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Clinton Tweets on Email Controversy; Chris Van Hollen to Run for Barbara Mikulski's Senate Seat; Boston Marathon Bombing Trial; Harvey Mudd Top College for Return on Investment

Aired March 05, 2015 - 07:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back. The U.S. ambassador to South Korea out of surgery and in stable condition this morning. He was slashed with a knife. Mark Lippert is recovering from a two and a half-hour operation to close a four-inch wound to his face. The ambassador was attacked by a man spewing anti-American sentiment; he was just about to deliver a speech in Seoul.

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: Police in Georgia investigating why a shooter terrorized a neighborhood before taking the life of an officer. Fulton County police say Officer Terrence Green, a 22-year veteran, was ambushed by Amanuel Menghesha after responding to a 911 call. Officers were told the suspect was banging on doors and firing a gun around the neighborhood. Other responding officers opened fire, wounding Menghesha. He is in custody now at the hospital.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Last night's NBA game between the Grizzlies and the Rockets, just a sideshow. The main event, this -- a fan seeking a half-court shot worth $25,000.

PEREIRA: I love that!

BERMAN: And a scholarship. Better than that, the dude got carried off the court here. That is a night that man will never forget.

CUOMO: Respect.

PEREIRA: That is solid. Watch it again.

BERMAN: That confidence. That was not some heave. That was a man who had been practicing that shot and --

PEREIRA: Luck was on his side. Well done.

I don't he's so much of the round ball. But I feel like John King probably played rugby. Don't you feel?

CUOMO: He's a very formidable man with good hair.

PEREIRA: Let's get to Inside Politics, to a man who has a formidable swath -- what is it? A figure? What do you say? CUOMO: It all works.

PEREIRA: Oh stop.

JOHN KING, CNN HOST, "INSIDE POLITICS": I might make a free throw. Half-court? Not happening.

PEREIRA: No, not happening?

KING: That's a great shot, good for him. Lucky guy. It's great to do that in a packed stadium like that.

PEREIRA: And carried off the court, awesome.

KING: Amen. That's a great moment. And of course everything today is captured on film. Michaela, Chris, John, good to see you this morning. Let's go Inside Politics on a busy day. With me this morning to share their reporting and their insights, Lisa Lerer of Bloomberg Politics, Ed O'Keefe of "The Washington Post".

Like every good decision about good government, you send a tweet at 11:35 at night to announce it. That's how it works. I think that's somewhere in the Constitution. If you're trying to do something big and important, send a tweet at 11:35 at night.

The tweet I'm mentioning came from former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. We've been talking for a few days about her private email server, whether she violated the spirit or the letter of federal regulations by keeping her email outside of the State Department when she was Secretary of State.

Here's what happened last night. People have been screaming about this. There were subpoenas issued yesterday by Congress. "I want the public to see my email. I asked State to release them. They said they will review them for release as soon as possible."

OK, obviously a lot of political pressure, a lot of complaining from Democrats that this had not been handled well. What's the next page?

LISA LERER, BLOOMBERG POLITICS: Well, I think the next page is continued. This is not going away; the Republicans have subpoenaed a bunch of these emails. They see this as a major attack line for them. They can push this narrative that the Clinton -- that Hillary Clinton is secretive, that she'll do anything to win politically. It's a narrative that's sort of trailed her since the 1990s. They're hoping to sort of reincarnate that image for a new generation. We'll see if they're successful, but I don't think one tweet is going to solve this problem for her.

ED O'KEEFE, THE WASHINGTON POST: Republicans love this. This is everything for them this is all the questions about the past and what the Clintons -- this is Benghazi, this is raising questions about her tenure as Secretary of State, which speaks to the broader arguments about foreign policy, which all Republicans are eager to talk about right now. They will do everything in their power to keep this in the news every single day. And to see Congress so quickly jump in and help these presidential candidates by issuing subpoenas shows you this is what to expect for the next year and a half.

KING: and to your point about one tweet is not going to answer this. Look, obviously she was facing pressure to do this -- not just from Republican demands, but a lot of Democrats saying why are you putting us through this? We've moved the whole party into your port. We're waiting for you to be our next nominee. Why are you doing this to us?

