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Corrections Officers Subpoenaed in Epstein Case; Summer of Warren; Rainforest Fires Spread. Aired 9:30-10a ET

Aired August 23, 2019 - 09:30   ET

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

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[09:33:53] JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: Federal investigators have issued grand jury subpoenas to as many as 20 officers and staffers at the New York jail where Jeffrey Epstein committed suicide. This according to a source speaking to CNN.

CNN's Shimon Prokupecz, he's been following this story since the beginning.

Shimon, what are they looking to find out from these people?

SIMON PROKUPECZ, CNN CRIME AND JUSTICE REPORTER: Really they want records. They want to know what the prison guards there knew leading up to the death of Jeffrey Epstein.

It's not so much the circumstances of or the manner of his death. It's more about recordkeeping. It's more about, were the guards doing what they were supposed to do? Remember, the attorney general has said publicly several times that there were irregularities at the jail and that is what they're investigating.

Guards were supposed to watch Jeffrey Epstein. He was supposed to be checked on every 30 minutes. There are indications that perhaps some of the guards were falsifying records to indicate that they --

SCIUTTO: Claiming that they'd been (INAUDIBLE).

PROKUPECZ: Claiming that they had been checking on Jeffrey Epstein, when, in fact, they weren't. So that's part of the investigation.

The other issue that we have heard time and time again from officials is that a lot of the guards and the staff at the jail have either lawyered up or have not been cooperating in the investigation, so that when the FBI agents went to them and said, hey, we want to know what's going on here, what happened, tell us, you know, what led up to this, a lot of them refused to talk to the FBI. Some wanted immunity right away. They were concerned about getting criminally charged. So, obviously, that drew a lot of suspicion from investigators. So they said, you know what, we're just going subpoena everyone.

[09:35:18] SCIUTTO: There -- as you know, there's been wild speculation, rumors, et cetera, about what's behind this. But just to be clear, the view of U.S. law enforcement is that this was a suicide? PROKUPECZ: Yes. The view of law enforcement and also people close to

Jeffrey Epstein, his family -- his brother, who is now taking charge of all of this, and even his lawyers. I think the big issue for them is the failures on the part of the jail to keep him safe and to make sure that he didn't hurt himself.

There's also this issue about the first attempt of -- concerning Jeffrey Epstein and whether or not that was a real attempt by Jeffrey Epstein to kill himself. It now appears that it was and that the jail guards and the staff at the jail completely mismanaged it. They didn't think it was serious. They thought perhaps maybe Jeffrey Epstein was trying to get some kind of sympathy so he could be moved out of the jail.

SCIUTTO: Right.

PROKUPECZ: That doesn't appear to be the case. And so that is now part of the DOJ investigation. Why didn't the prison guards, the staff treat that more seriously?

SCIUTTO: Yes, signs of an enormous failure.

PROKUPECZ: Yes.

SCIUTTO: Shimon Prokupecz, thanks very much.

PROKUPECZ: Sure.

SCIUTTO: Coming up, many Democratic voters say what they want most in a 2020 presidential candidate is someone who can beat President Trump. So how can Elizabeth Warren convince them that she is the one to do it?

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[09:40:48] SCIUTTO: Welcome back.

This just into CNN.

The 2020 Democratic field shrinking again. Massachusetts Congressman and veteran, Seth Moulton, plans to end his presidential bid today at the DNC summer meeting in San Francisco. That according to prepared remarks from his speech.

The Marine veteran plans to announce his run for re-election instead to Congress and relaunch Serve America, that's a PAC, political action committee, that looks to elect Democrats with backgrounds in the military services. Moulton failed to qualify for the first two Democratic debates.

Later today, 2020 contender Senator Elizabeth Warren will speak at the same DNC meeting where Congressman Moulton will announce that he is leaving the race. So will several other candidates. Noticeably absent, though, the frontrunner, Joe Biden. He is in New Hampshire.

New CNN polling shows Warren 15 points behind Biden, battling with friend and fellow progressive Bernie Sanders for second place, as you can see there. Over the last few months, Warren seems to have made steady progress, though, in her push for the presidency. In fact, a new piece in "GQ" calls this the summer of Warren. It takes a deep look at what life is like for the Massachusetts senator on the campaign trail.

I'm joined now by the author of that piece, "GQ" correspondent Julia Ioffe.

So tell me what you learned on the campaign trail following her. Your piece begins with this line, suddenly she's winning over Democrats by making the grandest ideas sound perfectly sensible, including her biggest pitch of all, that she's the one to beat Trump.

Do you find, when you're on the campaign trail meeting actual people, and actual potential voters, that they buy that?

