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Ousted South Korean President Faces Corruption Probe; What Are Trump Campaign's Ties To Russia?; Lawmakers Demand Evidence Of Trump's Wiretap Claim; Trump Adviser Suggests Wider Surveillance Of His Campaign; Trump Fires 46 Obama-Era Prosecutors. Aired 6:30-7a ET

Aired March 13, 2017 - 06:30   ET

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

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[06:30:37]CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: Listen to this, more than 100 million people in the U.S. are under winter storm warnings ahead of this potentially historic March blizzard. How much snow, how bad, where, CNN meteorologist, Chad Myers, joins us now. One of the last times he'll be in a suit for the next few days. What do you see?

CHAD MYERS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: I have those boots you don't like too. Probably 12 to 18 inches here in New York City. Maybe a little less in Boston if it mixes in with a little bit of rain. That's possible and somewhere between 4 and 6 in Washington, D.C. So let's get to it.

The blizzard warnings means it's going to be windy and stalling at the same time for more than three hours at a time. This snowstorm goes all the way back to Iowa. It's right through Chicago as well, but not with those huge numbers we're going to see here.

What is going to happen with this storm is its going to interact with the Atlantic Ocean and the ocean is warm, relatively warm. It's warm enough that when the storm is here, down here across the Deep South when it runs up into the ocean and grabs that moisture, if you heard of lake effect snow this turns into ocean effect snow so by tonight we start to see the snow.

By tomorrow morning, Chris, you and I are in it, probably 4 inches on the ground here and then snows in D.C. by, I would say 10:00 tonight, 2:00 here for us in New York and maybe noon for Boston for tomorrow and it keeps snowing.

The big news is it could mix in with some rain along the coast. That keeps the numbers down but New York City I don't see it, at least a foot, maybe more.

CUOMO: Yikes. All right.

POPPY HARLOW, CNN GUEST ANCHOR: I'm not going to be able to make it into New York. Do you know where I'm from? I'm from Minnesota. I walk through that.

CUOMO: I need you. Thank you very much. I made fun of his boots, but I'll have the same pair of them. We're following breaking news. There have been protests in Ferguson, Missouri. Several arrests outside the market where Michael Brown was in there shopping or that's a subject of controversy in the hours before he was shot and killed by a police officer in 2014.

St. Louis Police called in to help Ferguson officers keep demonstrators away from the store. These protests coming after the release of a new documentary that alleges Brown never robbed the market. Do you remember that? The police suggesting it?

It was always a point of intrigue. CNN cannot confirm the video's authenticity but an attorney for the store claims the film "Stranger Fruit" used editing techniques to falsely imply there was an exchange of marijuana between store employees and Brown. That attorney says the market will release the full video later today.

HARLOW: Right. We'll be look for that. Also five more Jewish community centers in the United States and Canada, the target of bomb threats over the weekend. The threats coming on the Jewish holiday. No devices were found. No arrests have been made. This is the second time in less than a week that a JCC in Rochester, New York had to be evacuated because of the threat. Overall, there have more than 150 reported threats against these Jewish centers since January.

CUOMO: In South Korea, prosecutors are expected to pursue criminal charges against the country's now former president, Park Hye. Now Park left the executive mansion on Sunday. Two days after the Constitutional Court voted to uphold the first impeachment in that country's history.

CNN's senior international correspondent, Ivan Watson, live in Seoul with more. I was actually thinking as I was reading that how are they dealing with this being a novel instance? What's the latest?

IVAN WATSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: It was a pretty remarkable moment for Korean history, Chris. You had the former president leaving the official residence under cover of darkness in a cloud of disgrace with her motorcade.

It's about 48 hours after she was stripped from office and for the first time she was seen in public since that took place. She was greeted at her private residence by crowds of supporters who chanted we love you and she made her -- she broke her silence, her first public statement via a spokesperson and had almost no remorse.

She said, quote, "I'm sorry I couldn't fulfill my duty as a president until the end. I will accept all the results. It will take time, but I believe the truth will definitely come out."

She can now be prosecuted as a private citizen and guess who is celebrating? North Korea calling this a victory for justice, which is rich coming from one of the most repressive countries in the world -- Chris.

