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Uruguay's Suarez Banned Four Months For Biting; FIFA: U.S.- Germany Match Will Go On Despite Rain; Supreme Court Rules On Recess Appointments; Missing Boy Found In Father's Basement

Aired June 26, 2014 - 10:00   ET

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

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Well, he's been suspended. Andy Scholes is here to tell us more.

ANDY SCHOLES, CNN SPORTS: The FIFA won't buying that story, were they, Carol? They just announced he's been suspended for the rest of the World Cup, nine games in total, four months, he can't get on the soccer field and compete at all whether that be for his national team or his club team, expensive bite.

COSTELLO: Expensive bite. You're not kidding.

SCHOLES: This is the third time he's bitten someone and he still only got nine games. Some people were saying this should have been harsher. The most severe penalty would have been a two-year ban. This is still not, you know, as severe as it could have been for him.

COSTELLO: Why do you suppose they didn't issue the most severe ban if this is the third incident?

SCHOLES: I don't know, Carol. I'm not a soccer expert, but like the Uruguayans are saying after the game, soccer is an athletic game, not a game of morality.

COSTELLO: Let's talk about the rain falling in Brazil right now. We lost the signal because the weather is so bad where the game is being played. It is a downpour. Inches of rain have fallen. Some of the roads are washed out. FIFA came out and said, yes, the game will go on. It won't be postponed. The players will be on the field. You have to wonder if it's dangerous for the players.

SCHOLES: You know, the conditions can't be great in terms of playing soccer because we've seen already in this World Cup people pouring hamstring. Jozy Altidore pulled his hamstring and the conditions were perfect. They don't want to get hurt because if they tie 0-0 both teams move on and the important games are coming up. The next game is a knockout game, you have to win. No tying in the next round. Those players have that in the back of their mind and they're going to go out and not try to hurt themselves.

COSTELLO: OK, we have our signal back from Recife, Brazil. Lara Baldesarra is out there. So what's the weather like?

LARA BALDESARRA, CNN ANCHOR, WORLD SPORTS: Hi, Carol.

COSTELLO: Did you hear me? It looks OK. I do hear you. It looks terrible out there.

BALDESARRA: It is. It's absolutely horrible out here. This rain does not want to stop. It is just a constant downpour. Now like you just said, FIFA has confirmed that this game will go ahead as planned. The big thing here, the reason, number one, the pitch must be five. If I go into the stadium to see it for myself, but to postpone this game would have meant postponing the Ghana/Portugal game, because both of these games have to be played at the exact same time so that there's no question of match fixing or anything like that.

So the game will go ahead as planned. It remains to be seen whether a lot of fans will be turning up for this game because the roads are completely washed out, making travel to and from the stadium very, very difficult. But the biggest importance here is not the 40,000 or so people that are going to be in there, but all of the people that will be watching on TV.

And, of course, that the World Cup stays on schedule. Nonetheless this game will go ahead as planned and it's going to be awfully interesting now considering the weather, Carol. This is just -- it's never ending here.

COSTELLO: So Lara, are all the players there?

BALDESARRA: They should have arrived a short time ago. We don't know if their transport has been delayed because of all of that flooding. I assume they will have left a lot earlier knowing what the weather was like, the conditions of the roads, so they should all be there now and in their locker rooms.

And slowly they will be taking to the field over the next hour or so for their usual pregame warm-ups and then they have to go back in and dry off before heading back out on to the pitch for 1:00 p.m. local time here.

COSTELLO: That's just insane. OK, stay with me. I want to go to New York and Indra Petersons, our meteorologist, so talk about this rain and if it's going to go away any time soon.

INDRA PETERSONS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: I wish I had better news, Carol. You have to keep in mind, Recife is not a place used to seeing rain. I mean, 25, 30 days out of the month they typically get rain. What they don't see is what they're seeing this morning. They've seen 3 inches since midnight and some of the rain is so heavy, about an inch has fallen in just an hour.

Current conditions already 73 degrees. That 100 percent humidity is out there and the concern, of course, is that flooding potential. They're already seeing it across the area. If this continues in this manner, they have the potential to see 20 percent of the month's rain in just one day. That day being today.

That rain is expected to continue to fall even through game time today. Yes, they may get a little bit of a lull by tomorrow, hardly going to help the players out there. Everyone trying to get to the game, right. At the game time itself we still have about 70, 80 percent chance for more rain in the forecast, 79 degrees. Humidity will be way up there, about 79 percent.

