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Early Start with John Berman and Zoraida Sambolin

Washington Post: Manhattan D.A. Convenes Grand Jury To Hear Trump Case; Biden: Sanctions For Belarus "In Play" Over Forced Plane Landing; Biden-Putin Summit Set For Geneva On June 16. Aired 5:30-6a ET

Aired May 26, 2021 - 05:30   ET

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

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[05:30:12]

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: All right, good morning. This is EARLY START. I'm Christine Romans.

LAURA JARRETT, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Laura Jarrett. It's 30 minutes exactly past the hour here in New York.

All right, a major escalation in the investigations into former President Donald Trump. "The Washington Post" first reporting Manhattan's district attorney has convened a grand jury that is expected to decide whether to indict the former president and other executives at his company or the business itself. Now, this move indicates that D.A. Cyrus Vance's investigation of Trump and his business has reached a critical advanced stage after more than two years.

ROMANS: It also suggests that Vance thinks he has found evidence of a crime, if not by the former President Trump then potentially by someone close to him or his company. The possible crimes include tax fraud, insurance fraud, falsified business records, and whether the Trump Organization misled lenders and insurance companies about the value of properties.

It's sure to be a tall mountain for prosecutors to climb.

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DANIEL GOLDMAN, FORMER FEDERAL PROSECUTOR: I do think it's a difficult case against Trump. Fraud cases are hard. He has what would be perceived as an advice of counsel defense to some of the fraud charges.

And he doesn't e-mail so we know that there isn't going to be a lot of documentary evidence that demonstrates Donald Trump's knowledge of any misrepresentations to insurance companies, to banks, to tax authorities.

That's why Allen Weisselberg becomes so important. And if he is indicted, because he would know all of this stuff, then the question is whether or not he will cooperate.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JARRETT: All right, it's time for three questions in three minutes. Let's bring in former federal prosecutor and CNN legal analyst Jennifer Rodgers. Jennifer, so great to see you this morning. Appreciate you getting up.

All right, walk us through what is about to happen. Obviously, the grand jury operates in secret so a lot of people don't know what's really going on behind closed doors. Walk us through it.

JENNIFER RODGERS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST, FORMER FEDERAL PROSECUTOR: Well, first of all, it's not like a trial. I mean, if you've heard people say that a trial is not like law and order -- it's a lot more long and tedious -- this is even 100 times more than that because they put in basically every shred of potentially relevant evidence, like bank records, the underlying communications records, every single witness. There's no hearsay allowed in the grand jury so witness A through Z and on and on all have to testify, so that takes time.

Second, the grand jurors have the opportunity to ask questions, so that's different from a trial. If they have concerns about, for example, whether prosecutors have proved the issue of the defendant's intent they can ask about it and prosecutors can refer back to the evidence or even bring witnesses back for additional testimony.

And then finally, they'll present a proposed indictment to the grand jurors for them to vote on, where they say here's who we want to charge, and here are the charges that we want you to vote on. And importantly, the grand jury doesn't have to be unanimous. It's not like a trial jury. It can be just a majority vote.

And they also are voting only on whether there's probable cause to believe a crime has occurred. It doesn't have to be beyond a reasonable doubt like a criminal trial.

JARRETT: Yes, it's so interesting, obviously, the prosecutors are not in there. I'm not sure that everybody realizes how one-sided this presentation is, even just in this beginning stage.

I want to go back to something though that Daniel Goldman said -- he's also a former federal prosecutor -- in the setup here. I don't know if you heard it but his point was look, Trump wasn't e-mailing. This isn't going to be a case where there's going to be tons of evidence from Trump himself.

How hard -- how hard is that then going to be to bring a case potentially against him directly as opposed against maybe other members of the company or the company itself?

RODGERS: Dan's right it definitely adds to the challenge here. But the most difficult thing to prove is almost always the defendant's intent and the easiest way to prove that is usually through the defendant's own words. So as Dan suggested, e-mails are a great way to prove what the

defendant's intent was. Even better would be recorded conversations where the defendant is talking about committing a crime. So you don't have that here likely.

But what you do have probably is witness testimony. If Allen Weisselberg flips, for example, he can talk about conversations with Donald Trump about what they were doing and why.

So you can get at that information another way, it's just that there's not a paper trail. You know, you have an additional challenge there.

JARRETT: Yes, it seems like Weisselberg is, of course, key, as he has been with Trump for, what, over 40 years, so he obviously knows quite a bit.

I also -- I want to get your thoughts, though -- you know, Trump, for so long was so focused on the Russia investigation when it seems to me that these investigations in New York were always the ones that potentially he faced the most exposure. But he also has the investigation going on down in Fulton County in Georgia about his statements to the Secretary of State there, pressuring him to change the results of the election. He has plenty of civil lawsuits in the queue.