[06:35:13]CUOMO: Good point to make. Ivan Watson, thank you very much.

So just 7 days until the House holds the first public hearing on Russia's meddling in the U.S. election. What do we know about the Trump campaign ties to the kremlin? What are the issues for these committees? What are the things to look for? It's complicated but we'll break it down for you. The facts, next.

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CUOMO: All right, big date to remember, one week from today the House Intel Committee will hold its first public hearing on Russia's interference in the U.S. election. Part of the probe and the Senate and FBI investigations are all going to be looking at potential connections between President Trump's team and Russia.

So with new details emerging every day what is the state of play? What is that kind of basis of analysis? All right, last week CNN learned the FBI is looking into potential connections between computer servers at the Trump Organization and the largest bank in Russia.

[06:40:07]Investigators allegedly find the connection odd but odd doesn't mean anything to investigators. They don't know what the significance is. We'll be looking for that.

Beyond Trump's businesses, the House and Senate Committees are looking into communications between Trump's associates and the Russian ambassador to the U.S.

This probe sparked when Trump's former national security adviser, General Michael Flynn, was forced to resign after allegedly misleading the vice president about the nature of his conversations with that ambassador.

Since then two previously undisclosed meetings between that ambassador and former Trump surrogate, current Attorney General Jeff Sessions have also come to light.

The Russian diplomat has also met with Trump campaign advisers, J.D. Gordon, Carter Page and Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner. General Flynn's role on Trump's team facing renewed scrutiny after his firm filed paperwork with the Justice Department last week identifying Flynn as a foreign agent.

Acknowledging he worked for a Turkish owned company that may have benefitted Turkey's president, Erdogan's government while advising Trump and attending top level intel briefings.

The White House at first denied any knowledge of what Flynn was doing and then eventually had to own it. The Trump team owning that they were aware of Flynn's work.

All right two other points of intrigue also emerging this weekend. First, hacked text messages allegedly from one of Paul Manafort's daughter. He was the campaign chairman for a while.

These texts point to possible influence between Manafort and a former Ukrainian president, Viktor Yanukovych, an ally of Vladimir Putin. Text messages alleged that Manafort's strategic guidance lead to the deadly crackdown on protesters in Kiev in 2014, remember, they come from his daughter.

Now Manafort hasn't been linked to the shootings and he dismissed any connection, but he is currently under investigation as well for over millions that he allegedly got and fees working for Yanukovych. He's also denied taking any undeclared payments.

The second related to political adviser, Roger Stone. What's the intrigue here? He's Manafort's former business partner, but he's been around Trump for many, many years. And last week, Stone admitted for the first time that he has communicated with Guccifer 2.0, the online persona who claims responsibility for hacking DNC.

U.S. officials believed with high confidence that Guccifer is actually front for Russian military intelligence. So what is the deal? Well, Stone is now defending his communications and bragging about insisting that they were an innocuous brief exchange of messages that occurred in August after the hacker posted the information from the DNC.

But that timing is in question. Was Stone talking about what stone was going to happen Clinton and Podesta before the e-mails actually came out? You're going to hear about that.

Now on Friday he did say, though, that he had a back channel to Wikileaks during the presidential campaign. He later deleted that tweet. Stone made similar claims during the election, although, Wikileaks denies any communication between Stone and founder, Julian Assange.

OK, so that is the state of play. Those are the questions. The big question, of course, though, Poppy, is what are they going to find to substantiate the claims.

HARLOW: Yes, we'll learn a lot more arguably on Monday when those hearings begin. Chris, thank you so much for going through all of that.

Coming up for us, a New York congressman not mincing his words at all on the future of health care in this country. He says getting rid of Obamacare would be a death sentence for tens of thousands of Americans. We'll speak with the Democratic Congressman Jerry Nadler straight ahead.

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[06:47:39]

CUOMO: Bosses beware. Millions of Americans are going to be busy filling out their brackets. I don't care what they tell you because it's NCAA tournament time. Coy Wire has more in the "Bleacher Report." Are we going to get some action going there?