JULIA IOFFE, CORRESPONDENT, "GQ" MAGAZINE: Yes, I think they do. They have skepticism, and she always gets asked one of two questions, if not both. Either, you know, how are you going to implement all these wild pie in the sky plans that you have rolled out over the course of this campaign, or, how are you going to beat this guy? You know, are you really going to beat him with policy? And she's kind of figure out a way to respond to these things. And I think she showed in the second debate, in response to the question, that she definitely, you know, she'll shove (ph) someone if she has to.

SCIUTTO: Right. The, you know, the criticism or the doubt you hear about Warren is that she can energize people on the coasts, where voters tend to be more urban, more educated, more progressive. But in those key Midwestern battleground states, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, that she's too left.

IOFFE: Yes. So this is why I chose to follow her pretty much exclusively in those Midwestern states, including Indiana.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

IOFFE: And I was surprised to see that even in -- you know, I followed her to Elkhart, Indiana, kind of relatively conservative -- part of a very conservative state, the home state of Vice President Mike Pence. The room was palpably cool to her when she started. By the end of the -- of her speech, people were -- everybody -- everybody who could stand was up, cheering, pumping their fists in the air.

SCIUTTO: Interesting.

IOFFE: People were wiping away tears.

SCIUTTO: Really?

IOFFE: It's great. Like she really winds up a room. It's really -- I didn't expect to see that going in.

I think what's also really under-appreciated is she has this kind of aw shucks, I'm just your kind of sweet grandmother who just has thought of everything. Her campaign is actually a really well-oiled, well-organized, well-staffed machine.

SCIUTTO: Right. I mean --

IOFFE: And that was the other thing that became very apparent.

SCIUTTO: This has been in the offing. And we should say, despite that view, a Fox News poll showed Warren with a 7-point lead in a head to head with President Trump.

IOFFE: Yes.

SCIUTTO: You say that -- in your piece that voters are intrigued by her -- the specificity of Warren's vision. And this has certainly been her approach. She's got a plan, right? She's got a plan for everything.

IOFFE: Right.

SCIUTTO: Where as other candidates, including the frontrunner, are, it seems, deliberately more general in their --

IOFFE: Well, I think this is -- this was the lesson that I think a lot of people overlearned from 2016. You know, Hillary Clinton notoriously had so many plans and policies. Her campaign even had to hire a specific person to deal with all the national security white papers coming into her campaign because they understood they couldn't beat Trump with policy. And that was kind of the lesson of 2016.

And it's interesting. It's risky for Warren to be leading with policy. And I think that after basically nearly three years of Trump not having anything together, of having this kind of fly by the seat of his pants approach and a very chaotic administration approach to governing, suddenly it seem like an older woman who's thought of everything has a plan for everything and is organized --

[09:45:16] SCIUTTO: Right, maybe that -- yes --

IOFFE: Maybe that's a good thing.

SCIUTTO: It's that thing you don't want to overlearn the lessons --

IOFFE: Yes.

SCIUTTO: You know, if they were indeed lessons.

Of course the president attacks her with this offensive Pocahontas nickname, but that based on something of substance, right, which was this claim of Native American heritage, which she's since apologized for.

When you speak to people on the campaign trail, is this a major issue for them?

IOFFE: That -- I'm surprised that it wasn't. I think they understand that Trump is going to try to make hay out of it, but it wasn't something that a lot of Democratic primary voters raised with me when -- in the Midwest. They kind of think it's a nothing burger, that, you know, compared to all the things Donald Trump has done and said in office, this is so minor.

SCIUTTO: Right.

IOFFE: And, you know, compared to all the plans she's rolled out, the energy she's brought, the organization she's brought to the campaign, I think people think that it kind of pales in comparison. But we'll see. I think, you know, I think the -- if she is the -- if she is the eventual Democratic nominee, I think for sure the Republicans are going to beat that drum.

SCIUTTO: Oh, for sure. Absolutely.

IOFFE: No pun intended.

SCIUTTO: Well, this is why you go and meet people and you go to the ground to find out what's actually happening there.

IOFFE: Yes. Yes.

SCIUTTO: Julia Ioffe, revealing stuff. A great piece in "GQ." Worth reading.

Coming up, record wildfires burning right now in the Amazon rain forest. You can see this from space. And this could have a lasting impact on the planet. You've really got to listen to this story. It's important. It affects all of us.

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[09:51:09] SCIUTTO: French President Emmanuel Macron is calling the Amazon wildfires an international crisis that must be addressed at the G-7 Summit this weekend. Those comments did not go over well with Brazil's president, Jair Bolsonaro. He slammed them as a sign of the colonial mind-set. Plus, Bolsonaro is claiming that ranchers and non- governmental organizations may have intentionally started the fires to make him look bad. No proof for that, no evidence of that. But many environmental groups say Bolsonaro's encouraging deforestation with the intention of economic development.

