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April Jobs Report; Clinton Foundation Troubles; Battle Over Sofia Vergara's Frozen Embryos. Aired 8:30-9a ET

Aired May 08, 2015 - 08:30   ET

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

[08:30:00] UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And they all had their own story.

What hurts the most?

Once you get to know the folks out there, I knew that I had to keep going.

Are you doing OK medically?

And now we've managed to treat over 10,000 people. For the folks that are willing to come to us, we have a mobile medical van. Then we have drop-in centers.

Just open up again.

We connect with a person.

You've got friends. We'll be there for you, OK.

Then we advocate with them to get their insurance, get housing and care. Wherever they are, they're always within our circle of love.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You've been so nice to me.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: People on the street are beginning to get a voice in health care.

Good and steady. You've got a good heart.

It's something that we should take pride in and we can actually treat people the way we would want to be treated.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: We all yearn to be seen, don't we?

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: Yes, there are good people out there doing good things. That's why we have the heroes. Go online and pick your own.

So, another big deal that we're dealing with. Are you frustrated by the Clinton Foundation questions? Me too. Enough talk already. Did they take bribes or not? We have the two sides. We'll test the proof, you decide.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PEREIRA: All right, we have breaking news. The Labor Department releasing the April jobs report moments ago.

I need some good news on this Friday, Christine Romans. You're taking a look at them and -

[08:35:06] CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: I do have some good news because March did not feel very good, I've got to tell you, and it looks as though we've got things better in April.

In March, revised, 85,000 jobs re-created. That is not good. And 223,000 jobs created, though, in April. That is good.

What happened here in March, there was some weather, there was a strong dollar, there were a lot of different things happening in the economy. And for some reason in March, businesses just were not hiring in big numbers. We were worried that that might be portending something slowing down in the U.S. economy, but instead, in April, you have companies picking up the slack again and starting to hire.

The unemployment rate essentially staying unchanged at this eight-year low of 5.4 percent. So that's a good number there too, 5.4 percent for the jobless rate. Remember, it had been a long time where we were seeing 7, 8, even 9 percent unemployment, almost 10 percent at some points. So that's a good number to stay there.

Futures are higher. Stock futures are higher. We told you that U.K. election was one reason why investors were happy, but they also like this number.

Now, why am I showing you this crazy chart here? This is the labor force participation rate. You guys, as the election gets underway in full force, you're going to be hearing more about this. Every month we have these job numbers that have been strong and consistently strong, but the labor force participation, this is the percentage of the adult population not out there looking for a job, not in the labor market. That number is too low. So you're going to hear people say, oh, these job numbers are strong but there aren't enough people out there in the labor market.

So this is a political number. You're going to be hearing more and more about this, even as we see strengthening in the job figures. Broad based strength in the job market, not energy - not energy companies. They haven't been hiring all that great over the past few months. But, again, another strong month after a dip - a real dip in strength on March.

You guys.

CUOMO: But good for you saying that strong is a defining (ph) term -

ROMANS: It is.

CUOMO: Because when you look at that graph that Christine just put up about who's still in there looking for jobs, it explains why we have situations like what we're dealing with in Baltimore right now, people desperate for jobs.

Christine, thank you very much.

ROMANS: That's right. Chris, wage is up. Can I tell you, wage is up 2.2 percent. That's another important number in here. Wages starting to strengthen a little bit.

CUOMO: Thank you, Christine. Have a good weekend to you.

So, here is the question, nice and simple, did the Clintons take bribes? That's it. That's the question. For all the, well, it looks like and the troubling coincidences, no, either this book "Clinton Cash" has proof that they were on the take or is there proof of the opposite, that there were no bribes? There's another explanation. Once and for all, let's have it out with people who say they understand their side. Former White House special counsel to the Clinton administration, Mr. Lanny Davis, CNN political commentator, host of "The Ben Ferguson Show," Ben Ferguson.

Ben, for the purpose of this, you are the prosecution, Lanny, you are the defense.

Ben, what is your best case. Is there a bribe, where, how do we know?

BEN FERGUSON, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: If Hillary Clinton was not the secretary of state, would this many people have given this much money, tens of millions of dollars from foreign governments, during her time? The answer is no, there's no way that this many foreign governments would have given money to the Clinton Foundation. And the proof of it is, they weren't giving the money before she was the secretary of state when the Clinton Foundation was around. So this was, hey, we need favoritism in the State Department, we need deals at the State Department, we need good relationships with the Clinton Foundation because that means we have a better relationship with the United States government, which she represents, and that's exactly why they wrote serious big checks to the Clinton Foundation.

