Return to Transcripts main page
Early Start with John Berman and Zoraida Sambolin
President Biden Travels to Brussels for His First NATO Summit; Trump DOJ Subpoenaed Apple for Former White House Counsel McGahn's E- mail Records; Naftali Bennett Sworn in As Israel's New Prime Minister. Aired 5-5:30a ET
Aired June 14, 2021 - 05:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[05:00:00]
LAURA JARRETT, CO-ANCHOR, EARLY START: Welcome to our viewers in the United States and all around the world. We have reports this morning from Brussels, Geneva, Washington, Jerusalem, Austin, Hong Kong, Shanghai and London. We are everywhere. This is EARLY START, I'm Laura Jarrett.
CHRISTINE ROMANS, CO-ANCHOR, EARLY START: As only CNN can. I'm Christine Romans, it is Monday, June 14th, it is 5:00 a.m. exactly here in New York. This morning, President Biden's push to re-engage the U.S. with the rest of the world takes him to Brussels at his first NATO Summit as commander-in-chief, he plans to re-affirm America's commitment to the military alliance.
JARRETT: The event comes on the heels of meetings with several U.S. allies in the annual G7 Summit in Cornwall, England. Chief national affairs correspondent Jeff Zeleny is up bright and early, he's traveling with the president in Brussels. Jeff, the White House is laying out expectations for the NATO Summit. What are you hearing behind the scenes?
JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Well, good morning Laura. President Biden is going to be arriving here to NATO. As you said, it is his first time here as commander-in-chief, but certainly not to NATO overall. But he is carrying the message that he's been delivering throughout his European tour of America is back. Of course, no place like here at NATO is that America first agenda from the former Trump era still echoing.
Of course, it was some three years ago right here where President Trump threatened to withdraw from the military alliance. All that of course is ancient history, at least for now. But there are questions about the commitment of the U.S., but President Biden made a brief reference to this yesterday as he traveled here to Brussels.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We do not view NATO as a sort of a protection bracket. We believe that NATO is vital to our ability to maintain American security for the next century.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ZELENY: So, there have always been so many questions about the defense spending, the contributions that member countries are making. And President Trump, of course, made that front and center that as did former President Barack Obama. So, now, there actually have been higher contributions here from the allied nations, so President Biden will address that. But one of the key things expected to come out of this summit, just a one-day summit is a new strategic imperative, for the first time, talking about the rising threat of China, Russian aggression and cyber securities is going to be a central focus here.
An Article 5, of course, President Biden will re-affirm the commitment and importance to Article 5. That of course is an attack on one -- it is an attack on all. And for the first time, cyber security will also be included in that. All of this is coming, of course, President Biden, a welcome site for many European leaders. But there are deep questions about his own withdrawal plans for Afghanistan. Of course, pulling all U.S. troops out by September 11th. So, he'll be confronted and questioned on that as he holds some separate one-on-one meetings, but that summit begins here later today. Of course, he's making his way to Geneva to meet with Vladimir Putin on Wednesday.
JARRETT: All right --
ZELENY: Laura --
JARRETT: Big week ahead. Jeff, thanks so much. Appreciate it.
ROMANS: All right, speaking with -- the White House also gearing up for President Biden's summit with Russian leader Vladimir Putin. America's ambassador to the United Nations weighed in last night on how that meeting might go.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What happens if that meeting is a failure? What if it's impossible to do the friendly smiles that you diplomats do?
LINDA-THOMAS GREENFIELD, U.S. AMBASSADOR TO THE UNITED NATIONS: I don't know that it will be a meeting of friendly smiles. I think it will be a meeting that in which the president will be candid and frank with President Putin. It's the first step in I think a process of rebuilding a relationship that is stable and predictable.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROMANS: At the G7 Summit, world leaders singled out Russia for harboring the hackers behind that rash of ransomware attacks. But there may still be some areas for agreement between Biden and Putin. CNN's Matthew Chance is in Geneva where the two leaders will meet.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, preparations are underway here for this first summit between the U.S. and Russian presidents. With the stage set for a potentially tense encounter between the two leaders. There's of course a list as long as your arm of fraught issues in the U.S.-Russia relationship that have already strained ties from cyber attacks on the U.S. and election meddling to the Russian military threat against Ukraine, and of course, Russia's crackdown on critics at home. All of which President Biden says he will raise in the face-to-face meeting with President Putin on Wednesday.
But ahead of the summit, Russia has offered no indication at all that it's prepared to compromise or back down. In fact, it's already been announced there will be no joint news conference when the summit is over. Not exact a positive sign. Having said that, both sides are suggesting that there are some areas where they may be able to work together. Arms control, climate change, regional stability.
