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Russian Figure Skater Tests Positive For Banned Substance; New York Lifts Mask Mandate for Indoor Businesses; National Archives Asks DOJ to Investigate Trumps Handling of White House Documents. Aired 5- 5:30a ET

Aired February 10, 2022 - 05:00   ET

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

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CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: All right. Here we go. It is Thursday, February 10th. Five a.m. in New York. Thanks for getting an EARLY START with us. I'm Christine Romans.

LAURA JARRETT, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Laura Jarrett.

Welcome to our viewers in the United States and all around the world.

We begin this morning with a turmoil at the Beijing Olympics, a doping scandal. A Russian figure skater tested positive for a performance- enhancing drug. That positive test only coming to light after the Russian Olympic Committee won gold. Now, the medal ceremony for figure skating on hold.

Christine Brennan who broke the story is live for us in Beijing this morning.

Christine, we understand the athlete in question here is a minor. What more can you tell us?

CHRISTINE BRENNAN, CNN SPORTS ANALYST: Absolutely. Well, good morning to both of you. And this is a very chaotic situation that is kind of swallowed up the entire Olympic Games, figure skating so popular. The Russian team is six members. They won that gold, dominated the competition. U.S. second and Japan third.

And as I was able to report, it's yesterday now, Beijing time, one of the members of the team tested positive in a doping violation. And my sources have told me that my sources have told me that that person is a minor and the only minor on the Russian team is 15-year-old Kamila Valieva.

And so, that's where the story stands. For two straight days now press conferences, the International Olympic Committee have said it's a legal matter and basically not said another word. So, confusion, chaos, uncertainty. No medals have been given out. People are wondering about the status, of course, if the 15-year-old Valieva. What -- is Russia going to be able to keep that gold medal, on and one, it goes. So many questions and so very few answers right now.

ROMANS: Christine, talk to us a little bit about the history here, about the Russians and these allegations of doping. I mean, they're skating not even really under their own national flag, is that right?

BRENNAN: That is correct, Christine. In fact, yes, they are on double secret probation if you wanted to have a little laugh over this. This is the fourth straight Olympic Games that Russia has not been able to have their flag, their anthem or even call themselves Russia.

It's the Russian Olympic committee. That's because of doping violation, state-sponsored doping. Now, what Lance Armstrong did, that was not state-sponsored. This is an effort by the government of Russia to cheat, started at the Sochi Olympics, their own Winter Olympics eight years ago. And Russia has basically been skating on thin ice.

And yet, the International Olympic Committee allows them to keep coming back, little lap on the rest. You can come and compete, but you can't use your flag and your anthem which really is kind of ridiculous, because they're still competing as Russians.

So, how amazing is it this nation already in trouble for doping now has a doping violation.

JARRETT: It's incredible. Terrific reporting, Christine. Thank you so much for bringing us the story. Appreciate you getting up. I know you've been up around the clock on this. Thank you.

Also this morning, we're learning more about the cause of death for beloved comedian Bob Saget. Saget's family is saying in a statement last night that he died from head trauma. The family goes on to say authorities, quote, have concluded that he accidentally hit the back of his head on something, thought nothing of it and went to sleep.

Saget was found dead by hotel staff at the Ritz Carlton in Orlando, Florida, last month. The family says they have been overwhelmed with the incredible outpouring of love from Bob's fans, calling it a great comfort.

ROMANS: All right. This morning, New York officially lifting its statewide mask mandate for indoor businesses. Masking rules for public transportation, hospitals and schools, those remain in place for now.

Here's New York Governor Kathy Hochul.

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GOV. KATHY HOCHUL (D-NY): Given the declining cases, given the declining hospitalizations, that is why we feel comfortable to lift this.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMANS: New York joins eight other states that are ending mask mandates. Indoor mask mandates are in place in at least seven states.

Let's bring in Dr. Elizabeth Murray. She's a pediatric emergency physician at the University of Rochester Medical Center.

Welcome back, Doctor. So, nine blue states are now dropping their mandates or announcing

plans to do so. Good call or is it too soon? I mean, I'm looking at the numbers here. You're still looking at 2,100 fatalities a day because of COVID.

DR. ELIZABETH MURRAY, PEDIATRIC EMERGENCY MEDICINE PHYSICIAN: Yes. We now have 600,000 pediatric cases a week. It's down and still quite large. I think that we hopefully will have some good news about the youngest children being able to be vaccinated next week. And so, maybe a little bit longer until we could start getting vaccines into the entire population.

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But there definitely are regions of the country where this could be very well appropriate. And everybody wants an exit strategy. And I totally, totally understand that. I would love to see some metrics go along with this, too, because there might be times when masks need to come back on, and they certainly are still needed in school for right now.

JARRETT: OK. So, Doctor, speaking of which, what would those metrics look like? Because, as you said, we're all looking for a light at the end of the tunnel here. But there may be a new variant that comes along or something happens and we have to put those masks back on. So, what would the metrics look like?

Case counts, hospitalizations, what are we talking about?

