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Over 2000 Justice Department Staffers Say Barr Should Resign. Bloomberg And Sanders Trade Barbs Ahead of Nevada Caucuses; Global Conference Reveals Rift Between U.S. And Europe; Wine Prices Expected to Hit Lowest Point in Five Years. Aired 3:30-4p ET

Aired February 17, 2020 - 15:30   ET

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

[15:30:00] ARIANNA BERG, FORMER ASSISTANT U.S. ATTORNEY, SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK: I served as you mentioned under both Republican and Democratic Attorneys General and so, it was very much a difficult call. A lot of soul searching on my part over the weekend before I was ready to sign this letter.

But ultimately, like you said, Brooke, though it may not result in the resignation of Bill Barr, my hope is that this becomes a battle cry across all parties for the oath of preserving the integrity and the impartiality of the Department of Justice that I love so much.

My hope is to restore the public's faith and confidence in the Department of Justice. And yes, I do it also to stand for the four prosecutors who were put in the untenable position of having to withdraw from the Roger Stone case and, one, as you mentioned, Jonathan Kravis even having to resign from the Department of Justice entirely.

BALDWIN: So it's a battle cry for you, but what about the reality for all these prosecutors. I mean, let's say you are working for DOJ and you want to hold on to your job, and you're being charged with listening to Giuliani on Ukraine or maybe reexamining the Flynn case. What do you do?

BERG: It's such an excellent question, Brooke, and I think that that is the almost impossible position that now current DOJ employees are placed in. And so it is my hope that the rest of us, those of us who are now outside of the Department of Justice can take up this battle cry and stand up for them.

It is also my hope that the current employees at the Department of Justice, please, please, stay in your positions, hold the line, keep your heads down and do justice as we have all been trained to do in a fair and impartial way.

BALDWIN: Do you think -- you know, there are a number of asks in this letter, right. Report abuses to the Inspector General, refuse to carry directives inconsistent with their oaths of office.

Do you think the prosecutors feel more empowered, Arianna, or less so in the wake of what we have been reporting on at Justice last week? BERG: I hope that they feel empowered. That is my hope. I hope that

they hear us, they see us, they know that we are here standing with them, holding up the principles of the Department of Justice just as they are for centuries.

BALDWIN: OK, Arianna Berg, thank you for using your voice. Appreciate it.

BERG: Thank you.

BALDWIN: Coming up next, Michael Bloomberg and Bernie Sanders trading jabs just days before the caucus in Nevada despite the fact that the former New York City Mayor is not on the ballot there. Bloomberg's National Political Director joins me live, next.

[15:35:00]

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BALDWIN: The momentum behind Michael Bloomberg's campaign is picking up among some current and former big city mayors, places with diverse populations, places like Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, Compton, Miami, and they are backing him despite his record on stop and frisk policing and his past comments about women.

Moments ago a senior adviser to the campaign of Senator Bernie Sanders had this to say about Bloomberg's rise in the polls.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JEFF WEAVER, SENIOR CAMPAIGN ADVISER TO BERNIE SANDERS: We call Michael Bloomberg the billionaire backstop. I mean his whole campaign is designed to stop Bernie Sanders from getting the nomination and going to beat Donald Trump.

I mean, look, the Democratic voters are united. Given what we have in the White House we don't want a President who's going to cut social security. Who's opposed to a raise in minimum wage. Who wants to ration healthcare. We don't want that. We don't want someone who has racist criminal justice policies. And so that's why we don't want Mike Bloomberg. We've got that now with Trump. We don't need that with Mike Bloomberg.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Let's get a response to all that. Michael Nutter, Former Mayor of Philadelphia and National Political Chair for the Bloomberg campaign, is with me now. Mr. Mayor, welcome, sir. Your response to Jeff Weaver?

MICHAEL NUTTER (D), FORMER PHILADELPHIA MAYOR: Thank you. Well, you know, I think it's unfortunate whenever Democrats, you know, kind of aggressively, if not savagely attack other Democrats. Mike is running against Donald Trump. He's virtually said nothing, and certainly nothing negative with regard to Senator Sanders. You know -- BALDWIN: There is that ad you all just released, the Bloomberg ad against Bernie Sanders.

NUTTER: Right. The ad is not negative on the Senator, but the ad is factual about things that his supporters, who are sometimes are pretty aggressive, if not, rather nasty on social media, or actual headlines from media outlets. Everything in the ad is accurate. And you know, the Senator, unfortunately, has also been attacking pretty aggressively Mike Bloomberg over the last two weeks, if not the last few months. So I mean, we're not going to be attacked and have nothing to say. We're not going to be a punching bag for anybody.