It's going to feel like 82 degrees, but again, Carol, it is all about this rain. This is something we saw in the beginning of the World Cup if you remember, just north of there. They saw about 5 inches of rain in one day. We saw what it did to that region, landslide, many people had trouble getting to the game and almost like Groundhog Day all over again.

COSTELLO: That's terrible. Let's head out to Chicago in Grant Park, George Howell is out there and he is awaiting the massive number of people expected to watch the game here in the United States, at least in Chicago. Hi, George.

GEORGE HOWELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Carol, hi. Putting it into context, it's a foggy, cooler day here in Chicago and keep in mind it's sort of the beginning of the day, so people should be at work. A lot of people, though, will be leaving work, some people coming in from all over to be here.

Look back here, no one's here yet obviously but they're expecting some 25,000 people. That will be the greatest number of fans to watch one of these games here in Chicago later today. We know that the doors, the gates here will open up here an hour before the game and look, I covered this just a few days ago as well.

It's like a party atmosphere. People coming in from all over, everybody just trained in, tuned on that game to see what happens, win, lose or draw, you know, people are watching here in Chicago.

COSTELLO: All right, George Howell, thanks so much. We also have Joe Tolleson with us. He is a world soccer announcer. You've been involved in the game for a very long time. So I was talking with Andy earlier about, you know, with the players take the field, and the field is in not great conditions. They'll sort of like not really play and then they'll tie at 0-0 and both teams will go on. That seems so odd to me.

JOE TOLLESON, EXECUTIVE PRODUCER, HOST OF SIRIUS XM FC CHANNEL: You know what, I don't know if it's quite going to play out that way. One, while the rain is horrific and some of the streets in Recife it is up to like a foot, about the top of some tires on cars and what not in different pictures that have come out of there, but these are brand new stadiums so the drainage has been terrific.

Even in the games in Natal where it poured and poured all the players said the field was fine. I don't know if that will be a huge issue. I don't know that we're going to see this collusion we've been talked about because Jurgen Klinsmann is German and he is playing against the team he used to coach.

The fact of the matter is, while it's a mathematical and probability, it's still a possibility that if Germany doesn't win this game or I should say if the U.S. beats Germany, the Germans could be out. I expect them to come out and play. They don't want to have any kind of cloud hanging over. They want to make sure they get through to the knockout round as well. What could be more important for the U.S. is what happens between Ghana and Portugal.

COSTELLO: So are you excited to see the game? I mean, of course, you are, because you're really --

TOLLESON: Sure.

COSTELLO: Of course, you are.

TOLLESON: That's what we do.

COSTELLO: I know, stupid question on my part.

TOLLESON: It's Sirius XM FC and we're soccer all the time and we're excited about this. The thing with it with Germany and the U.S. this is a great opportunity for the U.S. to take another step on the world stage. They came 20 seconds away from beating the fourth ranked team in the world and now they have a shot to go after the second ranked team in the world.

They beat them a year ago in the U.S. Soccer Centennial celebration, although some will say that was a German B team. Still they got the victory and have confidence here. It should be exciting. It's a confident team. You talk to the players, they're ready to see what they can do against Germany and show the rest of the world that the U.S. has arrived on the world stage.

COSTELLO: All right, Joe Tolleson, thank you so much for enlightening us. I really appreciate it. I'll be back in a minute.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: All right, the U.S. Supreme Court has just dropped a ruling and I'm going to try to parse this out for you. The U.S. Supreme Court has sided with Congress and the high stakes power struggle over presidential recess appointments. Officials placed in top government jobs temporarily without Senate approval.

In other words, the president didn't wait for Senate approval to appoint these people and the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that is wrong. Let's head out to the U.S. Supreme Court and Pamela Brown. There you are. So tell us more about this ruling.

PAMELA BROWN, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Right. So Carol, the justices unanimously handed over a big win to Congress. It's a big defeat for the White House. This has been a power tug of war between the legislative branch and the executive branch for years. A lot of people might not understand that the president has the constitutional authority to temporarily appoint people to very prominent positions.

We are talking cabinet members, talking board members, judicial positions and in this specific case the president appointed three people to the National Labor Board when Congress was supposed to be in recess. However, the Senate, Senate Republicans, did a legislative maneuver called a pro forma session.

So they claim that they were actually in session when the president made those appointments and therefore, they were invalid. And today the justices agreed with the Senate Republicans saying that the three people the president appointed to the National Labor Board doesn't count essentially because the Senate was in session because of this legislative maneuver.

