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Democrats Ramp Up Pressure on Barr Over Mueller Report; Regulators Order Boeing to Fix Second Software Issue; FBI: Person Claiming to Be Missing Boy is Not Him; NYT: Trump Asked that Confirmation of IRS Counsel Be a Priority. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired April 05, 2019 - 06:00   ET

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

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MANU RAJU, CNN SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Jerry Nadler sent a letter demanding all communications between the Mueller team and the Justice Department.

[05:59:07] UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We are very concerned. We've only seen one four-page summary.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We've had 23 months of jumping to wrong conclusions. Let him do his job.

TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Boeing is admitting its software played a role in the Ethiopian crash.

DENNIS MUILENBURG, CEO, BOEING: It's our responsibility to eliminate this risk. We own it, and we know how to do it.

NADIA MILLERTON, MOTHER OF PLANE CRASH VICTIM: This is not an accident. This is something that should have been prevented.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

Announcer: This is NEW DAY with Alisyn Camerota and John Berman.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right. This is where it gets interesting. Welcome to our viewers in the United States and all around the world. This is NEW DAY. It's Friday, April 5, 6 p.m. here in New York.

And the major headlines this morning: the president is not closing the border with Mexico. He is not proposing a new health care plan, and his father is not from Germany. So maybe you remember a time when those wouldn't be such glaring revelations, but within the last few days, the president has said the exact opposite of all those things and more.

So in the midst of the flipping and fibbing, there is some fighting. So we have the three "F's" of the apocalypse, as it were. House Judiciary Committee Chair Jerry Nadler is demanding the Justice Department produce all communications between Attorney General William Barr and the special counsel. This comes after reports that some members of the Mueller team were unhappy with Barr's four-page summary of their nearly 400-page work. They felt it did not properly convey how damaging their findings were for President Trump.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Meanwhile, the White House is resisting Democratic demands to get six years of President Trump's tax returns from the IRS.

"The New York Times" reports this morning that the president urged Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to prioritize the confirmation vote for President Trump's nominee for IRS chief counsel. The request is raising questions about the president's timing and motivations. We will talk with the reporter behind that story, Maggie Haberman, in just minutes.

But let's begin our coverage with CNN's Jessica Schneider. She is live in Washington with our top story -- Jessica.

JESSICA SCHNEIDER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Alisyn.

The anticipation in advance of the release of the full Mueller report has really reached a boiling point. CNN has learned that some investigators from the special counsel's team are frustrated with how the 400-page report has been portrayed by the attorney general.

We've learned that the team wrote a series of summaries outlining their findings that they expected to be released. And now Democrats say they want to see those summaries soon, as well as all of the communication between the special counsel and the attorney general.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SCHNEIDER (voice-over): House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler demanding the public release of summaries prepared by Special Counsel Robert Mueller's team outlining their findings.

REP. JERRY NADLER (D-NY): This is a matter of law, and it is a matter of justice. We need a full accounting of the president's actions.

SCHNEIDER: As CNN learns that several investigators on Mueller's team have expressed frustration with the way Attorney General William Barr characterized their report. In particular, some investigators say Barr's letter inadequately described how the probe into potential obstruction included derogatory information about President Trump's actions.

REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA): There's an easy answer to this. Release the Mueller report as soon as possible.

SCHNEIDER: Nadler also requesting all communications between the special counsel's office and the Justice Department about the report.

The Justice Department tells CNN they are not commenting on Nadler's latest demand, but earlier in the day they defended Barr's handling of the report, insisting that every page of the report may contain confidential information and that the attorney general did not want to release the report in serial or piecemeal fashion. Democrats making clear that what Barr's preparing will not be enough.

NADLER: It's inevitable that Mr. Mueller is going to testify at some point, but the first thing we need is all -- is the release of the report and the documents.

SCHNEIDER: The White House accusing the Democrats of overreach.

SARAH SANDERS, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: They've lost in 2016. They lost on the collusion battle. And now they're looking for any and everything they can to continue to attack this president, because they have no message.

SCHNEIDER: President Trump echoing that message on Twitter, writing, "This is the highest level of presidential harassment in the history of our country."