In your mind, which are -- which are the cases or the one case where you think he faces the greatest possible exposure? Is it the New York case?

[05:35:07]

RODGERS: I think it is, although it's funny that you mention the Russia investigation because I do think that while there's less of a likelihood that a case is brought based on that activity if it were brought it would have to be brought by the federal authorities.

That obstruction of justice case with Don McGahn and trying to fire the FBI director and the purpose behind that is a pretty clean-cut case. So I don't think the Biden DOJ is going to do it but if they did that would be another area, along with this New York case, where there would be significant personal liability, potentially.

JARRETT: All right, so much to unpack here, Jennifer Rodgers. I could talk to you for hours. Thank you so much for getting up.

RODGERS: Thanks so much.

ROMANS: All right, to (audio gap). Americans are returning to the skies again, but Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky told my colleague Poppy Harlow business travel won't go back to the way it was before the pandemic.

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BRIAN CHESKY, CEO, AIRBNB: The bar is now higher to get on a plane to do a meeting. People now have what they didn't have a year or two ago. Many people now have flexibility. They have flexibility about where

they travel, where they live, and where they work, and they're starting to combine all of those. And I think once people have something they're not going to let go of it.

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ROMANS: Chesky said Airbnb is already seeing travel activity back to 2019 levels but people are being more flexible about where and when they travel. People are also staying in locations longer. Chesky said almost a quarter of Airbnb's bookings in the first quarter were for stays of 28 days or more.

Pent-up demand for travel means planes are crowded again and prices are rising. U.S. airfares are up nine percent since the beginning of April. For months, planes were mostly empty and airlines slashed flights. As demand returns, so do restrictions on the lowest-priced fares.

Delta's CEO said bookings are ahead of 2019 levels and expects leisure travel in the U.S. to be completely back, Laura, by June.

JARRETT: Well, an Alabama man charged with bringing loaded guns and bombs in Mason jars to the U.S. Capitol riot had weeks earlier called Sen. Ted Cruz's office and even tried to visit his home.

A new court filing says Lonnie Leroy Coffman had wanted to discuss the election fraud myth with the Texas senator. Prosecutors say a crew staffer who talked to Coffman described him as, quote, "not 100 percent there."

The filing also says the 71-year-old Vietnam vet participated in a paramilitary patrol on the southern border seven years ago.

Coffman has pleaded not guilty and remains behind bars.

ROMANS: And the Senate expected to vote tomorrow on whether to move forward with a bipartisan commission to investigate that Capitol riot. Right now, it doesn't look like it will get the 60 votes needed to advance to a final vote.

This, as Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema, who are both in favor of preserving the filibuster, issued a statement demanding that Republicans greenlight this bill. Still, Manchin told CNN he would not support blowing up the filibuster over this.

JARRETT: America's longest war is winding down, but as U.S. troops leave Afghanistan, thousands of Afghans who work for them -- well, they're being left behind. So how to keep them safe now?

Nick Paton Walsh has reported extensively for years from Afghanistan. He has new information this morning. Nick, what are you learning?

NICK PATON WALSH, INTERNATIONAL SECURITY EDITOR: Yes, the Pentagon, according to my colleagues in Washington, are in the early stages of planning for the possibility that they may have to evacuate maybe thousands of Afghans who worked for the United States during this nearly 20-year long presence.

Now, firstly, it is remarkable, frankly, that this is occurring to them at this stage. For the last 10-plus years, I've had Afghan colleagues and friends doing all they can, frankly, to get out of Afghanistan because of the worsening security situation. Often people I worked with there over years are now in Canada, they're in Turkey.

There is a scramble amongst them possible to get out as much as they can because of the looming showdown with an advancing Taliban.

But the Pentagon planning, essentially, is trying to work out how they might be able to avoid the embarrassing for the U.S. and shocking for these Afghans scenes of the Taliban marching on the capital city, Kabul, and those who worked for the Americans being essentially left behind.

Now, the State Department saying there are as many as 18,000 people who have applied for the kind of visa they need to apply in order to get out of Afghanistan and go to the United States -- 18,000. Now I know from what I've heard from people in the country it takes over a year, at times, to get yourself processed and moved out.

And often, Afghan translators who've worked for the United States have found themselves beaten and often killed at times by the insurgency as it moves forward. Now, the problem is just going to get worse in the months ahead.

The United States also, yesterday, announced that it had gotten maybe as far as a quarter of the way through its full withdrawal from Afghanistan and this may be something that occurs at some point during July. So the acute need to help the Afghans who worked for the United States who are still there will just rise and accentuate in the months ahead.

