Return to Transcripts main page
CNN Newsroom
Andrew Brown Jr.'s Funeral Held Amid Calls for Justice; Bodycam Law Under Scrutiny in North Carolina; Republican Party Faces Major Fight Over Its Future; Large Sections of Trump's Border Wall Remain in Limbo; France Eases Restriction as New Cases Drop; Bill and Melinda Gates to End Marriage After 27 Years. Aired 4:30-5a ET
Aired May 04, 2021 - 04:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[04:30:00]
ROSEMARY CHURCH, CNN ANCHOR: Family and friends gathered Monday to remember Andrew Brown Jr. The black man fatally shot by police almost two weeks ago in North Carolina. They are also calling for justice and want authorities to release the body cam footage of Brown's death. CNN's Brian Todd reports.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): An emotional service as family and supporters remembered Andrew Brown Jr., shot and killed by sheriff's deputies executing a warrant in North Carolina, 12 days ago.
SANDRA WHITE, RELATIVE OF ANDREW BROWN JR.: I do know him as a very good person. Did nobody no harm.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I love you, pop.
TODD (voice-over): A message for his sons.
REV. WILLIAM BARBER, PRESIDENT, REPAIRERS OF THE BREACH: He looked them in the eyes with no gun. Comfort, let that comfort you. Your daddy was a man.
TODD (voice-over): Also, calls for change.
JHA'ROD FEREBEE, SON OF ANDREW BROWN JR.: We're going to get justice behind this. And I just so appreciate everybody.
TODD (voice-over): Civil rights advocates calling for law enforcement accountability.
BENJAMIN CRUMP, ATTORNEY FOR ANDREW BROWN JR.'S FAMILY: Andrew was killed on justifiably, as many black men in America have been killed, shot in the back.
REV. AL SHARPTON, NATIONAL ACTION NETWORK: You don't need time to get a tape out. Put it out. Let the world see what it is to see. If you've got nothing to hide, then what are you hiding? TODD (voice-over): Advocates pledging to pressure Congress and the Justice Department to change police tactics and reduce the deaths of black man in police encounters.
CRUMP: We're going to be going to Washington D.C. arguing for the United States Senate to pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act. Now, another name added to that argument would be Andrew Brown Jr.
TODD (voice-over): And protesters planning to keep up the pressure to release all the body camera footage in Brown's case. The public has only seen video showing deputies arriving and shouting commands. Only two family members and one family attorney have seen a short 22-second clip of the incident, and say Brown was shot as he sat in his car and then backed away.
CHANTEL CHERRY-LASSITER, ATTORNEY FOR ANDREW BROWN JR.'S FAMILY: At no time in the 20 seconds that we saw when he was threatening the officers in any kind of way.
TODD (voice-over): The district attorney's version, Brown moved his car backward then forward, making contact with law enforcement both times.
ANDREW WOMBLE, DISTRICT ATTORNEY, PASQUOTANK COUNTY: It is then and only then that you hear shot.
TODD: And CNN has learned that Andrew Brown's family through his attorneys is going to call for Andrew Womble, the local district attorney, to recuse himself from the investigation and any prosecutions in this case. One family attorney Bakari Sellers telling us that's because Womble has had extensive dealings in the past with several deputies in the local sheriff's department.
Brian Todd, CNN, Elizabeth City, North Carolina.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CHURCH: And as Brian just reported there are growing calls for authorities in North Carolina to release the body cam video that recorded Andrew Brown Jr.'s death. The state's Attorney General, Josh Stein, says laws also need to be changed to allow this type of video to be made public. Here's more from Stein.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOSH STEIN, NORTH CAROLINA ATTORNEY GENERAL: North Carolina law was changed in 2016 and it declared that body cam footage is not a public record and that's backwards. The whole reason we have body and dash cam footage is so that we can know what happened. The public will have more trust and faith in what law enforcement does when we can see what happened. So we need to change North Carolina law, switch it so that it is a public record and if there's some valid investigative reason why the footage should be temporarily delayed, put the onus on law enforcement to get that hold.
(END VIDEO CLIP) CHURCH: North Carolina's Attorney General there.