BALDWIN: Is that why the Mayor punched back because of the incoming from team Sanders?

NUTTER: Yes, I mean you know, this is a campaign. We'd love it to be a campaign of ideas not a campaign of personal destruction. But you know there comes a point where if you talk about us and say inaccurate things or attack things that are not true, and you're trying to undermine another Democratic candidate, we will respond.

[15:40:10]

There is no question about that. The Senator, you know, has been aggressive, Donald Trump has been aggressive, both of whom have actually now finally figured out that Mike Bloomberg is the only candidate who has a real path to not only winning the Democratic nomination but actually beating Donald Trump.

It's not a coincidence, Brooke, that both, Senator Sanders and Donald Trump are aggressively simultaneously attacking Mike Bloomberg. Because they are worried about our rise and the fact that we are a unifying campaign that actually puts an operation together that is built to last through primaries and caucuses as well as the general election. That's why we are being attacked.

BALDWIN: What is that path because you know you all aren't on the ballot until Super Tuesday, a lot of people describe this -- this campaign as an experiment. What's the path to win?

NUTTER: Well, it may be different, It's not an experiment. You know as well as I do, Brooke, that with every respect to the first four contests, they represent a little less than 4 percent of the delegates that you need to take the nomination. Super Tuesday, March 10th and all of March is about 60 percent with a very front-loaded process, especially including California.

Again, I think some of the candidates have realized the significance of California on Super Tuesday, if you have great success there, and I think this is what is going on with Senator Sanders, great success on Super Tuesday especially in California puts you in a position where the math may not just work going forward. You could have so much of a lead that virtually no one can catch you.

And that's why we are seeing such an aggressive, at times nasty response either from the Senator and some of the things that he has said. And certainly his supporters on various forms of social media. Other candidates have actually complained. Some of the union folks are complaining about how aggressive people are being. I have seen some of that as well.

BALDWIN: No, I asked Jeff about that, and --

NUTTER: -- let's talk about policy. Let's talk about programs.

BALDWIN: No, I know. But if I may, on the, you know, on the dollar side of this. You know, I know that Bloomberg, yes, of course, he wants the nomination and the presidency but he has pledged up to $1 billion to whoever becomes the nominee, right. He has talked about that. He wants to put his money behind whoever can take Donald Trump out of the office. And so, Jeff Weaver made news, because he just told me, I asked him, would you guys accept that Bloomberg money if Bernie Sanders is the eventual nominee, and you know what he said to me? No.

NUTTER: Well, Mike Bloomberg didn't -- he didn't say he was going to write anyone a check, and actually we can't. But Mike's commitment is to defeating Donald Trump and he can use his resources in all the ways that are legally available to help bring down Donald Trump.

So you know I mean Mr. Weaver or the Senator, they can say whatever they want to say, we're are focused on defeating Donald Trump one way or the other. You know, if they want to be -- that's how they are going to run their campaign, we're focused on winning the general election with Mike as the nominee.

But somehow, some way, if it doesn't work out, the true mark of a leader and a champion is someone who continues to fight even if they are not in the final rounds. That's the kind of campaign that Mike Bloomberg is running.

BALDWIN: On policy, Mayor Nutter, I want to give you the opportunity to respond to this because I know you've seen "The New York Times" opinion columnist Charles Blow has been vehement in how he feels against Mike Bloomberg. Right. And so let me just read part of his latest column today and I want you to respond.

He wrote, how many people rightly complaining about kids in cages at the border are simply willing to overlook all the kids Michael Bloomberg put in cages as a result of stop and frisk?

How many people who stormed Washington during the Women's March cheered #MeToo and recoiled in horror as Trump was accused by multiple women sexual impropriety are now willing to ignore the accusations against Bloomberg. And for what, he writes. It's not as if Democrats don't have viable candidates to choose from, none who come close to the scale of Bloomberg's transgressions.

Talk to me about that and on stop and frisk, why you have you decided to throw your support behind Mike Bloomberg and forgive him, accept his apology?

NUTTER: Sure. Yes, well, I accept his apology because I know it's sincere, and I also served around about the same time. Some of time overlapped while Mike was in New York and I was Mayor here in Philadelphia.

Mike Bloomberg has demonstrated over the years an absolute commitment to reducing violence, to stopping gun violence in particular, and taking on the NRA. When you come into office either in New York or Philly and you have excessively high homicide numbers.

[15:45:00]

700 plus in New York, nearly 400 in Philly, when each of us came into office. Both of us care about our citizens and most of those victims were black and brown men. So as a mayor unlike virtually anyone else in a city, you do have a personal responsibility to bring those numbers down and reduce the violence. At the same time, Mike knows that mistakes were made. And he has taken responsibility which is what a leader does.

