Return to Transcripts main page

New Day

Jury Deliberating in Boston Bombing Trial; Russians Hack White House Computers; President Obama Tackles Climate Change; Police Officer Charged with Murder. Aired 6:30-7a ET

Aired April 08, 2015 - 06:30   ET

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

[06:30:00] CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: I don't think he could have him with a taser. And he shot at this guy eight times. I don't know how many times he hit him.

But when the forensics would have come back on that poor man's body --

ERROL LOUIS, NY1: Yes.

MO IVORY, ATTORNEY: That's right.

CUOMO: -- and you would have seen how many bullets were in his back and what this officer said, I think he had trouble, anyway. No question, Mo, we got to wrap it up for now, we're going to keep talking about it. This video is going to open a window into how these situations are investigated, investigated, because if you don't have a video like this, these cases are very hard.

Errol Lewis, thank you for taking us back to the first step, Mo Ivory doing it as well. So we don't get lost in the emotion of the moment.

Now, we're taking this on because it does open up a big debate again. It is just one case, one video on one case, but it is going to have bigger meaning, you know that as well as I do.

So, we have a discussion, what does it mean to you? Tweet us or please go to Facebook.com/NewDay, and tell us what you think so we can continue the conversation -- John.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Important discussion.

All right. So, nobody doubts Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's guilt in the Boston marathon bombing trial because his attorney says he did it. So, why does the jury need a second day to deliberate? What questions do they have for the judge? We'll take to you Boston, live, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:35:06] ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: A second round of jury deliberations in the Boston bombing trial gets under way this morning.

On Tuesday, the panel could not reach a verdict after seven hours, and they sent out two undisclosed questions to the judge.

Let's get right to CNN's Alexandra Field tracking all of the latest for us from Boston.

What do we know this morning, Alexandra?

ALEXANDRA FIELD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hey there, Alisyn.

This case isn't exactly a who done it. Dzokhar's attorneys have admitted to his role in it. But the jury does have the responsibility of looking at each of the 30 counts that Dzhokhar is charged with and determining whether or not the government met its burden of proof. A lot of people thought the process would move swiftly. This is the first time that the jury has been together behind closed doors where they're able to talk freely about the testimony that they've heard and the first time they've had access to every piece of evidence that's been entered into the case over the last couple of weeks.

We know that already this process has raised a couple of questions for the jury. They submitted two notes with questions for the judge. Those questions have not been publicly revealed in the courtroom. We expect that the judge will help the jury resolve those questions later this morning.

But we should point out, this is certainly not irregular. It's pretty routine, Chris, for juries to come back with questions, wanting clarifications, definitions, maybe a little more guidance. We should know more when the jury returns here at 9:00 a.m.

CUOMO: All right. Alexandra, we'll stay on that.

We have big news this morning -- murder charges for a South Carolina cop after disturbing video surfaces depicting what happened. This officer shooting an unarmed man in the back. That man, Walter Scott, 50 years old, obviously running away from the police officer. This all started with a traffic stop Saturday morning at 9:30 a.m. local time.

The officer is Michael Slager. He says he had to shoot Walter Scott because Walter had taken his stun gun in a scuffle and there was fear for his life. But that was before the officer knew that video existed.

BERMAN: The fate of Aaron Hernandez now in the hands of a jury, which resumes deliberations later this morning. During closing arguments on Tuesday, the defense team admitted that the former New England Patriot witnessed the murder of Odin Lloyd.

Now, this was a surprise. This was the first time we heard this in the courtroom. The defense has always maintained that Hernandez had no part in planning Lloyd's murder.

CAMEROTA: Washington, D.C. was in the dark, a voltage drop briefly knocked out electricity in parts of Washington and Maryland, including the White House and the State Department. Officials blame a downed transmission line at a power plant in Maryland. The White House, which switched to back-up power so quickly, we're told President Obama did not even notice this. They dismissed any terrorist connection to this outage.

But it was so bad, even Oprah Winfrey was left in the dark.

BERMAN: To thousands --

CAMEROTA: Yes.

BERMAN: When it happens to Oprah --

CAMEROTA: This has never happened to Oprah before, she was giving a speech honoring Maya Angelou when the lights went out.

CUOMO: I thought she had the power to create light, no?