[05:05:00]
And in the shorter term, diplomats from both sides are suggesting returning ambassadors to each other's countries may be agreed, and the emotional issue of prisoner exchanges could be discussed. But when it comes to the substantial issues that stand between Russia and the United States, expectations are still very low. Matthew Chance, CNN, Geneva.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
JARRETT: Matthew Chance, thank you for that report. Well, democratic leaders in Congress now demanding to hear from former top Justice Department officials after revelations that data was secretly seized from Democratic lawmakers under the Trump administration. There is a lot here we still don't know. Like what were prosecutors after in the first place? Why did this go on in total secret for so long? Why the need for such unusually aggressive tactics? Bottom line here, plenty of questions that the current DOJ knows the answers to.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA): What the administration did, the Justice Department, the leadership of the former president goes even beyond Richard Nixon. How could it be that there could be an investigation of other members in the other branch of government and the press and the rest too. Yet, the attorneys General did not know.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
JARRETT: It turns out it wasn't just Democrats. New reporting shows that account information for former President Trump's top lawyer in the White House, yes, the White House counsel, was subpoenaed and swept up during the last administration as well. Our senior legal affairs correspondent Paula Reid has the latest on all of this.
PAULA REID, CNN SENIOR LEGAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Well, good morning Laura and Christine. CNN has learned that in February, 2018, the Justice Department requested from Apple records for former White House counsel Don McGahn and his wife. Now, to underscore what an extraordinary request this is, at the time, McGahn was the top lawyer for the president of the United States, and Apple was barred from revealing this request until May of this year. That means the Justice Department had to go to court multiple times to keep this under wraps.
Now, what's not clear right now is whether McGahn was individually targeted in an investigation or if he was swept up in an investigation into someone else. As of right now, a source familiar tells CNN that the former Attorney General Jeff Sessions and former deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein had no knowledge of this request for Don McGahn's records. Now, something about that does not add up. But we continue to work our sources on how they could be possible that the two top justice officials would not know about such an extraordinary request. Also, an important piece of context here, few weeks before this request was made, Don McGahn and the president were at odds over the fact that the president had been pressuring McGahn to fire then special counsel Robert Mueller.
McGahn resisted, and this kind of back-and-forth really was at the center of the obstruction of justice investigation into former President Trump. Laura, Christine?
ROMANS: Paula, thank you for that. Apple and other tech giants are caught between competing demands, subpoenas from law enforcement and demands for privacy. You've probably noticed Apple has been ramping up privacy features to protect consumers. But at the same time, tech companies legally must comply with law enforcement requests for your account information. There could be thousands of requests per week, many of them are vague of the focus on an investigation and the companies can only challenge subpoenas if they're related to a corporate client, not a government one.
"The New York Times" found Apple only disputed 4 percent of requests in the first six months of 2020. That means companies often hand over the customer data they pledge to protect. Apple defending its privacy credentials amid revelations it handed over lawmakers data to the Trump administration. Apple claims it was blindsided, saying the subpoena quote, "provided no information on the nature of the investigation and that it was virtually impossible to know without digging through users' accounts."
JARRETT: You can see them trying to do this delicate dance here because they're getting so much pushback --
ROMANS: Yes --
JARRETT: People worried about privacy concerns and Apple is trying to say, look, we're trying to follow the law here.
ROMANS: That's right.
JARRETT: All right, still ahead, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's historic 12-year rule comes to an end. But he's vowing a return to power. We are live in Jerusalem next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[05:10:00]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) MICKEY LEVY, SPEAKER, KNESSET (through translator): The results of
the voting, 64, the new government 59 against 1. Thank you, friends. I ask you, friends, please.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
JARRETT: And just like that, the Middle East sees a historic power shift. Benjamin Netanyahu ousted as Israel's longest-serving Prime Minister, but not before one final act of defiance.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BENJAMIN NETANYAHU, FORMER PRIME MINISTER OF ISRAEL: We will be back soon, we'll be back.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
JARRETT: Netanyahu did shake his successor's hand, but is refusing to attend today's hand-over ceremony, where have we seen that before? So, what does this all mean for Israel and the region and Israel's relationships abroad including with the United States? CNN's Oren Liebermann is live in Jerusalem, back on his old beat, Oren, good morning to you.
OREN LIEBERMANN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Laura, there will be a behind- the-scenes meeting between former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the man who ousted him from power, now Prime Minister Naftali Bennett. But not the traditional public handover of power ceremony that is seen here and has been seen over the changes of power throughout Israel. For all of the gifts former President Donald Trump gave Netanyahu, he could never give him outright electoral victory.
And now that Bennett has removed him from power, now that Bennett has become Israel's leader, the White House, the Department of State, the Defense Department were all very quick to send congratulatory messages.
[05:15:00]
President Joe Biden already having his first conversation with Prime Minister Naftali Bennett.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
LIEBERMANN (voice-over): After 4,457 consecutive days in office, Benjamin Netanyahu's grip on power was broken. In his final speech as Prime Minister before being replaced, Netanyahu lashed out at his rivals.
NETANYAHU (through translator): You calls yourselves the guardians of democracy, but you're so afraid of democracy that you're ready to pass fascist laws against my candidacy. The language of North Korea and Iran in order to maintain your regime.