But the fact of the matter is, a 48 percent reduction in homicides in New York City, that's a whole lot of black and brown people who were not killed. 9,200 fewer homicides in his 12 years in office as compared to the 12 years before.

So no one's perfect, Mike Bloomberg is not perfect, everything did not go well but he's taking responsibility. He has apologized to the black community, the brown community and many others. And the work and the testament of his commitment are things like the Greenwood Initiative. A 100,000 new black owned businesses with employees, a million new black homeowners trying to deal with the issues of wealth and the wealth gap between blacks and whites in the United States of America.

The reduction in incarceration in New York City while crime was coming down, 39 percent reduction whereas in many other places it was going up. So was it a perfect tenure? No, I've never met a perfect elected official but that man's heart and soul and being is in the right place. He is a true leader.

BALDWIN: Michael Nutter, appreciate you. We got many months to go, I know we'll be talking again.

NUTTER, Thank you, Brooke.

BALDWIN: Thank you.

NUTTER: I hope so, thank you.

BALDWIN: Coming up next, Secretary of State Pompeo insists that the West is winning, despite a clear rift between the U.S. and its European allies, at a global security conference. One of the reporters who covered it will join me live in moments.

[15:50:00]

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BALDWIN: Seems like the United States under the Trump presidency is moving away from its longstanding alliance with Europe and look no further than what happened at the Munich Security Conference.

Germany's President opened the gathering of world leaders by criticizing the Trump administration's America First policies. Saying they reject, quote, the idea of an international community. The French President agreed saying what Europe wants is not quite the same as the U.S., and here is how U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo responded.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MIKE POMPEO, SECRETARY OF STATE: The death of the Transatlantic Alliance is grossly overexaggerated. The West is winning. We are collectively winning. We're doing it together.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: David Sanger is CNN political and national security analyst and the national security correspondent for "The New York Times" and David, you were there. Walk us through what went down in Munich and this theme of "Westlessness" what is that?

DAVID SANGER, CNN POLITICAL AND NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Well, the theme of the conference was that the West was both restless and no longer centered. And so it was interesting to see Secretary Pompeo come directly as that.

He basically said, it's a ridiculous concept that the United States is still at the center of NATO. He went through a series of steps the U.S. has taken. They've committed a billion dollars at this for new energy programs throughout parts of Europe that have been threatened by Russia.

And yet, many in the audience were not convinced. In fact, there was barely any applause interrupting either Secretary Pompeo or Secretary Esper, the Defense Secretary, who was also there to warn about the dangers with China.

And I think what that reflects, Brooke, is a belief that even if the United States is plunging ahead with joint military operations, some economic support, that President Trump fundamentally doesn't believe in the alliance and fundamentally doesn't believe in pushing back on Russia.

BALDWIN: So you mentioned China, how much is China capitalizing or just gaining strength as a result of the so-called Westlessness?

SANGER: Well, until the coronavirus hit, I think you could say they were gaining strength a lot. They've obviously had to go retreat now. The main China debate has taken place in Munich over the question of whether Germany would follow the path of Britain and allow Huawei, the big telecommunications giant to go in to build part of the new German 5G networks. The most advanced networks coming together.

And Secretary Esper devoted his entire speech to warning against the dangers of becoming reliant on Chinese technology. Again, what everybody in the hall was saying is what's your alternative and so far, and we have a story appearing in "The Times" on this imminently. The answer has been that the United States doesn't have a competitor to stand up to Huawei. And the administration is running around coming up with different strategies, some of them contradictory to try to give an alternative. But that's an example of where so far, the West has not leading.

BALDWIN: 5G, the wave of the future. David Sanger, glad you were there and you could report back. Thank you.

SANGER: Thank you, Brooke. Great to be with you.

BALDWIN: Thank you. We have breaking news of a different vintage. Wine drinkers rejoice, the price of vino hitting its lowest level in years and it could stay that way for a while. That's next.

[15:55:00]

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BALDWIN: We're going to leave you today with some good news for wine lovers. Thanks to the great state of California a surplus of its grapes and a dip in demand, wine prices are expected to drop to their lowest level in five years. Thousands of acres of new vines were planted in 2016, at the same time, wine consumption dropped for the first time in 25 years as more people are buy ready to drink cocktails and hard seltzer like White Claw.

The lower prices are predicted to last up to three years, so, bottoms up to that.

I'm Brooke Baldwin, hope you have a wonderful holiday, Monday, let's send it to Washington. Dana Bash --

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