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At This Hour

Federal Grand Jury Indicts Former Minneapolis Police Officers for Violating George Floyd's Rights; Major Disappointment: Report Shows 266,000 Jobs Added in April; Pfizer Seeks Full FDA Approval of COVID Vaccine for Ages 16+. Aired 11-11:30a ET

Aired May 07, 2021 - 11:00   ET

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

[11:00:00]

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He created something that will last.

(MUSIC)

ANNOUNCER: Fifty years later, why is it an anthem for new generation?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's prophecy, man?

DON LEMON, CNN HOST: What do you think, Marvin, when you think about "What's going on"?

ANNOUNCER: CNN special report, "What's Going on: Marvin Gaye's Anthem for the Ages", Sunday at 8:00.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: From our very own Don Lemon. Tune in.

Thanks for watching us. I'm Poppy Harlow.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Jim Sciutto.

AT THIS HOUR with Kate Bolduan starts right now.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, everyone. I'm Kate Bolduan. Thank you so much for joining us.

AT THIS HOUR, we're looking at breaking news in the murder of George Floyd.

A federal grand jury just indicted four former Minneapolis police officers involved in Floyd's death. You know those faces. Minneapolis police officers involved in his death in the indictment is for each of the officers involved in restraining Floyd face down on the pavement for 9 minutes and 29 seconds. Those 9 minutes and 29 seconds that killed him.

This indictment includes Derek Chauvin who is convicted of murdering Floyd by a Minnesota jury just three weeks ago. All four officers are now charged with failing to provide medical care to Floyd, and violating his constitutional rights. According to the indictment in part it says this, the defendants saw -- the defendants saw George Floyd lying on the ground in clear need of medical care and willfully failed to aid Floyd, thereby acting with deliberate indifference to a substantial risk of harm to Floyd.

Joining me right now is CNN's Omar Jimenez who is following all the details.

Omar, can you tell us more about what we learn in this indictment?

OMAR JIMENEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, Kate. This indictment by federal grand jury in part says that Derek Chauvin and some of the officers but Chauvin in particular didn't provide care and unreasonable force by a police officer. Those are rights protected by United States Constitution as the indictment lays out.

Now when you get into the specifics, because there are three counts here and there is only one count where all four officers face that one individual, but three counts in particular on the first one which specifically singles out Derek Chauvin, it says that he held his left knee across George Floyd's neck and his right knee on Floyd's back and arm as George Floyd lay on the ground handcuffed unresisting and kept his knee on Flody's neck and body even after Floyd became unresponsive.

Then the next count that singles out Alexander Keung and Tou Thao saying specifically that they were aware that defendant Chauvin was holding his knee across George Floyd's neck as Floyd laid handcuffed and unresisting.

And then on the third, which encompasses all of them, saying that specifically the defendant saw George Floyd lying on the ground in clear need of medical care and acted with delinquent indifference to a substantial risk of harm to Floyd. This offense resulted in bodily injury to and the death of George Floyd.

Now, of course, these were some of issues of which were litigated and over the course of Derek Chauvin's estate trial which Chauvin was convicted of second degree unintentional murder, second degree manslaughter and third degree murder. Of course, this comes ahead of the officer -- or the trial for the remaining four Minneapolis police officers charged with aiding and abetting second-degree murder and aiding and abetting second degree manslaughter.

We've been hearing from the Minnesota attorney general today who has been meeting with the prosecution into the state cases who says this move by the federal government was absolutely appropriate and it is the federal government's duty to protect every individual's civil rights.

So again, these are two proceedings and comes two weeks after Chauvin's conviction and a few months ahead of the trials for the other officers, Kate.

BOLDUAN: Omar, thank you for laying that out for us.

Let's get analysis on this now with Elie Honig, former federal and state prosecutor.

Elie, I want to read part of what Omar had laid out. This is in the indictment talking about Chauvin, and how Chauvin violated Floyd's rights to the Constitution and civil rights.

He says specifically the right to be free from unreasonable seizure, which includes the right to be free from the use of unreasonable force by a police officer.

What do you think of this?

ELIE HONIG, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Yeah, Kate, this is a very strong statement by DOJ. They clearly are seeking full accountability here. This is about the worst news possible for Derek Chauvin and the other three officers. It's a fascinating indictment, the way DOJ has put it together.

The first count as you say, charges Derek Chauvin with depriving George Floyd of his civil rights, the right to be free of excessive force by a police officer. And DOJ alleges that that resulted in George Floyd's death which means that Derek Chauvin faces a maximum sentence of life in prison, technically the death penalty. But that's not going to come into play here, but a maximum of life in prison.