CUOMO: Lanny Davis.

LANNY DAVIS, FMR. WHITE HOUSE SPECIAL COUNSEL, CLINTON ADMINISTRATION: No juror can accept a prosecutor who says my facts are, there is no way, or my facts are, I'm speculating on people's motives who actually might want to do good by giving philanthropic money. So those aren't facts, those are opinions. So with all due respect to Ben, that's not an argument that a jury would vote on.

I'll give you facts, not opinions. Let's take the Iranian deal. Fact, the body of people who approved that deal were nine governmental agencies, including the Defense Department, the State Department and the Treasury Department, and the State Department representative, an assistant secretary of state named Jose Fernandez said, I never heard of Hillary Clinton, ever. Fact, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, an independent body, approved that transaction. Fact, the Utah Radiation Commission, a pretty red state commission, approved that transaction.

So with all due respect to my friend Ben, the prosecutor doesn't state facts. I stated facts that contradict the notion of a bribe.

FERGUSON: Then - then let me -

CUOMO: Ben.

FERGUSON: I've got one question and that is this, how is it that when Hillary Clinton was not at the State Department, the amount of money that was coming in from foreign governments wasn't even remotely close to the massive amounts of money that was coming in, and you could even say first-time donors from foreign governments that never gave money before to the Clinton Foundation and all of a sudden she's secretary of state and they go, oh, now I want to give you $1 million. I'm sorry, I think the average juror would say that's bribery.

[08:40:02] DAVIS: I think the average juror would hear that you didn't state a single fact but ask hypothetical questions assuming -

FERGUSON: The fact is, they didn't give the money before.

DAVIS: Excuse me, Ben -

FERGUSON: What made them give the money?

DAVIS: Prosecutors don't interrupt defense attorneys if they're courteous. On TV (INAUDIBLE) interrupt me. I am going to finish my point.

FERGUSON: Thank goodness we're not in court.

DAVIS: You did not say - you're still interrupting. So, thank you.

CUOMO: Go ahead, Lanny. How do you explain the fact that they gave all this money?

DAVIS: There's not a single fact - OK. There are two possible explanations. One is that they were badly motivated seeking a favor from Hillary Clinton, no fact that any favor was ever received. Another possibility is that their grants do good things, which I can prove to you if I had the time. Every government contribution was a direct grant to help feed people in Africa, cure AIDS and lots of other things. So I have facts. I'm not asking questions.

CUOMO: So, wait a minute, Lanny - Lanny - Lanny, alright.

Ben, let me ask you a question.

FERGUSON: Sure.

CUOMO: If - if - let's spit the baby here for a second. If they gave money with bad intentions, they wanted influence, but they wound up not getting any influence, certainly that's not bribery, but how is that any different than any other political donation scenario where people are giving on the prayer that something good happens to them in the future, which we're all familiar with? How is this any different?

FERGUSON: Well, she - she was a secretary of state. She wasn't running for office and they couldn't give this much money to her campaign. It would have been illegal to give this amount of money from foreign governments to her campaign.

CUOMO: But if she didn't do anything, if we can't show that she did something, where does this lead?

FERGUSON: I don't think you continue to give money if you're not getting anything in return.

CUOMO: But you've got to show that they gave something.

FERGUSON: There was a motive. They gave money and continue to give money.

DAVIS: May - may I respond.

FERGUSON: Well, but here's the thing. We didn't - great question, Chris. We don't know what happened behind the scenes because we don't have e-mails from Hillary Clinton, which she wiped from her server, about any of the interactions.

DAVIS: Thank you (ph).

FERGUSON: And so if you want to know what happened, we may never know, honestly, because we don't know what her e-mails actually even said.

CUOMO: So - so, Lanny - so, Lanny, Ben's point is, I can't show you proof because you hid all of it?

DAVIS: Thank you, Ben, and let me - let me respond.

FERGUSON: Or deleted it.

DAVIS: Let me - let me respond, Ben, because I think you raised the question I was hoping would be my end point here. If Jeb Bush, who I greatly respect and admire, is going to be accused by this author, Schweizer, of doing the same thing with all the smoke with no facts, which he says he's going to do, I will come back on this program and you might be the prosecutor of Jeb Bush for not revealing his private e-mails.