MURRAY: Yeah, I think it's going to be a combination of things. Hopefully we will get vaccine available for the youngest parts of our population and we'll see how that goes out. The uptake in the 5 to 11- year-olds perhaps have not been as robust as we would have liked to see it. So, getting more children vaccinated is another layer that will help make schools safe.

And if we're going to remove one of the layers of safety, let's make sure we get the other layers robustly in place. And so, whether it'd be a 2 percent positivity rate, a 1 percent, I think it might depend on the scenario we're looking at.

The rules for schools might not be different than the rules for the larger community. Younger kids don't do as great of a job with masking. Don't do as great of a job with spacing. Adults in an office setting can be spaced and do just fine perhaps without masks. So, I think it needs to be a case count and what's going on hospitals in region by region.

ROMANS: I think your point about vaccines are incredibly important here. I mean, vaccines are still the core here, that we have to get more people vaccinated.

JARRETT: And more young kids vaccinated.

ROMANS: And more young kids, and we're moving forward, moving forward on getting those younger, younger kids to be able, maybe in the next month or so, we'll know more about that.

Fingers crossed over here. Laura can't wait.

We're also learning about the Russian figure skater, doctor, who tested positive for a performance enhancing drug. We wanted to ask you. You're a pediatric specialist. Can you explain what this drug does to the body and why it would give an advantage?

MURRAY: Yeah. So this is not something we normally use in children. This is a medicine that's used for angina, chest pain. It is not something that kids normally get or people who are having trouble with blood vessels in their heart.

This is an interesting choice to be used in this way. I think a lot of times people might think to enhance your performance you use a stimulant or something that would increase your heart rate, or gain metabolism.

ROMANS: Yeah.

MURRAY: But what this drug does is make your heart work more efficiently. And it doesn't change your blood pressure very much, or change your heart rate. So, an athlete wouldn't get jittery or necessarily all that different, but they would theatrically be able to perform at a higher level for longer. So, it would increase their endurance potentially.

ROMANS: Not the kind of thing you'd normally be giving a 15-year-old, though, is what you're saying? A 15-year-old athlete.

MURRAY: Unless there's a very good reason.

ROMANS: All right.

JARRETT: Very helpful.

As always, Dr. Murray, thank you.

ROMANS: All right. A CNN business on inflation watch this morning. In just a few hours, we could find out that consumer prices have hit a 39-year high again. You're already feeling it as soon as you wake up and you fuel up. A gallon of gas hitting $3.47 nationwide. The last time it was that expensive was 2014.

And coffee futures just reached their highest level in 10 years, with Arabica prices doubling in 2021. Blame dry weather in Brazil, supply chain turmoil and freight cost. The consumer price index is expected at 8:30 a.m. this morning.

And coming up in just a few minutes, how inflation will affect your Super Bowl party this Sunday. Hint, it's going to be more expensive. But on the upside, you could even have one last year. So --

JARRETT: All I know is hot dogs are on the menu.

ROMANS: Hot dogs are on the menu. JARRETT: All right. Up next for you, new questions about how potentially classified documents from the Trump White House ended up down at Mar-a-Lago.

ROMANS: Could a group of truckers protest at the site of Sunday's Super Bowl?

JARRETT: And how plans for a Russian invasion into Ukraine could get stuck in the mud.

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JARRETT: Welcome back.

New this morning, the National Archives has asked the U.S. Justice Department to look into former President Trump's handling of White House documents. Now, the Archives had to recover boxes of White House records which wound up down at Mar-a-Lago.

CNN's Katelyn Polantz joins us live from Washington on this story.

Katelyn, "The New York Times" takes this story a little bit further. They report late last night that the National Archives was concerned that some of these records contained classified information. That was their belief.

That, if true, is potentially far more significant and serious than just Trump ripping up documents.

KATELYN POLANTZ, CNN CRIME AND JUSTICE REPORTER: That's right, Laura. So this has been a steady drip of news where we've had Trump has had his own records-gate for lack of a better term, there's a gate for everything.

But in this situation, "The New York Times" is reporting that the Archives is concerned about classified information being in these boxes at Mar-a-Lago, that they had to call Trump and his people last month to go down and retrieve.

There's also been persistent stories during the Trump administration about Trump's habit of ripping up documents, basically shredding them in half after he was done with them. And so, the Archives is asking the Justice Department to look into that. So, the Archives is the Biden administration. The Justice Department is also the Biden administration but looks at potential crimes.

Now at this time we don't know if the Justice Department is actually going to open a formal investigation here and it's really unclear even to the legal experts that I speak to that even though there are laws about federal property about maintaining documents, keeping classified information secret, protecting national defense information, it's unclear here because Trump was president. These were documents created under him. What exactly that means in the context of potential criminal probe,

although I should point out during the Trump administration, mishandling of classified information was a frequent attack that Trump had against his political opponents.

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JARRETT: Well, of course, we all know how the campaign went with Hillary Clinton on that and he is the ultimate classification authority. So, the question is, did he declassify any of this before he took it out of the White House. A lot of unanswered questions there.

Also this news that this one-time trade advisor Peter Navarro, a close adviser to Trump, now the latest aide to be subpoenaed by the January 6th committee.