The question now is is it just, I assume, we're only going to see emails sent from the personal account that mentioned the State Department, that mentioned official business. I don't think we're going to see, I'm not trying to be flip here, but Chelsea's wedding planning or emails to Bill when he's traveling the world or emails to friends, things like that.

LERER: Well, what the Clinton folks have said is they've released nine out of ten emails that she's sent, have been released to the State Department and the the State Department can now release them to the Congress and the world. Of course, they selected that 9 out of 10 emails, which is why you've seen the White House not really leap to their defense. Because nobody other than those in the Clinton team involved in this decision know how the emails are selected, which makes it really hard for even other Democrats outside of that orbit to defend these decisions. Because nobody knows how they were made.

KING: And people see the issues, like most issues, through their political prism. So Democrats are out there -- we've seen this in the Twitterverse the last few days -- saying there's no evidence she did anything wrong. Colin Powell did something like this. Why are you picking on her? Republicans say, hey, wait a minute, we were trying to get documents from you in the State Department. Reporters say, hey, wait a minute we filed Freedom of Information Act requests for documents in the State Department. If you have your email server at your home in Chappaqua, you can at least slow down those requests, sometimes maybe you can stymie those requests.

Listen to Trey Gowdy. He's the chairman of the new Benghazi committee and he said, number one, the thinks there's information relevant to that committee. He's also wondering, because it was a private account, could somebody else like the Chinese have hacked into it?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. TREY GOWDY (R-SC), BENGHAZI SELECT COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: And I want to you assume that Secretary Clinton would have used her personal email account to email somebody else in the State Department on a personal email account. There would be no way for that document to be captured by the state Department. So if you had an inquiry, or you were doing a story, and you wanted to send a FOIA request, how would you even know what to ask for? Because these are both personal accounts being used?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: It is an interesting point because more and more people in the government use personal accounts either exclusively or in addition to their government accounts. And since Secretary Clinton was emailing somebody else at the State Department, one of her top political aides, and sent it to a G-mail account or a Yahoo account or something like that, is that covered?

O'KEEFE: No, and it's been a problem for the Obama White House. It was a problem during the Bush administration. Remember, Karl Rove was using personal accounts or RNC accounts conducing official business.

There are no good rule for this and Congress that can't agree on what day it is isn't going to be able to sit down and figure out what exactly is legal, what exactly is permissible, when it comes to your personal and official stuff. And this stuff is just going to continue to fester.

But look, you know, I think most Americans can understand that sometimes the personal and the professional mix. The question is to what extent this will resonate with voters. There's polling out there this morning we're going to talk about. We have no sense yet whether this is resonating at all.

KING: Right. Here's why she's not all that worried, or Team Clinton, when you talk to her people close to her, they're not all that worried. Some of them roll their eyes about this. Some of them say it's a BS story. So what? She's doing what other people did.

But here's one of the reasons, whatever their rationalization or their statement about it. Qunnipiac poll out this morning among Democrats. Hillary Clinton 56. Elizabeth Warren 14. Joe Biden 10. Bernie Sanders 4. Elizabeth Warren says she's not running. Joe Biden says he might. Bernie Sanders says he might.

56. So if you're at 56 and there's nobody else even above 15, you don't sweat these things. I'm not saying you shouldn't, but you don't sweat these things.

LERER: The question is not whether someone says I'm not going to vote for Hillary because she didn't release her emails. It's hard to see a voter making a -- I suppose someone could -- but making a decision solely on that factor. The issue is how this becomes part of a broader narrative that Republicans have been already working hard for over a year to define her -- as out of touch. As elitist. As, you know, secretive. As not playing by the rules. And this, they love this story; Republicans love this story because it plays right into what they've been pushing for 18 months.

O'KEEFE: And 56 percent is a little lower than she's been in the past.

LERER: Right.

O'KEEFE: We should at least point that out.

KING: She's been 60, 61 in some of these polls.

O'KEEFE: Exactly. So you wonder again, will this resonate with Democrats who are at least worried and say we need to have at least somebody out there kicking her tires to get her ready for the race? KING: One of those somebodies is probably -- he hasn't been that

aggressive yet but he is starting to go to the key primary states -- is Martin O'Malley, the former governor of Maryland. He's former mayor of Baltimore as well. He decided yesterday, to make clear, he's not going to run for the open Senate seat. Barbara Mikulski has retired, so he's going to keep his feet in the presidential race there.