And I will say to you, unless you have facts he has a right to keep private his e-mails, and Jeb Bush is an honorable man, and you have no quid pro quo, as you just weren't able to site to answer Chris' question, a single fact or action by Hillary Clinton, in her tenure as secretary of state, that was in return for anything else. So your answer as a prosecutor is, I don't know, and no juror is going to vote on an I don't know by a prosecutor when I'm giving you the facts that all the good works of the Clinton Foundation are overlooked, which you have conceded and everybody concedes, while you're raising speculative questions, all smoke, no facts.

FERGUSON: Well, there's one thing we do know, the Clinton Foundation wasn't always doing good work. Look at how few of the dollars that came into their foundation actually went out in donations to people that needed it. There is a lot of money that stayed right there for their means.

DAVIS: I've got to give you facts. I've got to give you facts. You said how -

FERGUSON: For their private trips, for their planes.

DAVIS: Excuse me. Excuse me.

CUOMO: Go ahead, Lanny.

DAVIS: You said - you're making general comments. I'm going to give you facts. How little money? I'll give you facts. Eighty cents out of every dollar, if you don't include the HIV programs, 88 cents out of every dollar goes to people and good works. Those are facts as opposed to your general characterization. The jury votes for facts, not for rhetoric.

FERGUSON: Lanny, have you - have you not seen -

CUOMO: Final point, Ben.

FERGUSON: Have you not seen - have you not seen their bills just for their own personal travel? Millions of dollars on private jets and private planes, and cash going to all the family members in the Clinton family to pay for their glorious five-star lifestyle?

DAVIS: Ben - Ben -

FERGUSON: You can't say it's all perfect here.

DAVIS: Facts.

CUOMO: All right, Ben -

DAVIS: Ben, I said fact. Eight-eight cents out of every dollar, and you didn't dispute my fact. You went into the jury. Case closed. Case closed.

FERGUSON: There will be people there to dispute that (INAUDIBLE).

CUOMO: We got it, Lanny. Ben, let me give you a chance. You can bounce off on the 88 cents the next time we do this, but, Lanny Davis, Ben Ferguson, thank you very much for coming on and testing the situation.

FERGUSON: Thanks.

DAVIS: Thank you very much, Chris. Thank you, Ben.

CUOMO: Alisyn.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: OK, Chris.

Well, if you watched NEW DAY and saw our interview with Nick Loeb yesterday, you know it raised some big questions, does life begin at conception? Can one person bring an embryo to life against another's wishes? [08:44:39] We'll discuss that legal battle ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NICK LOEB, SOFIA VERGARA'S EX-FIANCE: I have always believed that life begins at conception. How else would I define what two embryos are that happened to be female? I can't say these are female property. These are lives.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: That was Nick Loeb, the ex-fiance of TV star Sofia Vergara, making his case to win custody of their two frozen embryos. Their legal battle relaunching a debate over when life begins and what should happen to embryos when couples split up.

Let's bring in CNN commentator and legal analyst Mel Robbins and Melissa Brisman, reproductive attorney and owner of Reproductive Possibilities.

Ladies, thanks so much for being here. Great to see both of you.

Mel, I want to start with you because you think that this is more than just a squabble between two high-profile people. You think this has ramifications for everyone.

MEL ROBBINS, CNN COMMENTATOR AND LEGAL ANALYST: Of course it does. I personally don't agree with Loeb in his position that life begins at conception, and I certainly don't think that liquid nitrogen is the same thing as a uterus or a womb.

However, one of the things that I find fascinating about this case is if the roles were reversed and this were a young woman and she had the frozen embryos and she wanted to bring them to term and turn them into two daughters by using a surrogate or herself, and it were her ex- boyfriend who ran off and got engaged and now suddenly wants to not have that happen, I think the public opinion in this case would be very different, that we would be sympathetic.

[08:50:13] And there are a lot of people that look at Loeb and you know, and kind of cocked head and they're like he is a dirt bag and he's shaming her and what a jerk. And the true is, I think that's a bias against men in some regard.

I think what we are going to find out in this discussion is the law is extremely complicated and it's not very clear, and there are only ten states that have even ruled on the matter, so this is not a clear-cut case, but I found the sympathies and lack of sympathy for him to be sort of fascinating.

CAMEROTA: Yeah, it is interesting. He does say that, in part, he is doing this to stand up for father's rights.

Melissa, what do you think? Do you think he stands a chance? MELISSA BRISMAN, REPRODUCTIVE ATTORNEY: I think he stands no chance

whatsoever. It's pretty clear that in the ten states that have ruled, they have never given custody of embryos for someone who wants to procreate unless the person who wanted the embryos had no other means of procreating with their own biology.

CAMEROTA: So cancer victims. They awarded it to two cancer victims who that was their last chance to have children.