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SCHNEIDER: And the Justice Department, of course, has said it plans to release Mueller's full report with redactions by mid-April if not sooner, so we could see that report any day now.

The president, of course, has claimed that he's been totally exonerated by this report, despite the fact that he hasn't seen it. And the attorney general has been clear to state that was not the special counsel's conclusion.

Meanwhile, of course, the president will be at the border today after backtracking on those threats to close it completely -- Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: Jessica, thank you very much for explaining all of that.

Joining us now is CNN senior political analyst John Avlon.

John, is Jerry Nadler jumping the gun by demanding all these things? Bill Barr has already said, "I'm going to be giving you the report. I'm working on it right now." And Jerry Nadler doesn't seem to be exercising a lot of patience.

JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: No. And I think his initial April 2 deadline was presumptuous. It was pushing the attorney general.

But the new information we've gotten this week, that CNN has confirmed with our own reporting, is that the Mueller report investigators are getting itchy, saying they provided these summaries to the Justice Department with the assumption that those would be released. And instead Barr, of course, did his own -- not even summary, top-line assessment. And the question is: how much was he putting the best positive spin on it for the president?

It may not change the underlying outcomes, but it's perfectly reasonable to say, now we know these summaries exist, they were written to be released. Release them.

CAMEROTA: CNN has a source that describes the summaries as not really ready for prime time. That they were part of a confidential report; they were not ready to just be released, you know, wide-open kimono to the public. They still have to go through those for confidential.

AVLON: Look, it is absolutely appropriate for the attorney general to take out classified information, anything that could compromise ongoing investigations. And I think there needs to be a degree of deference to that process.

But once this is all comes in, then it really does need to go as wide as possible. And if it's too heavily redacted, if it appears that there was spin on the ball with the initial assessment, that's a real problem, politically and practically, for the attorney general and the president.

[06:05:13] CAMEROTA: Is Robert Mueller working with Bill Barr to figure out what needs to be released?

BERMAN: There has been reports that he is working with the attorney general in his office to go through the report to -- to make sure the redactions are appropriate.

CAMEROTA: That should comfort Democrats.

AVLON: It should, but we're -- we're way beyond a place where people are acting rationally about this report. I mean, the president's, you know, spots (ph) are doing their best to do what they do to defend the president. But repeating this line that the president was exonerated, when even the Barr summary top line assessment explicitly says he's not exonerated entirely on questions of obstruction.

We need to see the report. We need to see as much as of the full report as humanly possible without compromising sources, tactics and ongoing investigations.

CAMEROTA: OK. Meanwhile to Michael Cohen.

Michael Cohen's attorneys are making the case that he should not report to prison soon, because he has just discovered a trove of more computer files and emails and voice recordings and that he can still be helpful to prosecutors.

And by the way, that's better than Jussie Smollett's excuse for not going to prison, OK? So if you can waive Jussie Smollett's charges, can't prosecutors get rid of Michael Cohen's charges?

AVLON: I'm not too sure those things are fungible.

CAMEROTA: Well, I think so.

AVLON: But we can have a larger conversation about metaphorical truth later.

But look, I think Michael Cohen is clearly, at this point, seems to be bargaining with prison a month away. If he, indeed, did find new information, hey, it was a pretty thorough process when his, you know, hotel rooms got raided by the Southern District, but it better be pretty compelling.

So at this point it does look like he's bargaining for some kind of a delay in a term, and it's -- whatever evidence he's got has got to be compelling enough to change the sentencing.

CAMEROTA: Maybe he will reveal some of that.

AVLON: We shall see. Stay tuned, as President Trump says.

CAMEROTA: Yes. We do say that also in television. John Avlon, thank you very much -- Berman.

BERMAN: All right. Federal regulators are ordering Boeing to fix a second software problem with the flight control system on its grounded 737 Max fleet. This development was reported overnight by "The Washington Post," and it comes as Boeing's CEO has accepted blame for the two deadly crashes.

CNN's Tom Foreman is live in Washington with the latest here. A second software problem, Tom.