LIEBERMANN: The man who replaced him, right-wing rival Naftali Bennett speaking under a hail of abuse from Netanyahu allies and far- right extremists. Some ejected from the hall. Late Sunday night, Bennett won a crucial conference vote in the Knesset, Israel's parliament. The swearing in made it official. Bennett became Israel's Prime Minister. He promised a different kind of politics. One aimed at unity and agreement, not discord and division.
NAFTALI BENNETT, PRIME MINISTER, ISRAEL (through translator): Twice in our history, we have lost our national home precisely because the leaders of the generation were not able to sit with one another and compromise. I'm proud of the ability to sit together with people with very different views from my own.
LIEBERMANN: The 49-year-old high tech millionaire is Israel's first religious Prime Minister. His roller-coaster political journey has taken him through a series of different political parties on the right. He now leads the most diverse coalition in Israel's history, including the first Arab party ever to join a government.
BENNETT (through translator): We are not enemies. We are one people.
LIEBERMANN: Until the final moment, Netanyahu was working to scuttle Bennett's government, hang on to power. In language echoing former U.S. President Donald Trump, Israel's longest-serving leader accused his rivals of the greatest fraud in the country's history. Trump gave Netanyahu major political gifts, recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, moving the American embassy to Jerusalem, normalization agreement with some Arab countries and more.
But it was never enough to get Netanyahu what he craved, an outright election victory. Netanyahu couldn't overcome a polarized electorate in the ongoing corruption trial which he's denied wrongdoing. He's now leader of the opposition as he watches Naftali Bennett lead the country into a new era of politics.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
LIEBERMANN: Naftali Bennett's job of leading the country will certainly not be easy. He has a bare minimum majority in Israel's parliament, the Knesset. And that means that passing any sort of legislation from budgets to matters of state and religion to trying to fix the cost of housing here, all of that will be incredibly difficult especially with Benjamin Netanyahu working from the opposition to try to topple this government. Laura, it's worth pointing out that so much of this era of Netanyahu will be defined by his relationship to former President Donald Trump.
Netanyahu lasted only 144 days after Trump, and he had a functioning government for exactly zero of those days.
JARRETT: All right, Oren Liebermann, thanks so much for being there for us, appreciate it.
ROMANS: All right, here in the U.S., a violent weekend across the country as families once again turn their grief into a call for action.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK) [05:20:00]
ROMANS: Americans waking up to the numbing reality of another gruesome weekend in the U.S., at least 11 people killed and another 55 injured in 10 mass shootings across seven states. Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Savannah, Georgia, Louisville, Kentucky, Chicago, Seattle, Dallas, Austin.
JARRETT: In Ohio alone, mass shootings in Cincinnati, West Salem, and in Cleveland where a mother is left grieving the loss of her son.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I want to see my son. I still want to see my son. I still want to see my son. Yes, right, seven kids, I'll only shoot for that --
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What happened?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I don't know. Everybody is mad at each other for dumb reasons. I don't know. I really don't know.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
JARRETT: In many of the shootings, at least one gunman is still at large. That includes Austin where 14 people were shot and one has now died. CNN's Ed Lavandera is there with more for us.
ED LAVANDERA, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Christine and Laura, the shooting that erupted here this weekend on Sixth Street, the iconic entertainment district of downtown Austin, Texas, has now turned deadly. Austin police say that 25-year-old Douglas John Kantor has died. More than 24 hours after he was rushed to the hospital from the shooting scene here in downtown Austin. According to Austin police, they are looking for two suspects, one of them was arrested over the weekend, but the search continues for that second suspect.
Austin police say that the shooting erupted as an altercation between two people. They do not believe that the wounded and the now dead, that they were specifically targeted in this shooting. But it was a chaotic situation as the gunfire erupted. Dozens of officers responding to the scene there as people were running away, and in that confusion, the suspects were able to get away from the scene. The first suspect wasn't arrested until many hours after the shooting took place. And Austin police say they continue to look for the second suspect. Christine and Laura?
[05:25:00]
JARRETT: All right, Ed, thank you for that. It's going to be a long Summer --
ROMANS: It will --
JARRETT: If this keeps up. All right, reopenings now delayed in England. Why are coronavirus surge in the U.K. this Summer could spell trouble come Fall in the U.S.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
ROMANS: Good morning, this is EARLY START this Monday morning, I'm Christine Romans.
JARRETT: I'm Laura Jarrett. It's about 29 minutes past the hour here in New York. President Biden making his entrance at the NATO Summit today, highlighting the U.S. commitment to the military alliance that was frequently maligned by his predecessor Donald Trump. The president making a big push for greater coordination in checking China and Russia, two adversaries whose actions on economic and national security fronts have become the chief foreign policy concerns.
ROMANS: And President Biden will underscore the U.S. commitment to the alliance charter, which spells out that an attack on one member is an attack on all.