However important to note that the justices didn't take away the constitutional authority for the president to appoint people when Congress is in recess. The president can still do that, but not when they're in this pro forma session. This raises the larger question, Carol, can the Senate Republicans just stay in session all year-round to hold up the nominations that the president wants to go through.

And also, you know, what's going to happen to all the decisions that the three members of the National Labor Board made when the president appointed them. So we still have a lot of unanswered questions here.

COSTELLO: As usual, Jeffrey Toobin, this is a more complicated decision than just not black and white, right? I guess, you could say the president lost but did he?

JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: He lost no doubt.

COSTELLO: He lost in this particular case but overall, right?

TOOBIN: Well, he lost overall. There's no question this is a win for Congress and a defeat for President Obama. The interesting question is, is it a defeat for the presidency? Because this is really a case about gridlock. This is a case about what happens when the Senate simply refuses to act on the president's appointments.

It doesn't vote them up, doesn't vote them down, just doesn't allow them to come up for a vote. The president says look, I have to have a mechanism to keep the government functioning. And what the Supreme Court said today is yes, that mechanism still exists, but the way you used it, is improper.

And the question coming out of this is how the president will be able to use it, will there be recesses where he can make recess appointments and also what happens to all the decisions that were made by the National Labor Relations Board with these now we know improperly appointed commissioners. That's a very big issue and that's not resolved.

COSTELLO: Wow. So is it safe to say that the U.S. Supreme Court's decision will only create more gridlock in this country?

TOOBIN: Well, I think that's probably most likely. That's I think a simple and appropriate way of putting it, is that it restores the Senate or establishes the Senate as a much more equal partner in terms of approving appointments and the senators, especially with the power of the filibuster, you know, have been exercising that power.

The Republican minority and if the Republicans take control of the Senate, which is certainly possible in the 2014 election, it really suggests that gridlock will be epidemic and raises real questions about the functioning, especially of these independent agencies like the National Labor Relations Board, the Securities and Exchange Commission, members who have to be appointed and confirmed by the Senate.

COSTELLO: Pamela Brown, Jeffrey Toobin, thanks so much. Still to come in the NEWSROOM, a bizarre moment in a missing child case plays out live on television.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NANCY GRACE, CNNHN HOST: We're getting reports that your son has been found in your basement.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: It gets even more bizarre than this. We'll show you the entire thing after a break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: New developments just in, in the case of a missing boy who disappeared June 14th and then was miraculously found in his own basement. Detroit police say 12-year-old Charlie Bothuell was found in a makeshift barricade in the basement, but this bizarre ending to this story is raising a lot of questions. The father, during a live TV interview with Nancy Grace, said that his son -- actually this is his reaction. Let's watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What?

GRACE: We're getting reports that your son has been found in your basement. Sir? Mr. Bothuell, are you --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What?

GRACE: Yes. We are getting reports that your son has been found alive in your basement.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What?

GRACE: Yes. That's -- if you can hand me that wire very quickly. We're getting that right now.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: Strange, right? Well, police have not ruled out child abuse charges in this case. CNN's Rosa Flores is following this strange story for us. Tell us more, Rosa.

ROSA FLORES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, you know, Carol, we're learning from police this morning, more about the circumstances of how this boy was found. First of all, they describe this basement as a mechanical room, a very small room, with a furnace and other mechanical things inside.

They describe the area where this boy was found as small. He had food with him, they described cereal, perhaps soda, and they also say that this boy had access to a bathroom. Now the weird thing is, that the father of this child did not learn this from police, he learned it live on television.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GRACE: We're getting reports that your son has been found in your basement. Sir? Mr. Bothuell, are you --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What?

FLORES (voice-over): A bizarre revelation. Live on the air. This father is apparently shocked to find out his missing son is alive.

GRACE: Yes. We are getting reports that your son has been found alive in your basement.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What?

GRACE: Yes.

FLORES: Questions are swirling around the discovery of 12-year-old Charlie Bothuell. What should have been a happy ending to a missing child case is now shrouded in mystery. The boy's father tells HLN's Nancy Grace that it's impossible for his son to have been in the basement for the nearly two weeks he was missing.

GRACE: Sir, did you check your basement?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I checked my basement, the FBI checked my basement, the Detroit police checked my basement. My wife checked my basement. I've been down there several times.