I'm joined now by Andrew Miller from the nonprofit Amazon Watch.

Andrew, first of all, what do we know about the cause of these fires?

ANDREW MILLER, ADVOCACY DIRECTOR, AMAZON WATCH: Well, this is Brazil's burning season. So this happens every year. People set fires in order to prepare the territory for different kinds of agricultural activities, cattle ranching and others.

The issue is that this year it's almost double what it was last year. In the last week we've seen 10,000 fires that have been set.

It's interesting, earlier this month, Brazilian press reported that local farmers and ranchers had declared August 10th as the day of fire. They were publicly saying, we're going to set these fires and -- and they said publicly, we are emboldened by President Bolsonaro in order to do this.

SCIUTTO: In other words, this is a practice that had been regulated to help save the forest, right, and they feel that they have license now? I that the idea?

MILLER: Well, they definitely feel like they have license to do this as widespread as they want, and including to do it in areas where it's entirely illegal.

SCIUTTO: OK.

MILLER: You know, and this -- these fires are just one manifestation of this kind of open season on the Amazon that Jair Bolsonaro has created. We're seeing spikes in deforestation. We're seeing spikes in threats to indigenous territories of land invasions from miners, from loggers. So the fires are just the most visual manifestation. And, you know, you see the fire, you see the Amazon, you understand what's at stake just by looking at the picture. But it's part of a pattern.

SCIUTTO: The Brazilian president, as often on many issues, often echoes the rhetoric of the American president, President Trump. Does Trump's withdraw from the U.S. -- from the international climate agreement, does it make incidents like this more likely because you don't have the U.S. applying pressure to control this sort of thing?

MILLER: Well, interestingly, Jair Bolsonaro actually recently stated the fact that he said, well, this international climate treaty can't be that great if the U.S. has pulled out. He's been trying to pull Brazil out, but there's a number of sort of forces in Brazil that are holding him back.

But, yes, certainly the tone that Donald Trump sets around the world makes a difference and Jair Bolsonaro has called the Trump of the tropics. You know he very much feels an affinity with Trump. They came and visited -- he came and visited in March. And immediately upon his return in March, he started to talk about how he wanted the U.S. to go in on his sort of development plan for the Amazon.

But his development plan is essentially an apocalyptic plan and we're really seeing the manifestations of that in these wildfires. So --

SCIUTTO: Burn it -- develop it how? Burn it down? Grazing for agriculture? For --

MILLER: Yes, it's --

SCIUTTO: Cattle, agriculture?

MILLER: Jair Bolsonaro represents the agri-business and he was elected in part by the very powerful agri-business lobby that has a big bloc in the Brazilian congress. You know, so it's those forces. It's the forces of, you know, the logging industry, the mining industry. And these are very powerful industries that really are salivating to get into more parts of the Amazon, not just in Brazil, in other parts of the Amazon too.

But every action that he's taking very much is in -- on behalf of those interests.

SCIUTTO: For folks watching at home, they know the Amazon rainforest, but they might say, well, it's far enough away. Does this have consequences for the global climate, the health of the planet (INAUDIBLE)?

[09:55:02] MILLER: The existential threat that the Amazon is facing has enormous global consequences. I mean, of course, we talk about the statistics, the Amazon creates 20 percent of the world's oxygen. It generates 20 percent of the world's fresh water. It houses a huge amount of biodiversity. It drives weather systems and feeds agriculture across the hemisphere, including up into the United States.

In terms of the climate, however, in recent years, we're also talking about the way in which the Amazon helps regulate the climate, how the Amazon serves as a sink for carbon. And so as -- you know these fires represent carbon emissions.

SCIUTTO: Right. So it's turning it on its head, in effect.

MILLER: So it's turning it on its head.

SCIUTTO: Normally it would absorb it and it's spitting it out.

MILLER: Yes. And so it's -- you know, obviously it's crucial to focus on the Amazon. It's crucial to support the local actors.

SCIUTTO: Right.

MILLER: But it's also crucial for us, as northern societies, to reexamine our role in this.

SCIUTTO: Right.

MILLER: How are we creating the economic impetus for the beef, for the soy. And, you know, so we -- we need to make changes too at the same time.

SCIUTTO: Well, it's all connected. Andrew Miller, thanks very much.

MILLER: Thanks.

SCIUTTO: We're following breaking news this morning, China announcing a new round of tariffs, a big one, on $75 billion worth of U.S. goods. Wall Street reacting. It's not happy, as you can see there.

Stay with CNN.

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