And former President George W. Bush is speaking out about the future of the Republican Party and he's not holding back. Bush says a lack of inclusion will make it difficult for the party to win again. Here's part of what he told the podcast, The Dispatch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GEORGE W. BUSH, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: If the Republican Party stands for exclusivity -- you know, used to be country clubs, now it's White Anglo-Saxon Protestantism -- then it's not going to win anything.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[04:35:00]
CHURCH: Well, it's far from clear whether the former president's words will have any impact on current party leaders. The rift among Republicans has only deepened in recent days with top voices on both sides digging into their positions. Ryan Nobles has our report.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
RYAN NOBLES, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Tensions in the Republican Party appear to be at a breaking point. The future of the GOP unclear as two factions battle over the party's past and more specifically one question, do you buy into former President Donald Trump's false assertion that the 2020 presidential election was rigged?
For Wyoming Congresswoman Liz Cheney the answer to that question is simple. The 2020 presidential election was not stolen, Cheney tweeted Monday. Anyone who claims it was, is spreading the big lie, turning their back on the rule of law and poisoning our democratic system. That message today from the number three Republican in the House came shortly after Trump himself doubled down on his claims about the election results. Issuing a statement where he attempted to twist the meaning of the big lie, instead applying it to Biden's victory.
Cheney's vocal criticism of the former president and his willingness to continue to pedal a false narrative about election results has put Republican leaders in a bind. They are not caught between not fully wanting to embrace Trump's lies but very much willing to break with the man who still enjoys strong support from the party's base.
Senator Mitt Romney of Utah once the party's nominee for president booed at a state convention. In part because of his vote to convict Trump during the last impeachment trial.
SEN. MITT ROMNEY (R-UT): You might call me an old-fashioned Republican. I am.
CROWD: BOOING
ROMNEY: Oh yeah, you can boo all you like, but I've been a Republican all my life.
NOBLES (voice-over): As a result many Republicans like House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy dance around the topic, leaning into the big lie by claiming there were irregularities in November while praising Trump and his presidency.
REP. KEVIN MCCARTHY (R-CA): If you want to unite this nation you got to start with having integrity in your elections. There is questions out here.
NOBLES: McCarthy is worried Cheney's public opposition to Trump is hurting his party's chances to regain of the House. While he originally defended her, he is now refusing to.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Is Cheney still a good fit for your leadership team do you believe?
MCCARTHY: That's a question for the conference.
NOBLES (voice-over): And now House Republicans are pushing once again for another vote challenging Cheney's leadership, a showdown that could rip open the party divide in a big way. And one main Senator Susan Collins believes could make things worse.
SEN. SUSAN COLLINS (R-ME): She did what she felt was right and I salute her for that. We need to be accepting of differences in our party.
NOBLES: In the war of words between Cheney and Trump continues. Cheney speaking at a private conference to a group of donors did not back down in her attacks against the former president saying that his actions on January 6th represented a line that can never be crossed.
Meanwhile, the former president firing back as well, describing Cheney as a war monger and predicting that she will never hold elective office again in Wyoming.
Ryan Nobles, CNN, on Capitol Hill.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CHURCH: Well, another legacy of the Trump administration remains in limbo. Construction of a border wall between the U.S. and Mexico was a centerpiece of Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, now large sections sit idle across much of the southwest. CNN's Ed Lavandera has more on the miles that remain unfinished.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ED LAVANDERA, CNN U.S. NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice over): Fly straight east out of Nogales, Arizona and you'll pass miles of rolling border wall built during the President George W. Bush era. Then it reveals a construction zone frozen in time. Steel border wall bollards are lift in stacks and construction equipment sits on staging grounds. Just weeks before President Biden was inaugurated, the Trump administration pushed ahead to build a four-mile stretch of new border wall into the Patagonia Mountains.
LAVANDERA: This is the end of the road, about 15 miles east of Nogales, Arizona. This is as far as the border wall construction got. And what you see now is this carved-out path sitting next to the pristine, untouched landscape.
LAIKEN JORDAHL, CENTER FOR BIOLOGICAL DIVERSITY: So this trench, I mean this is the footer where they hope to put these bollards. Eight to ten-foot deep trench.
LAVANDERA: And they literally stopped in mid-trench.