And the second count is really interesting too, because it charges two of the officers Thao and Keung with failing to intervene.

[11:05:07]

That doesn't say that they directly physically caused George Floyd's death, but it says they had a duty to stop Derek Chauvin from what he was doing. That is a really important, aggressive statement by DOJ. It's not okay if you're a police officer to just sit there and watch.

And similarly with that final charge against all four police officers that they failed to render medical aid.

Again, the message is it's not okay to do nothing when you have a duty to protect as these police officers do.

BOLDUAN: Especially on the first two. I heard some suggest this is in their view an expansive reading of civil rights laws that apply here. Do you agree?

HONIG: I do. It's an aggressive reading. It's not a reading DOJ has taken in the past. It is unusual to see police officers charged, again, not for any affirmative act that they took but for failing to intervene and failing to render medical aid.

That is fairly novel. That is fairly aggressive. It will be tested in the courts. I think DOJ is making a statement about what they believe in and what they stand for here. BOLDUAN: Elie, what does this do to the state cases? Does this

federal indictment impact Chauvin's sentencing or the trial of the other officers?

HONIG: No, as a technical legal matter, there is no impact. I think our viewers maybe wondering, well, hold on, I just saw Derek Chauvin tried and convicted. The other three officers are about to be tried in Minneapolis later this summer.

How can the feds now pile on?

The answer is it's not a double jeopardy problem. One, these are different charges. These are not murder and manslaughter charges. These are federal civil rights charges. And, two, the U.S. Supreme Court actually gave us a decision two years ago saying that in the situation like this, it's okay for the feds and the states to charge the same conduct.

So there is not going to be a technical impact. Now the other three officers I think need to really think hard here about are we really going to go through with two trials first our state trial then the federal trial? It's hard enough for any defendant to be found not guilty in one trial never mind two.

So if I'm one of those other police officers representing them, I'm thinking about is there any way we can plead this thing out to prevent my client from having to do life?

BOLDUAN: That's interesting. Elie, thank you very much for that perspective. Appreciate it.

Let's turn to the other major story that we're looking at. We're standing by to hear from President Biden. He is speaking this hour.

We're going to bring that you to live when he does, and it will be his first reaction to the April jobs report that was just out this morning, a report that was a big miss and a big disappointment, 266,000 jobs were added last month, that is far less than the million jobs that a lot of economists had expected.

It's a sign that recovery very clearly has a long way to go, but what can you read from it? And what does this mean for Biden's agenda and his push for recovery going forward?

CNN's Christine Romans is looking through all this for us, kind enough to stick around and join us.

Thank you, Christine.

What are you seeing in these numbers?

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: You know this is not the flood of rehiring that economists predicted. It was a trickle.

When you look at the course of this recovery, this attempted recovery, you can see there how much work we still have to do. You're still down 8.2 million jobs since the crisis began.

And you saw the unemployment rate rise a little bit to 6.1 percent. Where you see the hiring, it was in leisure and hospitality, a sector that is still down 2.8 million jobs in the pandemic, but hiring workers, some 331,000 workers hired there. And you seem layoffs in transportation and in temporary work.

So, what it is showing us is that this was such a dramatic calamity that happened to the economy going to be a straight path forward in terms of recovery.

A few things happening. We're hearing a lot about worker shortages, especially in manufacturing. There are half a million job opening there's. Also you're hearing restaurant owners talk about some worker shortage there.

A few things happening overall. First, we're still in a pandemic, tens of thousands of people contracting the disease every day, right? So you have a fear of some people getting back into the labor market.

You also have childcare issues especially with hybrid schools across the country. There are people who maybe would like to be hired back but maybe the company wants them to come back. They can't come back just yet.

And you also have the $300 a week in extra jobless benefits, Kate. Those expire in the fall. We've seen South Carolina and Montana both say they're going to opt out of that extra jobless benefits programs because they see it as a disincentive.

But it's no the just that. I mean the labor force has been through such a shock over the past year. There is a lot of work to do before we're completely healed here yet. That first chart shows you how much work still needs to be done.

BOLDUAN: Yeah, a complicated recovery and a complicated picture I think is painted in this job report.

Thank you so much, Christine.

ROMANS: You're welcome.

For more on this, Jason Furman is joining us. He's the former chair of the Council of Economic Advisors under President Obama. He's also a professor of economic policy at the Harvard.