FOREMAN: Relatively minor, but it still has to do with the flaps and the hardware control of the plane. And it still has to be fixed after days of waiting for the first fix and after the stunning statement from the Boeing CEO.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MUILENBURG: We at Boeing are sorry for the lives lost in the recent 737 max accidents.

FOREMAN (voice-over): A rare and stark admission of fault from the world's biggest airplane maker.

MUILENBURG: It's apparent that in both flights, the maneuvering characteristics augmentation system known as MCAS activated in response to erroneous angle of attack information. It's our responsibility to eliminate this risk. We own it, and we know how to do it.

FOREMAN: The video statement from Boeing's CEO came after a preliminary report laid out in horrific detail what apparently happened to the doomed Ethiopian Airlines plane.

The report says the trouble starts right after takeoff with airspeed and altitude readings from the left side of the 737 Max 8 that don't match the readings from the right side. And two sensors on the front disagreeing about the angle of the aircraft's nose. The sensor on the right shows steady readings around 15 degrees, but the one on the left swings wildly from 11 to nearly 75 degrees steep, as if the plane is rocketing upward. Those readings are false, but they appear to trigger the MCAS system, an onboard computer, which starts pulling the nose down. If the plane were climbing steeply that would prevent a stall, but because it is climbing normally, the system erroneously starts pushing it toward the ground.

The report does not name MCAS, but Boeing has now acknowledged it was involved.

The captain asks the first officer to pitch up together, to pull back on their controls simultaneously. It does not work. Instead, the flight data recorder shows the plane diving, in all four times without pilots' input. An impact warning sounds in the cockpit: "Don't sink, don't sink."

DAGMAWIT MOGES, ETHIOPIA'S TRANSPORT MINISTER: The crew performed all the procedures repeatedly provided by the manufacturer, but was not able to control the aircraft.

FOREMAN: The report says the cockpit crew even figures out what is wrong and disables the MCAS system. Then the captain asks his first officer about a key part of the plane needed to regain control, the trim. The reply: "It is not working."

Less than six minutes in, once again, the aircraft began pitching nose down, eventually reaching 40 degrees; and it slams into the ground with 157 on board at nearly 600 Miles an hour.

[06:10:11] It is all eerily similar to the crash of an identical jet near Indonesia last fall, killing 189 people. Hours after the preliminary findings were announced, the family of an American woman, Samya Stumo, who was killed in the crash, filed the first lawsuit against Boeing and others.

ADNAAN MILLERON, BROTHER OF PLANE CRASH VICTIM: The potential of my sister and 156 others driven straight into the ground because of Boeing's greed.

FOREMAN: Stumo's family says they are grief-stricken over the young woman's death.

N. MILLERON: Obviously, this could have been prevented, and that's what makes me cry. It's not like it was an accident. This is not an accident. This is something that could have been prevented and should have been prevented.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

FOREMAN: Interestingly enough, she was the niece, this victim, of Ralph Nader, former presidential candidate who initially became famous for being a consumer advocate.

But think about this, John. Just a couple of years ago, Boeing was talking about how much they appreciated the new, streamlined approach of the government to regulation. And now, investigations are swirling all around this line of planes: how they were tested, how they were certified, how they got into the air and whether or not people can really ever trust them again -- John.

BERMAN: Tom Foreman, thank you so much. And Ralph Nader, I should say, has said it will be a crusade, a cause for him, to make sure that these regulations are all fixed and their oversight is there that is needed. Thank you, Tom.

FOREMAN: You're welcome.

BERMAN: Joining me now is CNN aviation analyst Miles O'Brien. He's a pilot and science correspondent at "PBS NewsHour."

Miles, I want to start with the biggest of big picture, which is to hear the CEO of Boeing say, "We own this." That was a big statement. What do you think it means, and why do you think they came forward finally with that?

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: You know, I think there was just tremendous pressure, but just like we were talking about with the regulatory side of this, the FAA, what you see in the United States has been a relatively slow response to what has unfolded, you know. Better late than never, but that's probably a lot of cold comfort for these families.

BERMAN: Oh, no doubt. I mean, these families who have been looking for answers and not just in the Ethiopia crash but in the Lion Air crash way back last fall.