[05:40:00]

And the possibility that the State Department has to fly in extra personnel to process these visas -- well, frankly, even that, as some officials are suggesting may be the case -- that's unlikely to get through the 18,000.

A very stark series of measures are required here in the months ahead to make this last moment of America's longest war, not an acute failure of those Afghans who served them. Back to you.

JARRETT: Very well put, Nick Paton Walsh. Thank you so much for your reporting.

ROMANS: All right, new rules for pipeline companies two weeks after that cyberattack shut down operations at one of the country's most important pipelines for nearly a week. The directive from Homeland Security will require companies to report all cyberattacks to the federal government. It will be issued in the coming days. Right now, the reporting system is only voluntary.

Colonial Pipeline officials are still trying to figure out how their network was breached.

We'll be right back.

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[05:45:00]

ROMANS: To Italy now -- an update on that cable car accident in northern Italy that killed 14 people on Sunday. Three top officials with the company that ran the cable car service -- they have been arrested. They face several charges, including manslaughter. Prosecutors say the men were responsible for tampering with the braking system to work around an ongoing problem with stalls.

CNN has reached out to the men's lawyers for comment.

JARRETT: President Biden says sanctions against Belarus are in play after the country forced a commercial flight to the ground so that officials could arrest an opposition journalist.

CNN's Fred Pleitgen has been following the story. He's live in Berlin. Fred, so what are the options on the table for President Biden?

FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, I think one of the main options is probably to not allow U.S. airlines to fly over Belarusian airspace in the future. That certainly is something that would probably not do too much damage to most U.S. airlines because a lot of them don't fly over Belarus anyway. However, I did see, at least today, that some U.S. cargo airlines are actually flying over Belarusian airspace.

And that would certainly be one of the options. Sanctions would, of course, be another option as well, against entities and also against people close to the Lukashenko regime. That certainly seems to be one of the directions that the U.S. allies and the European Union are going.

Meanwhile, Alexander Lukashenko, the Belarusian president -- he gave a speech today in Parliament addressing that bringing down of the Ryanair plane in Minsk. He claimed that the alleged bomb threat that caused them to launch fighter jets came from Switzerland. This came after before the Belarusian authorities claimed that it had been Hamas that put the bomb threat on board, which even Hamas said -- later denied.

He also said that they are going to continue to be tough against the opposition -- against what he called the detractors outside of Belarus as well.

And if you look at some of the things that are happening it certainly is pretty troubling to the international community.

After that journalist was taken off the plane and arrested, Roman Protasevich was essentially, as the opposition says, forced to make a semi-confessional video. His companion who was traveling with him, a Russian citizen, Sophia Sapega, was also featured in a video on Belarusian pro-government media. That also causing a lot of outrage as well, guys.

JARRETT: All right, Fred, thanks so much. Appreciate your reporting on this.

ROMANS: So, Belarus will no doubt be on the agenda when President Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin hold their first summit meeting in Geneva. That will happen next month.

CNN's Matthew Chance live in Moscow with the details. And it just -- I'm just curious who benefits more from a face-to-face between these two leaders? Is it -- is it Biden or is it Putin?

MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, I think they've both got an interest in meeting each other.

I mean, look, from the Biden point of view his administration's been saying we want to try and find a way of putting the relationship with Russia back on a stable footing. Because there are so many kind of -- kind of random explosions and crises with Russia behind it, from hacking to escalating tensions in eastern Ukraine, to a host of other issues.

The arrest of a leading dissident -- a leading opposition figure here in -- here in Russia -- and that it's sort of distracting from the main sort of geopolitical concerns that the Biden administration has, like China, for instance, and how to deal with the challenge posed by that country.

From the Russian point of view -- well, I mean, that burden with sanctions, particularly from the United States and some other countries as well -- they want to find a way of establishing a relationship with the U.S. so they can't get some of those sanctions lifted. So that they can start to grow their economy again, which has been damaged by those sanctions and, of course, by the global pandemic, as many economies have been.

Now, in terms of expectations from this meeting in mid-June -- well, I think they're pretty low. Not least, of course, both leaders are going to be going into that meeting and the press conference afterward, which I'm looking forward to because it's going to potentially very tense, indeed, with both leaders showing the world that they haven't backed down to the other one.

Putin is going to want to show that he's not going to back down. Biden is going to have the Helsinki summit in 2016 between Putin and Trump in his mind when he sort of went with Putin over the intelligence of his own intelligence-gathering services.

And so, it's potentially going to be a very fraught meeting and fraught press conference, Christine.

ROMANS: Yes, I don't think you'll see an American leader quite so deferential this time around, but we know you'll be covering it for us. Matthew Chance -- thanks, Matthew -- Laura.