It's good to see you, Jason.

[11:10:00]

Christine lays it out really well, because this feels -- I don't know, somewhat in this report feels, I guess, in contrast with the hopeful sense of the country entering this new phase, opening up, pushing past the virus. Did this report surprise you?

JASON FURMAN, FORMER CHAIR, COUNCIL OF ECONOMIC ADVISERS UNDER PRESIDENT OBAMA: This report definitely surprised me. I expected a larger jobs number. But it's also really important to remember, you never want to overemphasize one report too much. We have a lot of different about the economy. We're going to get data for other months. It bounces around.

Virus was actually rising in the month of April. It's come down a lot since then. I think it's still going to come down. I'm reasonably optimistic about the future.

BOLDUAN: So, fundamentally, why do you think people aren't getting back to work in the numbers that we were hoping?

FURMAN: A lot of it is about labor supply, people not wanting to work. Not wanting to work because they're afraid of the virus, because schools and daycare are closed. I think in some cases because of the magnitude of the unemployment insurance benefits they're getting.

The reason we think that this is more about their labor supply than wages is because wages grew really fast in the month of April. There is a record number of job openings out there. What we need is people to get back into the jobs. I'm hopeful that's going to happen.

BOLDUAN: Look, you touched on this and Christine touched on it because there were a couple states actually getting rid, planning to cut off the federal assistance and jobless benefits because they see it kind of -- they see a labor shortage.

Do you think this is a signal, this report in what we see and hearing that the extended government jobless benefits to millions of people were too generous?

FURMAN: Look, they were wonderful thing to do last year. Part of the theory last year was to enable people not to work if it was unsafe for them to work. They were probably set at a reasonable level for January, when we were in a huge surge in the pandemic. To have benefits we're about half of workers are getting more from being unemployed than being employed in June and July when the pandemic should hopefully be way down. I don't -- I don't think that made a whole lot of sense --

BOLDUAN: One thing that we know for certain is that schools in most of the country are not open fully, right? Reliably full day five days a week, the things that parents count on.

How much of an anchor do you think this report is showing that factor is having on recovery?

FURMAN: Yeah. That factor having a big effect on some people, parents of young children. You look at the labor market as a whole though. The large majority of people who aren't in the labor force who left the labor force actually don't have younger children. A bigger one have been people who retired early.

And so a question mark in all of this is you retired during the pandemic. Do you jump back in especially when you see the red hot labor market and the high wages? I certainly hope we see some people deciding to come back from retirement because of what they're seeing.

BOLDUAN: Yeah, it's going to be fascinating to see as you well know what president Biden says and how the White House spins it today, we'll see and much more to come as it is one report of many, but an important one today.

Thanks, Jason.

FURMAN: Thank you.

BOLDUAN: Coming up for us, Pfizer now applying for full FDA approval for its COVID-19 vaccine. What does this mean for anyone that hasn't gotten a shot yet? We're going to jump into that.

And also coming up, Congresswoman Elise Stefanik is the odds on favorite to take over Liz Cheney's leadership post. She's defined herself as loyal to Donald Trump but she has not always been that way. What looking back can tell us now.

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[11:23:22]

BOLDUAN: This morning, Pfizer applied for full FDA approval of its vaccine for people 16 years old. If approved, it will be the first COVID-19 vaccine to receive this full endorsement. As a reminder, you well know, right now Pfizer's vaccine is allowed under emergency use authorization. It's a different designation.

So if the FDA grants full approval, Pfizer could then market the vaccine directly to consumers. How many of a game changer is this?

Joining me right now is Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health.

Doctor, talk me through what full FDA approval for the Pfizer vaccine would mean for all of us as we know there is such progress being made on the vaccine front.

DR. ASHISH JHA, DEAN, UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH: Yeah. So first of all, Kate, thanks for having me on.

I think it's great news to see this. Not totally surprising because of what the FDA has said to the manufacturers is we want to see long term safety. We want to see at least six months of data.

We have more than six months of safety data on tens of millions of people who got the Pfizer vaccine. And the data looks fabulous. It looks really, really good.

So, this is great. I expect the FDA to do this over the next month or so to approve -- to provide that full approval. And I think what it will do is do two things. For a lot of people on the fence who are worried about well, is this an emergency use? Should I get vaccinated? Had it will give them confidence. And then there are a lot of businesses who want to require that the

employees be vaccinated but have been waiting for this full approval. I think for those businesses it will make them feel better about moving forward with that. So I think it's going to bump up vaccinations for a lot of folks.