I was interested when you saw another -- many of you might not know Chris Van Hollen. He's a Democratic Congressman from suburban Washington. But he's one of Nancy Pelosi's top deputies. And if the Democrats were to take back the House, Chris Van Hollen would be in line to be majority leader, or to be speaker down the road, once the older generation -- if the older generation -- steps aside at one point. It's been a big debating point. But what this told me, and you know these guys very well, is that Chris Van Hollen has made the calculation maybe I would be speaker if the Democrats take back the House, but we're not going to take back the House for eight or ten years, probably. So I'm moving on.

O'KEEFE: And this is an ambitious guy who has options. And this option presented itself first. Democrats looking for a primary anywhere in the country move to Maryland, it's going to be hot. You've got Chris Van Hollen. You've got Baltimore area representatives. You've got a Kennedy potentially considering the race. It has the makings of a really messy contest. But he gets in -- this is man who was responsible this cycle, was supposed to be responsible this cycle, for raising money for House Democrats. It shows you how eager he is to get out of the House that he's now running for the Senate.

KING: Off we go. I think that tells you, though, that he's looked at the numbers as closely as anybody and the Democrats don't think they're getting the House back any time soon.

Lisa, Ed, thanks for coming in. Mr. Berman, as I get back to you, we showed those Democratic numbers. The Republican race a lot more interesting, no front-runner. A lot more fun. This one is going to be fun for a while. Look at these numbers. Scott Walker, the Wisconsin governor, 18. Jeb Bush, 16, Chris Christie 8. Mike Huckabee 8. Ben Carson, 7. Cruz, Paul, Rubio, Santorum Jindal -- there is no front-runner on the Republican side. You've got a generational and ideological battle there. That one is going to be fun.

BERMAN: Scrum. All right, John King, thanks so much.

KING: Scrum, good word.

BERMAN: The attorney for the accused Boston Marathon bomber Dzokhar Tsarnaev made one thing perfectly clear in her opening statement -- he did it. So why would she say that in the opening statement? Our legal experts will discuss, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) BERMAN: The Boston Marathon bombing trial finally under way, and it began with a stunning admission -- Dzokhar Tsarnaev's defense attorney told the court that her client did it, carried out the blast that left three dead, injured hundreds more. So how will this affect the trial? What's the strategy?

I'm joined by Juliette Kayyem, a CNN national security analyst and former assistant secretary for the Department of Homeland Security, and also with us Paul Callan, CNN legal analyst, criminal defense attorney and former prosecutor.

Mr. Callan, counsel, help me out here. The defense attorney goes up in the opening statements and says -- it was him. Pleaded not guilty, but she said, it was him. What's going on here?

PAUL CALLAN, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Very, very strange opening in a murder case. Usually the defense says -- prove it, prove that I did it, prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. Here she says my client committed the crime. But I'll tell you one thing she didn't say, and this is the most important thing -- she didn't say he's responsible for it. And that's what this trial is about.

BERMAN: So why are we here though now? I mean, we're told this trial could go on until June. What does the prosecution argue for the next month or two months, if the defense essentially said he committed the crime?

CALLAN: John, this case is all about the death penalty; it's not about who did it. The defense has conceded he committed the crime but they're saying he was brain-washed by his brother and he deserves the mercy of the court and the jury and does not deserve the death penalty. This is going to be a two-month battle about life or death, not about guilt or innocence.

BERMAN: It is all about the sentencing, which is why, Paul, they are now arguing over a key piece of evidence here. This is the boat. This is the boat where Dzokhar Tsarnaev hid out for hours and hours as the manhunt was going on., as this shoot-out was going on. The defense says they want this entire boat to be part of the evidence, riddled with bullets. Why is this important to them?

CALLAN: Prosecutors want this boat -- or they want to bring in a panel of the boat in which he scrawled in his own blood a variety of very, very explicit things about why the bombing occurred.

BERMAN: I'll get to that in a second.

CALLAN: Well, I'm talking about why they want -- why one side wants the boat in and one side doesn't. The defense wants the entire boat brought in to provide the context of the statement. In other words, to say that scrawling wasn't about his planning to do the bombing; that was his response to the attack by the police on him, which caused the bullet-riddled boat and other problems that preceded that.

BERMAN: Also, foster a sense of victimhood. He was hiding in that boat for hours and hours. CALLAN: Precisely.