LAVANDERA (voice over): Laiken Jordahl has spent years campaigning against the border wall in these remote areas of Arizona.
JORDAHL: It's kind of a bizarre scene because we've this huge amount of devastation, this massive swath of land that's been blasted open and nobody knows what's going to happen next.
LAVANDERA (voice over): We revisited a number of the border wall construction sites we've reported on in the last year and this is what we found.
[04:40:00]
Dozens of sites along the border have turned from bustling construction zones to ghost-like scenes.
JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: There will not be another foot of wall constructed in my administration.
LAVANDERA (voice over): Vowing not to build another mile of wall, President Biden stopped construction after taking office. About 200 miles of border wall that was being constructed now sit in limbo and funding is approved for about another 75 miles. The Biden administration says, it's reviewing the construction projects.
SHERIFF JOE FRANK MARTINEZ, VAL VERDE COUNTY, TEXAS: I'm taking you to the border fence. It's up the road here.
LAVANDERA (voice over): Sheriff Joe Frank Martinez in Del Rio, Texas, takes us to what is supposed to be a two-mile stretch of border wall.
LAVANDERA: This is border wall that was started at the end of the Trump administration.
MARTINEZ: Yes. This structure that you see here and that structure there.
LAVANDERA (voice over): It's replacing an old iron fence a few hundred yards away from the Rio Grande.
MARTINEZ: I just think it's foolish to leave this project just as it is.
LAVANDERA (voice over): Construction equipment is still on site. Deep trenches are dug out. The sheriff might describe this little section of Trump wall as overkill, but he doesn't want to see it abandoned either.
There are also environmental concerns. At the end of the Trump era, crews were blasting into the Guadalupe Canyon in southeast Arizona.
LAVANDERA: When the Biden administration took over, construction stopped, but before leaving, construction crews used the remnants of old steel border barriers to block access to the new wall. Just a few months ago, all you could hear out here was the sounds of heavy machinery, construction crews and explosive detonations blasting into the mountains. Now it is eerily quiet.
LAVANDERA (voice over): Laiken Jordahl says he wants to see construction money diverted to restoring the wilderness.
JORDAHL: It is enraging. Frankly, I'm so tired of watching these beautiful landscapes pay the price of politics, of really poor decision-making.
LAVANDERA (voice over): For anti-border-wall activists, the damage is done, and the question becomes, how do you repair a mountain landscape that now looks like this?
LAVANDERA: Just to be clear not all border wall projects are coming to an end, just those that were funded by the Trump administration by diverting money away from the U.S. military. Now the Biden administration must go through the process of paying out those canceled contracts. So there is still a lot of work left to be done on this issue and it is not going away anytime soon.
Ed Lavandera, CNN, Dallas.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CHURCH: As the number of COVID cases drop, Europe is making plans to reopen. The restrictions that are being lifted. We will take a look.
[04:45:00]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CHURCH: In France restrictions are easing with the number of new daily infections falling. Now people can venture further from their homes without permission. It's part of a four-phase plan to ease the country's third lockdown. And CNN's Jim Bittermann has more on all of this. He joins us live from just outside of Paris. There he is. Jim, thankfully COVID cases are dropping, now these restrictions are easing. So what is the plan ahead?
JIM BITTERMANN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well in fact, there's a couple of things going on here in addition to what you mentioned. The schools have been reopened here to some extent, the middle and upper schools classes came back yesterday. It remains to be seen how that's going to impact the COVID situation, however. The elementary schools which came back a week ago had to close down,
1,800 classes across the country and Prime Minister said reassuringly that's less than 1 percent the number of classes in the country. But they had to close them down because one student tested positive and that's the rule here. If one student tests positive you have to close down the class.
And a different matter involving COVID, the French are looking forward to the kind of things that are being discussed at the European level, the European Commission set to take action sometime this week perhaps, they're looking tomorrow among the ambassadors of the European Union at this green digital certificate which for all intents and purposes is something like a COVID passport. The idea is that to come into the European Union visitors, hopefully travelers and tourists, will be able to come in this summer with the certificate which proves that they have had a completed series of vaccinations within 14 days of their arrival.