BOLDUAN: Let's talk more broadly about vaccine supply here and abroad.

[11:20:04]

You said data that you're looking in vaccines on America right now show that the U.S. supply and surplus will soon potentially become a glut. So it's time to start sharing vaccines with the world. Why is that? What are you seeing?

JHA: Yeah, two things. So, first of all, vaccination numbers are slowing which is what we expected, right? We've got almost 60 percent of adults now being vaccinated with at least one dose, so you do expect that to slow.

But vaccine production is cooking along, actually getting better over time. And so right now we have about 75 million doses out to states and every day that number keeps growing and growing and growing.

And the way I look at this is the world is in a crisis, places like India and Brazil are in a crisis, and we have more vaccines than we know what do with. We're going to have hundreds of millions of additional doses by July.

So let's start sharing this. Let's start sending it to countries in need. It's not going to slow us down here. It will allow us to be better citizens and it will help bring the pandemic to an end across the world.

BOLDUAN: OK, it sounds entirely reasonable and smart and something that leadership has already been starting to push on. But India has been criticized for exporting vaccine that's they've been producing too much before securing enough doses for its own population. Is there a risk here ahead of, I don't know, a potential problem in the United States in the fall?

JHA: Yeah. So I'm not worried about us in the fall. Partly because, again, we have, you know, almost 60 percent of adults vaccinated. We have plenty of vaccines for 12 to 15-year-olds to get vaccinated.

And we'll keep vaccinating through the summer. I think we'll be in good shape. Most people will be vaccinated by the time we get to the fall.

The big worry right now is the devastation happening across the world. And that actual is good for to help people in India and Brazil and good for us to have the pandemic be brought under control.

BOLDUAN: That's exactly right. So many people including myself have really come to trust your judgment on kind of the questions of where we are and what you can be comfortable in doing.

Looking -- as you're talking about this summer, are you traveling this summer? Would -- are you ready to travel abroad? What do you think?

JHA: Yeah. So, actually, this is a conversation my wife and I had with our kids a couple of days. We decided we're not going to travel abroad only because I don't exactly know the rules are going to be and it's all sort of changing. So, we're definitely traveling within the United States.

I have two kids who are between 12 and 15 and my expectation is they'll be vaccinated. We'll have one younger who's not going to be vaccinated. And that's fine. I'm very comfortable. I don't think it's risky and I think people can get out.

And as long as they, you know, just pay attention to how much infection there is in the community, exercise some basic level of safeguards, I think it's very safe to stuff this summer.

BOLDUAN: It's good to hear and it's good to see you. Thanks, Doctor.

JHA: Thank you.

BOLDUAN: Coming up for us, Elise Stefanik has been one of Trump's fiercest defenders. But it hasn't always been that way. Why she is facing fresh scrutiny over some of her past comments?

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[11:28:00]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DAVID MCINTOSH, PRESIDENT, CLUB FOR GROWTH: She's very much a liberal. She is throughout her career been a pretty far left Republican and I think we just heard, her ambition told her, well, I better get onboard with President Trump. But our worry is when she gets into leadership, she has no principles at that point and that's the biggest problem that Republican Party has right now.

She'll be a terrible leader.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: That was president of the well known conservative Club for Growth this morning, saying Congresswoman Elise Stefanik is not conservative enough to lead the Republican Party. The House Republican leadership and even former President Trump have thrown their support behind Stefanik to replace Liz Cheney in House leadership.

It seems clear now if it was any question before the only requirement for Republican leadership, especially in the House, is blind loyalty to Donald Trump.

And for Stefanik, that is actually new position. She supported Trump during impeachment, yes, but a look back at her past comments and voting record reveals she hasn't always stood behind Trump and his agenda.

Joining me right now is CNN's Lauren Fox on Capitol.

Lauren, tell me about this. What you are learning today?

LAUREN FOX, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Kate, obviously, this has been an evolution of Congresswoman Stefanik and a new investigation from our KFILE shows that before former President Trump was in office and campaigning, Stefanik was someone who would go out and often make comments about things that she thought were inappropriate that Trump had done on the campaign trail. And she carried through with some of the same concerns when he was newly elected and in office -- Kate.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

FOX (voice-over): In a few hours, Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene are kicking off Gaetz's America First Tour in a retirement community in Florida, aimed at whipping up support for former President Donald Trump.

The goal: to rally people who voted for Trump. Many of whom believe his big lie that the 2020 elections saw rampant voter fraud despite no evidence to support such claims.