FLORES: Detroit police confirmed that investigators saw no signs of the boy after searching the home four times including once with a cadaver dog.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The FBI searched, the Detroit police searched, we've all searched. God, they brought dogs, everything, everybody has searched. What -- OK.

FLORES: According to police, Charlie was found barricaded behind boxes and a large 5-gallon drum raising suspicions as to whether someone might have hidden him.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's no way he could have erected this makeshift area of concealment. It would be hard for me to sit here and tell you that someone didn't know that Charlie was there.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There's the dad.

FLORES: In an impromptu press conference held as Bothuell arrived home from Nancy Grace's show, Charlie's father vehemently denies having any knowledge of his son's whereabouts.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: For anybody to imply that I somehow knew my son was in the basement it's absurd and it's wrong. I love my son. I'm glad he's home. I thought my son was dead, man.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

FLORES: Police will not go into the details, but they do tell us that they recovered a PVC pipe and bloody clothing from the home, not from the basement. They, as a matter of fact, describe that this basement was not an entrapment and did not appear that way. As for the child, they do tell us that this child is in the hospital. He was given a health -- a clean health bill is what they're telling us, and that he had -- has probably not seen his parents as of yet -- Carol.

COSTELLO: OK. So the boy was hiding supposedly in the basement. I mean, how was he hiding in the basement?

FLORES: You know, the chain of events here are just so bizarre. I specifically asked police, what led you to the basement in the first place, after 11 days of searching and they said that they actually had a search warrant for the home so they went to the home, exercising a search warrant.

Once they were in the home, police will not go into the details, but they tell us that led them to the basement. So that's what we know right now. We will hopefully know more as all of this case unfolds -- Carol.

COSTELLO: This is so strange. Rosa Flores, thank you very much.

Joining me by phone from Atlanta, HLN's Nancy Grace. Hi, Nancy.

GRACE (via telephone): Good morning.

COSTELLO: Good morning. First of all, tell us what it was like to inform that father that his kid was found in the basement?

GRACE: You know, I cover so many cases of missing children where I ask the viewers to help me find them and typically we have a bad outcome. Where a child has gone this long, at least 11 days, typically you would find the child dead or never find the child at all, so the big headline is, it's a miracle he's alive.

Now, I believe the father in his assertion that the FBI had searched the basement as had the police. We confirmed with police they even brought out cadaver dogs. This what is we learned. There may be a connecting hallway between all the townhomes through the basements. That may have been an in an out for whomever was keeping the boy.

We know he was hungry. I heard you report there was cereal down there, but the boy was apparently famished. There was no outward sign of abuse. He got a medical exam anyway. The father voluntarily took a polygraph with the FBI. It was inconsistent. Inconclusive, excuse me. The stepmother never took a polygraph, would not take a polygraph, and at last night's airing she was at home. Nobody knew where the -- police didn't know where the stepmother was, which concerned me. However, when I saw the father's reaction, crying, hugging people, to me that is not the reaction of a guilty man. I don't see it.

COSTELLO: Well, you know, police have not ruled out child abuse charges and they found that pipe and bloody clothing in the house which may mean nothing.

GRACE: It may mean nothing. Right now, we don't know. I can tell you this much, the PVC pipe doesn't mean anything to me because I can't determine what configuration it was or what context in which it was found. The bloody clothing, could mean something, but yet the child has passed his medical exam. So that rules out the bloody clothing to me.

What I don't understand is why this boy would have hidden away from his parents for that long. He's only gone missing one time before that we know of and it was just for a period of hours and he was just a few streets over, according to our reports, trying to get to his mother.

He lives with his father and his stepmother to my understanding. So I didn't -- I don't see him as a runaway that would try to be gone for two weeks. So why was he hiding? Where was he hiding? He wasn't in the basement when the FBI came down there. And how can a kid be in your basement on and off for two weeks and you don't know about it?

COSTELLO: It's just the strangest story, but I'm sure you'll be following it later tonight. Nancy Grace, thanks for joining me this morning. I appreciate.

GRACE: Yes, ma'am. Thank you.

COSTELLO: Still to come in the NEWSROOM, Flight 370, the search area shifts again and the search deepens. Rene Marsh has more on some startling new theories that emerged overnight. Good morning.

RENE MARSH, CNN AVIATIONA AND GOVERNMENT REGULATION CORRESPONDENT: Startling indeed, Carol. The plane flying on its own and the crew unresponsive because of a lack of oxygen. That's what authorities believe the likely scenario. We'll have plenty more details on the other side of the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)