That's something that could help the tourism business and they are certainly looking forward to that, but it also has a lot of confusion surrounding it. For example, which vaccines are being talked about and it's still up to the individual countries whether or not they could impose other kinds of restrictions like PCR tests and the rest of it -- Rosemary.
CHURCH: This is all very hopeful news. Thank you so much. Jim Bittermann joining us there. Appreciate it.
Well calling it quits. Billionaires Bill and Melinda Gates file for divorce after nearly 30 years of marriage. We will have the latest on their plans to go their separate ways.
[04:50:00]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CHURCH: Well, fans of Grammy Award winning singer Billie Eilish will be forgiven if they don't recognize her these days. This is Eilish on the cover of British Vogue's June edition. The 19-year-old has swapped her trademark oversized clothing for a series of formfitting designer outfits. Eilish was previously known for her bright green hair and baggy outfits. The singer says her fashion choices are all about body positivity and feeling good. Wonderful.
Well, billionaire philanthropists Bill and Melinda Gates have filed for divorce after 27 years of marriage. The couple announced their split on Twitter saying they came to the decision after a great deal of thought. And they will continue to lead the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation which has given more than $36 billion in charitable gifts since its launch. Pretty incredible.
And CNN's John Defterios joins me now from Abu Dhabi to talk more on this. Good to see you John. So how much of a surprise was this announcement to the philanthropic world after appearing together for the last two decades at the U.N. and venues like the World Economic Forum in Davos? JOHN DEFTERIOS, CNN BUSINESS EMERGING MARKETS EDITOR: Yes, I think you hit the nail on the head there, Rosemary, it's quite a shock for the charitable foundation world because they were such major players. And I think actually redefined the whole sector if you will.
Bill and Melinda Gates, you can say, went hand in glove. It's extraordinary because I remember at Davos, for example, year after year after year they'd sit side-by-side, pushing the next policy forward, the next target for eradication.
You talked about the $36 billion they gave away. They're leaving this foundation at this stage, although they're going to continue themselves with a revenue of $43 billion or the assets on hand for them -- pretty extraordinary. But they had some candor in the tweet here. Let's take a look at Bill Gates' tweet suggesting that they did a lot of work on our relationship, but we did make the decision to end our marriage.
And then in a court document in Seattle, Washington -- on the West Coast of the United States. Irretrievably broken is how they described the marriage. Looking to keep it clean and amicable. The have three children. Reportedly the last one now just turning over 18 years old. Perhaps that's the reason they decided to proceed in this direction right now.
They've asked for privacy and did ask the court to follow the instructions or desires they have for the financial settlement, which they'd like to keep private. Bill Gates the fourth wealthiest man in the world, $124 billion. Jeff Bezos at $200 billion and now they share a common link here unfortunately that both their marriages are splitting apart.
[04:55:00]
So money does not buy you love in this instance, clearly not -- Rosemary.
CHURCH: Apparently not. And John, what impact has the Gates Foundation had in the fight against diseases like smallpox, polio and malaria in Africa and of course the wider developing world.
DEFTERIOS: Yes, the target was very focused, Latin America, Africa, Southeast Asia. You might say that sounds very wide, doesn't seem to make a lot of sense. But they homed in on those diseases that they thought they had the best chance to tackle. It made huge head ways no doubt about it. And I think Bill Gates in particular redefined this idea what is a social entrepreneur and what is a philanthropist and when can you join them together.
He even had a lot of influence on Warren Buffett his friend at Brookshire Hathaway, the stabled investor, who's giving $2 billion to the foundation. But redefined this conversation with billionaires, what do you do with your money in the future? What's the best case for it?
So Bill Gates took the approach, good at technology wanted to apply that to the developing world, bring efficiency to the NGO community. Some would suggest the foundation was too big. Almost like the bully on the block. But no one really could argue with the progress they've made in the last two decades plus with Bill and Melinda together as a team. And then as you suggested staying on the foundation as co- chairs.
CHURCH: Yes, I mean they truly are two extraordinary people. They've given back a heck of a lot, haven't they? John Defterios joining us live from Abu Dhabi, many thanks.
And thank you for your company. I'm Rosemary Church. "EARLY START" is up next. You're watching CNN. Have yourselves a wonderful day.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