BERMAN: Chris Cuomo right there, @ChrisCuomo.

(CROSSTALK)

CAMEROTA: Wow, she's been revealed.

CUOMO: She's big enough to do it. I stick with my statement.

All right. So, bad weather news coming your way. Tornadoes could hit central U.S. today. With severe weather in the forecast as well.

Let's get to meteorologist Ivan Cabrera for the latest.

What do we know?

IVAN CABRERA, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Yes, talking about lights going out, I think we'll have plenty of that later this afternoon. Clash of the air masses here, Chris, is what we have going. Thunderstorms right now in parts of Michigan and just to the north we have snow. So, it's that clash of air masses that's going to set up the severe weather threat later on. Thunderstorms right now in Illinois. Temperatures well into the mid and upper 80s ahead of the frontal boundary, to the north, we have 50s and 60s.

So, we have the temperature difference, the moisture difference, dry air from the north and that we have upper level energy that's going to be coming in from the west, all of that is going to transpire late this afternoon to some thunderstorms that include large hail, damaging winds, and the potential for tornadoes in some of these super cell thunderstorms could be producing some strong tornadoes. We'll watch that closely. Oklahoma City, Wichita, Kansas city, heading up into St. Louis, that is an area we're focusing in on today as we continue heading through later this afternoon.

And the severe weather threat continues tomorrow, a multistate, multiday tornadic threat. We'll keep you posted on it, back to you.

BERMAN: Yes, pay attention to this one, guys. It doesn't look good. Thanks, Ivan.

We have a disturbing breach at the White House, Russian hackers manage to infiltrate the computers there. So, how much information did they get? Was any of it classified?

[06:39:32] Christiane Amanpour joins us next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CAMEROTA: Russian hackers behind a cyberattack on White House computers, according to U.S. officials. Investigators say only unclassified systems were compromised, but still, hackers were able to uncover private details about President Obama's schedule.

To talk about this and much more, let's turn to CNN chief international correspondent, Christiane Amanpour.

Great to have you in studio with us.

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Good to be here.

CAMEROTA: OK, they got, these hackers got access to President Obama's nonpublic schedule.

AMANPOUR: As you can imagine, the White House is playing this down. And it did obviously happen several months ago. But hacking, as we know, is the big sort of weapon of the 21st century.

So, we have Russian hacking, we have North Korean hacking, we have Iranian hacking, Chinese hacking. It just shows how sensitive these modern technologies is, how much protection you need.

But this has been going on since time immemorial. In the Clinton administration, there was a huge incident whereby there were Russian bugs and the computer was compromised in the State Department some 15 to 18 years ago.

So, it's the progression of foreign governments, if it turns out to be a foreign government, or just troublemaker hackers who simply have the ability now to be able to play cat-and-mouse with whatever technology exists. It is quite easy, to outsmart technology, and people just have to keep trying to build up the defenses better and better.

[06:45:02] CUOMO: Another big story, Yemen.

AMANPOUR: Yes.

CUOMO: You keep hearing from your sources, so do we, focus on Yemen, focus on Yemen. This is going to become the devil's playground. You don't understand how serious this is.

What's the context?

AMANPOUR: The context is and we've been saying this in our discussions, since this has sort of gone to hell in hand basket, really, that this was all for many years through President Obama's administration, the center of the administration's counterterrorism strategy in that region, because when they successfully got al Qaeda out of Afghanistan, and then busted them up in Pakistan, they started moving to Yemen and we know that the famous underwear bomber, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, you know, they have a lot of capability there.

John Brennan, who was the president's counterterrorism adviser and now CIA director, spent a lot of, you know, the frequent flyer program to Yemen, to Saudi Arabia, billions of American dollars have gone into the counterterrorism structure there. And yes, they hung their policy around trying to build up you know, a central government, their own security forces.

But there's a little bit of defensive play right now from the White House, even this week the press spokesman, Josh Earnest, called that the successful model. Clearly, it's not successful at the moment.

BERMAN: They're not walking away from it one bit. You have Anthony Blinken in Saudi Arabia essentially delivering more weapons to the Saudis, who are engaged in this remarkable intervention in Yemen right now with other Arab countries.

Do you think there's any reservations in the administration about being so public about taking such sides here?