Why does the committee need Navarro's testimony?

POLANTZ: Well, Laura, this appears to go back to Steve Bannon. So, Bannon was one of the first people that the committee was pursuing for information. He's refused to give information. And Navarro when he was a White House trade adviser appeared to be working with Bannon to overturn the 2020 election. At least that was the committee's belief whenever -- they sent him a subpoena for both documents and testimony.

Navarro had written in his book about something called a Green Bay sweep. So, Michigan was one of the states there was a focus on in the Trump world to try and overturn the result of a popular vote there. He wrote it was the last best chance to snatch a stolen election from the Democrat's jaws of deceit.

So Navarro said that Trump was on board with this, that there were members of Congress on board with this. The committee wants to talk to him about that. But the thing to take away from this, Navarro is not a household name. It feels like there's a subpoena every day we're getting from them.

But in this, it shows that the committee is not just looking at January 6th. They continue to try and pick away at understanding the entire disinformation campaign leading up to that certification of the vote on the 6th.

JARRETT: Yeah. And once again, talking about this stuff in your book and then claiming they were shielded from testimonies. It's going to be problematic for him, like many others.

But we will see where this goes and we know you're staying on top of it, Katelyn. Thank you.

ROMANS: All right. Just ahead, bracing for a possible invasion of Ukraine. The U.S. plan to get Americans out before Russian troops move in.

JARRETT: And George Floyd's aunt says what happened to her nephew isn't just Derek Chauvin's fault. She joins us live on her new book, next.

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JARRETT: Later this morning more testimony in the federal trial of three former Minneapolis police officers charged with violating George Floyd's civil rights. Today, jurors will hear from a forensic scientist who processed the crime scene. The toxicologist testified Wednesday that drugs are not what killed Floyd while Derek Chauvin shoved his knee down on his neck for more than 9 minutes.

Joining us now, George Floyd's aunt, Angela Harrelson. She's the author of the new book "Lift Your Voice."

Angela, so nice to have you this morning. Thank you so much for having us.

ANGELA HARRELSON, GEORGE FLOYD'S AUNT: Thank you all for having me. Thank you.

JARRETT: So you cover a lot of ground in this book. It's very raw. Very revealing. Very honest. How did you decide to write it?

HARRELSON: You know, I had so many emotions and everything going on inside of me and, actually, it became a therapeutic form to me to get out everything. After a while you run out of people to talk to, you know, and you just need to put things in writing and just reflect and I was able to do that in writing this book.

ROMANS: I feel like you really captured him, you know? I mean, your family called him Perry. That's the way you know him. We all know him as George Floyd. Your family, the people who really loved him called him Perry. That's what he was known by.

You talk about why you think his death captured everyone's attention in the pandemic. You write this in the book: I had held some hope in my heart that things would get better, that Perry's murder might bring about positive change in how police interacted with Black people then, bam, another Black man, Daunte Wright, was dead, not ten miles from where Perry was killed.

You know, Angela, last week, another man, Amir Locke, was killed in Minneapolis as well, in a no-knock situation. Has anything changed two years on almost?

HARRELSON: You know, change is here. The situation is the changes is here. Perry's death did change the world. Like I told many people, the change is here.

It's whether or not people want to be able to do something about it, to take action. The change is here. The door is open but people just have to walk through that door and say, listen, we got to do something. We got to make people accountable. And that's what's happening now.

People are still not making people accountable. Because people are open to change now.

JARRETT: You know, as Christine mentioned, we're coming up on two years this may which I imagine is still so raw and you say this also in the book which stood out to me, make no mistake, what happened to Perry is not just Derek Chauvin's fault. The real blame goes to the system, this broken system that has allowed for years. Only one officer had his knee on Perry's neck but the Minneapolis Police Department and the entire system killed him.

So I wonder, what changes do you want to see in policing? I know other members of your family have been very outspoken about the justice in policing act? Do you want to see even more? What do you wish?

HARRELSON: The most important thing is the transparency. The transparency that they have in the police force is a problem, it's still a problem. And because the police unions are so strong, they have a lot of power. They can take the time, the investigations. You know, they often side on the -- they often err on the side of the police.

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And that's a big issue that's going on. So, to me, it's just a communication, a transparency and holding people accountable. You're talking about a system that has been in place for over 400 years, coming from slavery, from laws like from Black codes, to slave codes, to Jim Crow laws and what we call today systemic racism.

That has been a huge problem for us because when you break it down, black America has been negotiating equality for over 400 years and equality is a birth right. It shouldn't be an option for us. It shouldn't be.

ROMANS: Angela Harrelson, the book is terrific. There's so much in there about white privilege, critical race theory, education, what kids should be learning in school. You really -- you've wrapped up so many issues that we've struggled with in the past almost two years since Perry's murder.

Angela Harrelson, thank you so much. Nice to see you this morning.

ROMANS: We really appreciate it.

Just ahead, how the trucker protests in Canada could affect you if you're shopping for a new car.

And holy molly guacamole and pricier parties on Super Bowl Sunday.

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