOVER: His party, by the way, is my party. I am intimately familiar with the Republican base. Fifty percent of Republicans under the age of 50 are in favor of freedom to marry.

CUOMO: What about the other 50?

HOOVER: And another 300 incredibly prominent Republicans are about to sign to a brief for the Supreme Court, saying, or making a conservative case for the freedom to marry. There is more and more support for the freedom to marry. Every primary state is going to have marriage by the time we have marriage.

CAMEROTA: Why doesn't Ben Carson know about that?

HOOVER: Again, untethered to reality. I refer to my earlier statement.

I just -- I think that he's not a savvy political candidate. He's been an incredible orator of the American dream and his personal story and that's really compelling. It's sold him a lot of books.

CUOMO: Number four in the CPAC vote. Number four in CPAC --

HOOVER: But it's not going win him the presidency.

AVLON: And apparently a very good neurosurgeon. But these qualities do not necessarily translate. I think she's got this one.

CUOMO: I think that Ben Carson isn't saying this because he thinks it will be unpopular. I think he is saying it because he actually believes it and I don't think he's alone in that belief. I think you're --

(CROSSTALK)

AVLON: I think he's probably regretting that comment.

CUOMO: Ironically, he just said before that, I've learned my lessons, I'm toning it down now.

AVLON: That didn't quite work.

It takes a while to break habits like that.

CAMEROTA: To Chris's point. He thinks he's speaking his truth and he thinks he is appealing to a certain portion of the primary voters.

HOOVER: Let's take Iowa for example, who won Iowa last time? Rick Santorum after Mitt Romney did it. The Iowa caucusgoers are actually half and half. They're half Christian conservative and half mainstream moderate.

The Republican primary is not over dominated by people who think gay people shouldn't deserve full freedom and equality in this country. It's just not. That's a media meme. That's a political consultant meme. That does not stack up against the data.

CUOMO: OK.

AVLON: Definitive, Margaret Hoover.

CUOMO: I see you're very defensive about this, Margaret Hoover. I understand why.

HOOVER: In my spare time, I run a gay rights organization.

CUOMO: I know. I know you're not just thinking off on your head. Look, I applaud the work.

CAMEROTA: OK. So, let's talk about Hillary Clinton's emails, on the other side of the aisle. She was supposed to be using a government email account. But during her time as secretary of state, she was using her personal email account.

How big of a deal is this, John?

AVLON: This is a pretty big deal for three reasons. One, there's obviously the security of it. You know, if she was sending any classified emails, which she almost certainly was over personal email, did it have the adequate security, or could it been more easily hacked?

Second, the issue of history, right? This is simply a matter of, you know, history, and the historical record, an it seems to be an end-run around it, which goes to the third point -- which is the optics. This again feeds into a Clinton, an anti-Clinton narrative that this couple is not comfortable with transparency.

CUOMO: Is it smells bad? Is it wrong, or do you think it's illegal?

HOOVER: It's blatantly illegal. Nobody knows that better than Hillary Clinton. It's called the National Archives and Records Administration, every time you are an elected executive position in this country, all of your emails have to be transparent. They have to go to NARA.

She knows that because her husband and her emails from the Clinton administration are all in their presidential library. They have more documents than any other presidential library, because they were at that critical moment where you transitioned from hard documents to computers.

Look, they know the rules. It's incredible that she chose to opt out of the rules. This is what's actually --

CUOMO: But they did let people use personal emails in the State Department.

AVLON: They did and that's an important context. But it's hard not to look at this as an end run. And the contrast with Jeb Bush and his total transparency is a political --

HOOVER: Here's the problem --

CUOMO: Well, he self-selected also, though, because they're only his work emails, not his personal emails.

AVLON: But that's at least an appropriate --

HOOVER: Your personal emails actually should be able to be personal.

But the problem in politics is stories, right? There's a story that Clintons think that the law doesn't apply to them or they can be better than the law. This plays directly into that.

Why does she not have to have transparent emails until they finally ask when she's out of the State Department?

CAMEROTA: And in tandem with that, I was astonished to read in an article today, the House committee investigating Benghazi, that's been asking about her emails about the Benghazi attacks for two and a half years, just got 300 last month. So, she's stalling. Even despite this, even when they're asking --

AVLON: Well, and for journalist, it's a FOIA request, you know, a hurdle as well. It's hard to say it's not intentional. It's not a good day for Hillary.