JARRETT: Police are looking for a suspect in a series of mysterious shooting incidents on the I-91 freeway in Southern California. Over 100 cars have now been hit by projectiles in the past month in Los Angeles, Riverside, and Orange counties.

Police believe the shooter is using a B.B. or a pellet gun, causing shattered windows and at least one injury.

[05:50:02]

ROMANS: A Florida high school is accused of promoting a sexist double standard in its yearbook. Bartram Trail High School altered photos of dozens of female students to mask cleavage. The school district's dress code says student clothing must be, quote, "modest and not revealing or distracting."

But worth noting, there are unedited photos in that yearbook that include the men's swim team wearing bathing suits.

The superintendent says there was an insufficient review before the girls' pictures were edited.

JARRETT: Nearly five decades after a Massachusetts teenager was murdered, prosecutors confirm a Catholic priest close to the family committed the crime. Officials were obtaining an arrest warrant on Friday for ex-priest Richard Lavigne but he died hours later from respiratory failure due to COVID.

The victim, Daniel Croteau, 13 years old at the time, was found dead in a river in Massachusetts back in 1972.

ROMANS: That poor family.

All right, looking at markets around the world this Wednesday morning, you can see Asian shares closed higher. Europe has opened narrowly mixed here. And on Wall Street, stock index futures this morning are pointing higher.

It was a down day. Stocks closed slightly lower Tuesday, just unable to hang onto gains earlier in the day. The Dow fell just a little bit, 81 points. The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq also down very slightly here.

Wall Street's biggest banks will weigh in on how they see the recovery today. The CEOs of JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, and Wells Fargo all testify virtually before the Senate Banking Committee.

Amazon is facing an antitrust lawsuit from Washington, D.C. alleging its pricing practices hurt competition and keep prices high for customers. The lawsuit focuses on Amazon's relationship with its third-party sellers, alleging Amazon banned sellers from offering their products on other Websites for lower prices.

D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine told reporters the restrictions placed on sellers has allowed Amazon to build and maintain monopoly power in violation of district law.

A spokesperson for Amazon said it takes pride in offering low prices and reserves the right not to highlight offers that are not priced competitively.

Americans are getting vaccinated and they're getting back outside. During a conference Tuesday, Uber's CEO said he's unhappy with how long it's taking drivers to pick up customers and the prices customers are being charged. He added while driver supply is getting better there's still a lot of room to grow as demand is outpacing supply right now.

Uber and Lyft are struggling to find drivers. If they can't get enough drivers customers may face longer wait times.

JARRETT: A California man is probably lucky to be alive this morning after his parachute got tangled in the powerlines in Lake Elsinore. Utility crews cut the power and firefighters had to use a safety basket to rescue him. He was stuck about 30 feet off the ground there. You can see his injuries, though, were only minor.

ROMANS: All right, still looking at the skies. The moon is about to put on a show. The full moon today will be the first total lunar eclipse since 2019 and it's set to begin within hours in the U.S.

The moon will have a reddish hue as it aligns with the sun and the earth. This will also be a supermoon -- the closest moon to earth this year. The eclipse will last about 15 minutes.

JARRETT: Very cool.

Finally this morning, we say farewell to one of the most beloved and iconic movie voices of all time.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SAMUEL E. WRIGHT, VOICE OF SEBASTIAN THE CRAB, DISNEY'S "THE LITTLE MERMAID": Singing "Under the Sea."

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JARRETT: Samuel E. Wright, the voice of Sebastian the Crab in Disney's "Little Mermaid," has died. That's according to a Facebook post from his daughter.

"Under the Sea" won the Oscar for Best Original Song back in 1989. Wright also had an extensive career on Broadway. He played Mufasa in Disney's "Lion King" when it opened in 1997, and was also Jesus Christ Superstar and in "Pippin."

He was 74 years old.

ROMANS: Truly, a very big talent there. Millions and millions of children singing that song with him.

JARRETT: Yes.

ROMANS: Thanks for joining us. I'm Christine Romans.

JARRETT: I'm Laura Jarrett. "NEW DAY" is next. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[05:49:12]

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: I'm John Berman alongside Brianna Keilar.

On this new day, a dramatic new turn in the legal jeopardy facing Donald Trump. Reports that a special grand jury convenes to decide whether the former president or anyone around him will face criminal charges.

Plus, Trump tells a court he has absolute immunity and therefore can't be sued by House Democrats for the insurrection. Will that defense hold up?

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: And Republicans finally rebuking Marjorie Taylor Greene for her remarks about the Holocaust, but will she face any real consequences from Congress? There is talk of a restraining order.

And in Mexico, elected officials and political candidates keep showing up dead. CNN goes there as we cover the wave of assassinations.