AMANPOUR: I don't think so, and basically in for a penny, in for a pound. I mean, presumably, they're trying to protect the massive investment that's already in there. And knowing that, you know, which side do you want to win?

Right now, al Qaeda is exploiting this vacuum. The Saudis have done -- you know, got quite a good cobbled together a local coalition. The Americans are providing some weapons, some intelligence, doing what they can. They may or may not be a ground invasion. Every day we hear that maybe the Saudis will put boots on the ground.

Two things: one, it's not working. The Houthis are still, still massively advancing. Some of their bases have been somewhat disrupted.

And two, you know, it's very, very difficult to know whether this is just a proxy war, civil war or is it going to be you know, just a massive collapse.

CUOMO: When you say proxy, between who?

AMANPOUR: Well, because, you know, the Saudis are backing right now, one group. They say the Iranians are backing another.

CUOMO: You're very slow on that, why?

AMANPOUR: Well, because there's no physical proof. Everybody says that, you know, because it's a Shiite sect and certainly the Iranians have said, stop the intervention. But I've tried to figure out and asked and asked about tangible proof of, you know, is the Iranian general there? Are Iranian weapons getting there?

And as yet, I haven't -- nobody has been able to deliver that proof, and from any platform or podium. So, but it doesn't matter, it's still a major, major issue that's going on there.

CAMEROTA: Christiane, always great to have you on to give us context like this.

AMANPOUR: Thank you.

CAMEROTA: Thanks so much for being here this morning.

BERMAN: Thanks so much.

President Obama tackling the issue of climate change -- you'll never guess what he said he can do to your health if nothing is done to fight the problem? He sat down one-on-one with our Dr. Sanjay Gupta.

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

[06:52:18] BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I remember when I first went to college in Los Angeles in 1979, the air was so bad that you couldn't go running outside. And you'd have air quality alerts and people who had respiratory problems or were vulnerable had to stay inside. We took action and there's a lot better, and incidence of asthma and other diseases went down. The same is true when it comes to climate change.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: That's obviously President Obama talking about the threat that climate change poses to public health. He addressed that issue at Howard University.

CNN's chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, he was there. You saw him speaking one-on-one with the president.

Sanjay joins us now live from the White House.

Good morning. Great to see you this morning, Sanjay.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes. Good morning.

BERMAN: I've heard the president talk in somewhat personal ways about climate change and the threat on personal health. He said his daughter Malia suffered from asthma, so he was acutely aware of situations that climate change can pose.

What's the science linking climate change to health issues?

GUPTA: Well, you know, that's a great question. It's where we started the interview yesterday as well. I think the best way to sort of characterize the science is still emerging. I mean one of the things you'll read often is that many doctors believe climate change is affecting their patients and that is happening now.

But exactly in what ways I think is part of what they're still trying to define.

They say, you mentioned asthma, John. They say asthma rates have doubled over the last three decades.

The question just how much of that is due to climate change, how much of that is due to other things is not completely settled. But I think what people do agree on is that asthma worsening or exacerbations can happen because of climate change, because of more particulates in the air.

So, look, I think this is a reframing in some ways of climate change and global warming, as more of a public health issue. I think it's been going on for some time. But it's the first time we've heard the president speak so forcefully about it.

BERMAN: So, Doctor, you know, a question I think a lot of people have, or patients have when they go to someone like you, is what can we do about it? How do we protect ourselves?

GUPTA: Well, you know, when I talked to the president about that, I think there was a message in here for the community at large. Also for doctors and nurses to be aware of climate change, as potentially being a factor in what is causing some of their patients' illnesses.

I think for the average person, you know, it's going to be more of a question of recognizing the air quality around you. They got a partnership for example with Microsoft and Google to allow people to be empowered, to measure the air quality in their communities, even in their homes.

You know right now, I think the message was more for the medical community at large, and obviously for carbon emitters, you know, coal- fired power plants, saying we need to reduce emissions. They're saying reduce them by 28 percent to 30 percent by the year 2025.

[06:55:02] So, we've been talking about global warming, talking about climate change for a long time. But I think this again reframing of it as a public health issue is something that everybody, you know, he says should pay attention to.