CUOMO: It's going to bring Benghazi back, that's for sure. My threat is full of it, that they are saying that this proves that there was intentional disclosure. Would you go that far?

AVLON: No, I wouldn't. I think feeding the Benghazi beast --

CAMEROTA: But it doesn't look good. I mean, why not? Why wait two and a half years ago?

AVLON: The optics are terrible and it should have been anticipated.

HOOVER: It's not just optics, it is not following the letter of the law. And we all know that.

CUOMO: It's very interesting. Just we're talking politics. People are saying you know, she hasn't been out there, her people aren't out there. They're not fighting this, what's going on?

There are different ways to fight. And I don't know if you've noticed, but there is this counter-narrative out there, especially on social media and the supposed objective sites about, hey, did you see the journalists who are in these hit ads for the Republicans now? And, oh, did you know Colin Powell did it, too? You know, there are stories coming out to feed that what she did isn't wrong by State Department standards.

CUOMO: Yes, the stealth campaign has already started, I mean, let's be real about that. But, yes, and look, so big story there and then, of course, there's Congress itself.

HOOVER: Well the worst thing for her to do would be to defend herself. It would draw attention to herself. So, you need surrogates to defend her. That's good politics.

CAMEROTA: John, Margaret, great to see you.

HOOVER: Thanks, guys.

CUOMO: It's a big story, it's not going away. There are a lot of those today. So, let's get right to the news, shall we?

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: As far as I can tell, there was nothing new.

BENJAMIN NETANYAHU, ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER: That deal will not prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

REP. PETER KING (R), NEW YORK: We do want a good agreement, I don't know if we're going to get did.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Gunshots fired near the National Security Agency.

CUOMO: Federal authorities say they have a suspect in custody in connection to a series of shootings.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The front area seems to have collapsed, skidded for 15-20 seconds.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The Internet is not anonymous, there's an enormous gap between this generation and accountability.

ANNOUNCER: This is NEW DAY with, Chris Cuomo, Alisyn Camerota and Michaela Pereira.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CAMEROTA: Good morning, everyone. Welcome back to your NEW DAY.

A war of words erupting this morning between Israel and the U.S., one day after Benjamin Netenyahu's fiery speech to Congress. The Israeli leader slamming President Obama for negotiating, quote, "a very bad deal with Iran." The president dismissing Netanyahu's criticism as nothing new, calling out the prime minister for not having a plan of his own.

CUOMO: Meanwhile, the big fallout of the speech appears to be in the halls of Congress. Senate Republicans are now scrambling to fast track a bill that would give them the power to sign off on any deal with Iran. That's going to be a problem.

CNN's comprehensive coverage begins with senior White House correspondent Jim Acosta. And I say it's a problem not because Congress doesn't have the right, but because the White House thinks it's not right.

JIM ACOSTA, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: That's right, Chris, and the White House knows President Obama may have a tougher sales job now after that fiery speech from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The president still has to convince lawmakers up on Capitol Hill to loosen some of the sanctions that would come with any nuclear agreement with Iran, which is why the president presented his own 11-minute rebuttal to Netanyahu's speech from the Oval Office yesterday.

The president, as you heard, from him, and other administration officials, they maintain that a bad deal is worse than no deal. But yesterday, during his speech to Congress, Benjamin Netanyahu flipped that argument on its head. Here's what he had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NETANYAHU: For over a year, we've been told that no deal is better than a bad deal. Well, this is bad deal. It's a very bad deal. We're better off without it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ACOSTA: And now, there's a potential new complication for the Iran nuclear talks. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell may fast track a measure that would give the Senate the ability to sign off on a nuclear deal. A senior administration official told me last night the president would veto that legislation. Meanwhile, the White House showed what the president was up to during

Netanyahu's speech. They offered up a picture of a president holding a video conference with other European leaders talking about the situation in Ukraine.

But, Chris, if it was Prime Minister Netanyahu's goal to gum up the works on Capitol Hill, it may be mission accomplished. The president has a much tougher climb after that speech yesterday, Chris.

CUOMO: And also, you have not just the effect on Congress, but what about Iran?

Jim, thank you very much.

ACOSTA: That's right.

CUOMO: Lies and deceptions, that's how one high-ranking Iranian official described Netanyahu's speech. How are the rest of the Iranian people reacting?