BRISMAN: Yes, and Nick obviously has more sperm. It's a really far stretch to say that they are alive. If they were alive, if he accidentally dropped them in the lab, he would be convicted of murder.

CAMEROTA: Look, this is what the personhood amendments are that are cropping up all over the country. He is not the only person who believes that these are lives. Half of the country, 50 percent, in the latest polling, believe that life begins at conception. It's not quite as cut and dry as you are making it sound.

But I want to play for you Sofia Vergara because she believes that the crux of this entire argument are these consent forms that they signed. So listen to Sofia Vergara on Howard Stern.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

SOFIA VERGARA, ACTRESS: Fortunately and unfortunately, there is law. You sign papers, legal papers, and if it was so serious for him, this issue, which I totally respect that it is serious for someone, then you should have taken it more serious at the time, like I did.

ROBIN QUIVERS, RADIO TALK SHOW CO-HOST: So there was already a contract?

VERGARA: There is a contract, he can't do anything. We wrote what we wanted at the time. It is not like a contract that they give you right there at the moment they are going to take my eggs out. No, they give you this in advance. You see it, you review.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: Melissa, you are a reproductive attorney. Should they have gone to an attorney to look through this contract? I mean, it was just from the fertility center?

BRISMAN: They could have gone to an attorney. Most people during that emotional time don't really take the time to go to an attorney, but I don't really think that's the crux of the issue, because not everything you sign is enforceable.

For instance, if I were getting married and my fiance gives me an engagement ring and I sign that I will marry him and then we rent a hall and then I decide I don't really want to marry him. What he can do is he can get the money back from me for the engagement ring. I can't keep it if I broke the engagement. But the court is not going to say you signed this piece of paper, you have to marry him. The court is not going to say you signed this piece of paper, you have to have a baby.

However, if you want to make more embryos because you need more embryos to have a baby, we will give you the money from Sofia to create those embryos.

CAMEROTA: To help me understand this better, let's look at the exact excerpt from the consent form that they singed. I think that that would be helpful because it says here, check out the screen, "One person cannot use the cryopreserved material," meaning the embryo, "to create a child, whether or not he or she intends to rear the child without explicit written consent of the other person."

Mel, to you, is it case closed because of that?

ROBBINS: I think it is case closed because of that and it's case closed because they also both agreed to language that says that the embryos would be destroyed if one of them died. The contract that they signed did include these provisions. States will either look directly at the contracts, or as Melissa said, they will use a balancing test to figure out if from a fairness standpoint, if one of them cannot have a pathway to parenthood, whether or not out of fairness, they should be able to use them.

In this case, you have a guy with extraordinary means who certainly has lawyers who signed this paperwork. He is claiming that he signed it under duress -- I doubt he will be able to prove that in court -- and the truth is, I do think in this particular case, it is black and white, he will not be able to stake a claim to use those embryos, and he will have to move on.

CAMEROTA: Mel Robbins, Melissa Bisman, thanks so much for helping us walk our way through the legality of some of those.

What is your take? We'd like to know. You can tweet us using the #newdaycnn or post your comment on Facebook.com/newday. We'd love to read those.

Let's go to Chris.

[08:54:57] CUOMO: Stephen Colbert, you know him, comedy superstar. But once he was just a kid in public school. Did he forget where he comes from? Find out in "The Good Stuff."

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CUOMO: Good Stuff! Before he came his ultraconservative ultraego, our boy, Stephen Colbert, he went to a South Carolina public school. And like most big shots, he totally forgot where he came from. No, no, he didn't. In fact, he has given back in a big and unique way.

The need is great in his home state. Teachers have had to take it on themselves to raise grant money on a website called donorschoose.org. And guess what? All the grants that they put out are getting funded. Thanks to who? Colbert.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) STEPHEN COLBERT, COMEDIAN: using the proceeds of the sale of my old set on "The Colbert Report" that we auctioned off, Donors Choose is going to flash-fund all 1,000 projects on South Carolina's website.

(APPLAUSE)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CUOMO: How about that? He sold his set, and then he got a foundation and a company onboard to match the sale of that set. 800,000 bananas funding 1,000 projects from 800 teachers at nearly 400 schools.

[09:00:01] PEREIRA: Incredible.

CAMEROTA: That's great. Gosh, they will be so grateful.

PEREIRA: They really will.

All right, Happy Friday, everybody. It's time for "NEWSROOM" with Carol Costello.

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Those are beautiful words. Happy Friday, right back at you. Thanks so much. Have a great weekend. "NEWSROOM" starts right now.