BERMAN: Juliette Kayyem, let me bring you in here. This is a picture of the note that Paul was just talking about, that was scribbled on the side. Let me read you what it says. It says the U.S. government is killing our innocent civilians, but most of you already know that. As a Muslim, I can't stand to see such evil go unpunished. We Muslims are one body: you hurt one, you hurt us all. Now I don't like killing innocent people, writes Dzokhar Tsarnaev, it is forbidden in Islam. But due to something, it is allowed. All credit goes to -- and it's unintelligible right there.

When you look at that Juliette, what does that tell you?

JULIETTE KAYYEM, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: So I mean, it tells a lot about his mental state at the time. I actually view that note as a bit of a sort of ranting of Islamic cliches. I mean, there's nothing actual delay unique in it. It comes out of sort of just him seeming to take a script from what someone might write before they are killed.

And I think the reason why it actually then is so relevant is because, as Paul was saying, this is all about the death penalty. And what we're seeing already set up is some theory of the case in which there's a bad brother and then there's the "good", in quotes, brother, Dzokhar, whose parents left him with this brother who's radicalized. He's a pot-smoking college student who really didn't know what he was doing. And it's just all about whether they can create enough sympathy at this stage. And I think the note sort of goes to that. That here's a kid who really just is not a very unique, very sophisticated thinker and he's just sort of playing along with some higher plan that was set up, either by his older brother or even others.

BERMAN: So Paul, Juliette, me, we're all from Massachusetts. We're all local people. We all know that really everyone in and around Boston is connected to someone who was affected directly by the marathon bombings.

The prosecution knows this, Juliette. It's a small town. And one of the things that's going on here is they're playing new video from just after the attack. Just horrific images from one of the running stores there that was nearby, also from the street corner. Juliette, you know, how is this playing up there in Massachusetts? And the jury, all from there, how do you think video like this will affect them?

KAYYEM: I think it's just -- I think it actually is bringing it back a lot of memories. I'll tell you, just from living here, the city actually has moved on. It has -- it's not a city that's traumatized by this in the way that these images might suggest. I mean, "The Boston Globe" cover today is the big three words, "It Was Him". This is obviously a focus of some part of this the city and of course the victims.

But what's sort of remarkable about the case going on just down the street is actually people are just sort of going on with their lives. And I think that is good. I wanted to say quickly one of the most amazing things about this case is that it's happening in a federal district court. I think that's a great statement, that this wasn't take ton a military tribunal or treated as some scary terrorism case. This is just a criminal case. And bringing it back down to reality is a good thing.

BERMAN: Well, these videos show the reality, in some ways remind us all of the reality of what happened there that day.

Juliette Kayyem, thanks so much. Paul Callan, great to have you here with us. Really appreciate it. Michaela?

PEREIRA: All right, John, thanks so much.

Hillary Clinton now coming forward about the controversy regarding her email. Is her response, though, enough to silence her critics?

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CUOMO: It is time for CNN Money now. That means chief business correspondent, you see her right there, Christine Romans, in the Money Center. So is it true, Christine? Spurlock had it wrong; McDonald's actually health food? True or false?

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: It could be. McDonald's is no longer going to sell chickens raised on certain antibiotics. Feeding human antibiotics to animals has led to a surge in drug-resistant bacteria. McDonald's now, it could change the entire industry. The fast food giant under huge pressure to appeal to millennials with higher quality food and some of its competitors, like Chipotle and Panera, have already moved away from those antibiotics.

Americans are saving a record amount for college in 529 plans, record. The total last year, $248 billion. That's up 9 percent from a year earlier. And the average account size has doubled in the past six years to about 20 grand, folks. All right, 20 grand covers about one year at a public school, so keep saving. After all of that saving, which schools give the best value? According to Pay Scale, brand new survey from Pay Scale, Harvey Mudd gives students the best return on investments. Also in the top three, Cal Tech and Stevens. Do you notice a trend, guys? They all have a heavy engineering focus. In fact, I think nine of the top ten best return colleges all big, big engineering schools.

PEREIRA: A lot of parents going to pay attention to that. All right, Christine, thanks so much.

The U.S. ambassador to South Korea attacked by a knife-wielding man. North Korea saying he deserved that kind of punishment. Who exactly was behind that slashing?

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