BERMAN: So, tying climate change to personal health and public health. Obviously, the biggest health care issue the president has dealt with in his presidency is health care itself, the passing of the Affordable Care Act. The Supreme Court once again weighing a decision that could in some ways derail Obamacare.

Did you have a chance to talk to him about that?

GUPTA: I asked him about that, you couldn't do an interview with him about health without talking about this topic.

Look, you're right, John. I think at some point this spring, we're going to hear again from the Supreme Court, a major challenge to the Affordable Care Act. What it has to do basically is states that do not have state-based exchange -- will people in those states be able to continue to receive subsidies?

I asked him about that, and I also asked him, look, if the Supreme Court decision rules against the Affordable Care Act, what is the plan B? Listens to what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OBAMA: If the Supreme Court made a ruling that said the folks who have federal exchange don't get the tax credits, what you would end up seeing is millions of people losing their health insurance. And the truth is that there aren't that many options available, if in fact they don't have tax credits. They can't afford to get the health insurance that's being provided out there.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GUPTA: So, really no plan B. I mean, he's very confident, John, that the Supreme Court decision is going to rule in favor of the Affordable Care Act. It's not going to -- the people are not going to lose subsidies.

But, look, if it doesn't happen, he just says there's going to be millions of people who lose those subsidies, lose their health care insurance. There is no particular plan B.

So, there you have it. We'll know more about that probably sometime later this spring. But that's sort of the White House's position on the whole Supreme Court issue right now.

BERMAN: Sanjay, were you guys both hooked up to monitors during this interview? There's all kinds of equipment there when you're talking to the president.

GUPTA: Well, they were measuring my heart rate to make sure I wasn't fluctuating too much. No, those were just props. We were in a hospital simulation center, that's where they decided to do the event. But it was a little -- it did feel very medically.

BERMAN: Good. I'm glad you were comfortable in that situation. Dr. Sanjay Gupta, great to have you here with us. Appreciate it.

GUPTA: You got it. Thank you.

BERMAN: Following a lot of news this morning, let's get right to it.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is a cop who felt like he could get away with just shooting someone.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The wounds found on my brother, they couldn't say anything but murder.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They're more worried about the cover-up than they were about saving somebody's life.

BERMAN: The United States is deepening its involvement in the battle for Yemen.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We've increased our intelligence-sharing and we've establishment a joint coordination planning cell.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: A breach of White House computers by Russian hackers.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They've been targeting our infrastructure for a long time.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It is not as safe as it should be.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He was a 23-year-old kid who witnessed something committed by somebody he knew.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The evidence in this case shows that Hernandez was much more involved than just an innocent bystander.

ANNOUNCER: This is NEW DAY with Chris Cuomo, Alisyn Camerota, and Michaela Pereira.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CAMEROTA: Good morning, everyone. Welcome back to your NEW DAY.

Michaela is off. John Berman joins us.

Great to have you here this morning.

BERMAN: Good morning.

CAMEROTA: This morning, South Carolina police officer on the other side of the law. He's charged with murder after shooting and killing an unarmed black man. There is a dramatic and disturbing new video of this incident. And it shows Officer Michael Slager shooting 50-year-old Walter Scott eight times while Scott runs in the other direction.

CUOMO: The officer says he needed to fire eight times because he feared for his life. But the video shows a very different account. The incident will also reignite the debate about excessive force by police, and who investigates these cases.

Our coverage begins with CNN's Martin Savidge live in Charleston, South Carolina.

Martin, what's the latest?

MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Chris.

We're standing outside of the home of the parents of Walter Scott. And they have been speaking out. They're saying that they're grateful that the truth has come out. They're grateful for that video.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

(GUNSHOTS)

SAVIDGE (voice-over): This disturbing video has South Carolina Officer Michael Slager behind bars this morning, charged with murder.

The three-minute video capturing shooting death of Walter Scott over the weekend.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: When you're wrong, you're wrong.

SAVIDGE: Taped by a bystander, it reveals the 33-year-old officer shooting Scott in the back --

(GUNSHOTS)

SAVIDGE: -- while he ran away.

In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, police said Officer Slager stopped Scott for a broken taillight in North Charleston. Through an attorney, Officer Slager described a scuffle, claiming the 50-year-old fought for his taser and he felt threatened. In this video, you see what could be a taser fall, and Scott takes off, running away as Slager fires eight times.