COY WIRE, CNN SPORTS CORRESPONDENT: Yes, let's do this Chris. I'm challenging you, buddy. We're going to have loss of productivity in building brackets and watching games throughout the tournament. That's what one firm estimated that $1.3 billion of company money are wasted each hour of a workday during the tournament. People get excited about it like Northwestern did. The moment they found out they would be going to the tournament for the very first time. They were the last major conference school to have never made it to the tournament in its 78-year history.

Let's look at the number one seeds, Villanova in the East, they were the overall number one seed. Kansas in the Midwest, North Carolina in the south and Gonzaga in the west region. But who does Vegas have winning it all? That would be the Duke Blue Devils. They are number two seed in the east there with Villanova picked by odds makers to win the big tourney.

All right, action starts tomorrow night on Turner's Tru TV with the play in games, Mount St. Mary's playing New Orleans at 6:40 Eastern and it's Kansas State versus Wake Forest at 9:10.

And on Wednesday, North Carolina Central and U.C. Davis will be followed by Providence playing USC. The round of 64 will start on Thursday, but look we want to have some fun with you guys too during the tournament.

So if you think you can pick a better bracket than Chris Cuomo, than Poppy Harlow, then go to cnn.com/bracket to join the group named CNN and see if you can get lucky. Poppy is pretty, pretty good.

HARLOW: I guarantee you can pick a better bracket than me, OK. I know how --

CUOMO: Alyson did it on the basis of the uniforms and she killed it.

HARLOW: I know my lane and I'm going to stay in it, and I'm going to give this to Cuomo and Baldy.

CUOMO: He has one of the most beautiful heads I've ever seen in my life. He was meant to shave his head.

WIRE: That's going on my highlight reel. Thank you so much.

CUOMO: What's inside that head? We'll see when you fill out your bracket.

WIRE: That's right.

CUOMO: Take care, pal.

HARLOW: All right, new revelations about the Trump campaign Russia contacts, but one Democratic lawmaker wants to have happen next in the investigation of the kremlin's election meddling. Congressman Jerry Nadler will join us straight ahead.

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[06:53:42]

HARLOW: Welcome back to NEW DAY. The House Intelligence Committee demanding that the Justice Department today turnover any evidence that it has of the president's claim that he was wiretapped by the former president.

So Senator John McCain is calling on President Trump to either prove this, show the evidence or pull it back, retract it. Joining us now is New York Congressman Jerry Nadler, a Democrat and member of the Judiciary Committee. Nice to have you here.

REPRESENTATIVE JERRY NADLER (D), NEW YORK: Good to be here.

HARLOW: A lot to get to you with this Monday morning. So we know what President Trump said that Obama ordered a tap of his phones in Trump Tower but his -- the president's senior counselor, Kellyanne Conway doubled down on that and went much further in this new interview with the Bergin record.

Just from yesterday she said there are many ways to surveil other people and she said you can surveil someone through their phone. Certainly through their television sets, any number of ways. She went on to say microwaves turning into cameras. This is a fact of modern life. You say?

NADLER: Well, I don't know what she means by microwaves turning into cameras, but look this is an administration that lies all the time. When you come out with an extraordinary accusation against the former president or anybody else, you to have some evidence.

Now I know that Senator McConnell is saying that the Congress has to investigate, et cetera, none sense. The president who made an extraordinary claim, a vicious claim against his predecessor has to come up with some evidence to show that there is some truth to it, then others can investigate.

You can't just come out and make a terrible accusation on the basis of no evidence at all especially when you have a reputation as a serial liar as this president does.

[06:55:12]CUOMO: Why isn't he getting more pressure to call the FBI himself?

NADLER: Well, I don't know. He certainly ought to be getting pressure to come up with evidence. Senator McCain called upon him to come up with evidence and that's good because you can't just go out there and say terrible things about somebody with no evidence and then demand that somebody else investigate it to see if there's any --

HARLOW: Well, you can. That's what he is doing. You can.

CUOMO: That works by the way.

HARLOW: He is proving that you can.

NADLER: He is proving that you can, but let's rephrase that you ought to be able to because especially when you have shown you're a liar from everything whether it was raining during the inaugural speech to everything else.

CUOMO: All right, another topic. So you have the Trump administration, they remove a big group of U.S. attorneys, and the Democrats go crazy. But is that false outrage? This is what happens. Clinton did it. Obama replaced people, Bush did it. Reagan did it. Both parties. These are all appointees.

NADLER: There's nothing unusual about removing the former president's U.S. attorneys. What's unusual here is that normally you do it in a reasonable way to continue the work of the office so that you say OK, we're going to replace attorney x and we're going to replace him with attorney y.

And he stays on until the new guy is ready to take over. Here overnight they fired 46 U.S. attorneys, had to be out of the office by close of business. No one named to take their place. That's very unusual and obviously gives rise to questions why.

These are not spies. They're good U.S. attorneys and the question is why do they have to be out of the office by the close of business? What's the rush?

HARLOW: All right, so you don't like the process, but we knew that this president was going to be unconventional and he does follow in the footsteps of Bill Clinton in his first year, 80 of 93 U.S. attorneys were replaced.

NADLER: They were not replaced.

HARLOW: Not overnight I get that, but you bring up a question at the end of your answer to Chris, which is, the question is why. Do you think there is a there "there?"

NADLER: I don't know. Maybe. Maybe he's just vicious in the way he does things or maybe there's a there "there." Now people have said that U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara had been asked a week ago by various groups to investigate Trump Towers in his jurisdiction, geographical jurisdiction to investigate certain things about the president. Maybe this is all a cover up just to --

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CUOMO: But he's never said that he had anything to do with Trump.

NADLER: He has said nothing and what I just said is pure speculation and maybe he's totally innocent, but the real question is why get rid of everybody -- it's not just a question. It's bad procedure. You maybe jeopardizing cases to say to people we're out tonight and we don't know when your replacement will come and who that is.

HARLOW: Although you have hundreds of deputies underneath him that will, for example, the investigation of Fox News and others -- they're going to continue these investigations unless someone comes in and replaces them and tells them not to. But Preet Bharara is really the one that made -- it's interesting because he said that the president asked him to stay on, right, a few months ago.

NADLER: That's another question.

HARLOW: Right, but then he's the one who refused to resign and to be fired.

NADLER: He was asked to stay on by the president and all of a sudden the president fires him literally overnight. Why? What happened?

CUOMO: Well, why was he asked to stay? Right? That's -- he's a Democrat. He used to work for Chuck Schumer. Schumer wanted him to stay is what the reporting is. It seems like Trump was trying to do a nice thing and whatever happened between Schumer and Trump was not so nice so why would he do a favor for Schumer.

NADLER: That's all possible. All I'm saying is there are questions.

CUOMO: But they're a little bit -- you're teasing it out there though that there's something here that's negative that's worth speculating on. We don't really have any basis. Preet Bharara is no shrinking violet. He would say this is wrong. I'm looking at Trump --

NADLER: No, unless he can't say.

HARLOW: Well, what would mean he couldn't say? He certainly said a lot on Twitter in the last 24 hours. This is someone that prosecuted Democrats and Republicans.

NADLER: He's been very nonpartisan. He's prosecuted major political Democrats and Republicans obviously. He couldn't say it. There are investigations going on that he can't comment on. I don't know. All I really want to say about this is to take 46 U.S. attorneys, fire them overnight, had to be out of the office by the close of business with no replacements in site. It's highly unusual and not very good for continuity of it.

HARLOW: Right. Congressman, we didn't get to obamacare. We'll have you back.

CUOMO: Will you come back please?

NADLER: Certainly.

CUOMO: Thank you very much.

NADLER: Because I saw that Tom Price was right about Obamacare.

CUOMO: You believe people will be uncovered?

NADLER: Absolutely. There is no question about that.

CUOMO: We'll see when the CBO score comes out as early as today. Somebody is going to be proven true and someone is going to be proven false.

HARLOW: Thank you, Congressman.

NADLER: Thank you.

HARLOW: All right, thank you to our international viewers for watching this morning, for you, "CNN NEWSROOM" is next. For our viewers here in the United States, NEW DAY continues right now.