Let me get your take on this new report from "The Washington Post," and let me just read this again, because it's their reporting. "Boeing confirmed to 'The Post' that it had found a second software problem that the Federal Aviation Administration has ordered fixed, pertaining to software affecting flaps and other flight-control hardware and is therefore classified as critical to flight safety."

So a second problem, not just the one problem they were aware of, but they found something else here, Miles. What does that tell you?

O'BRIEN: Well, a couple things. First of all, it was an inconsistent piece of messaging. They said it was critical flight controls, critical to the safe flight of the aircraft; and yet they said it was minor. So a little bit of the old sort of messaging there for a moment.

But then of course, what this raises is, how many other software bugs might be lurking inside this system? Boeing is -- the burden of proof right now is on Boeing, and the FAA needs to step up and certify and make sure that they are watching this one very closely, not allowing, in this case, the manufacturer to do any additional self-policing and self-certifying.

BERMAN: Very quickly, Miles, just a software problem? Does that fully explain this at this point?

O'BRIEN: Well, ultimately, there was a piece of hardware that broke, but the software needed more information. It wasn't getting the streams of data it needed. The fixes that they have announced address all these things. Confidence is another matter entirely in this aircraft. We'll see what happens.

BERMAN: Miles O'Brien, thank you for being with us. Thank you for calling for the change in the action here for months at this point. Appreciate it. Thanks, Miles. CAMEROTA: OK, John. Now to this cruel and heartbreaking twist in the case of that little boy who vanished nearly eight years ago. The FBI says the DNA tests reveal that the young man who claimed to be Timmothy Pitzen is not him. He turned out to be a 23-year-old man from Ohio with a criminal history.

CNN's Athena Jones is live for us in Newport, Kentucky, with more. How bizarre, Athena.

ATHENA JONES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Alisyn.

It really is a bizarre story and a heartbreaking development for this family that's already suffered for so long, to have their hopes dashed in this way after eight long years of searching.

We're hearing from Timmothy Pitzen's family, including his grandmother and aunt, who said that going through this was like living through his kidnapping all over again, his aunt telling reporters that Timmothy's father is devastated all over again. Here's more of what Timmothy's aunt, Kara Jacobs, had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KARA JACOBS, AUNT OF TIMMOTHY PITZEN: Unfortunately, this child is not our beloved Timmothy. We know that you are out there somewhere, Tim, and we will never stop looking for you, praying for you and loving you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JONES: And this person who said he was 14-year-old Timmothy Pitzen actually isn't a child at all. According to Newport, Kentucky, police, his name is Brian Michael Rini. He's a 23-year-old man from Medina, Ohio, with a prior arrest record, including jail time.

Just some of the crimes he's been accused of: theft, burglary, criminal trespass, making false alarms, passing bad checks and disorderly conduct.

Rini's brother telling CNN affiliates that he's known for starting fights and for acting out. His brother said that Brian Rini even impersonated him when he was stopped for a traffic violation a couple of years ago.

As of last night, Brian Rini hadn't yet been charged, but of course, we'll be checking on that.

And one more thing I should note. In their statement yesterday, the Louisville FBI said they will never stop searching for Timmothy -- Alisyn, John.

CAMEROTA: Athena, thank you very much. That's just -- that is a heartbreaking twist.

BERMAN: You've got to feel for the family. Imagine being the family, going through this thinking that maybe there was a chance. CAMEROTA: Of course. I mean, I think that it's clear that there's

some mental illness with the suspect. We're going to speak to his brother about his history.

BERMAN: Or depravity. I mean, it's -- you know, just to do that --

CAMEROTA: We'll see, I mean, what the brother thinks of his history. But believe it or not, you know, I worked at "America's Most Wanted" for many years. They deal with missing children all the time. And this happens from time to time. People do show up from time to time, claiming to be the missing child.

BERMAN: To your credit, the first words out of your mouth after this story broke was, you know, "Are we sure?"

CAMEROTA: Let's pump the brakes a little bit. Thank you.

BERMAN: All right. A new report reveals that President Trump wanted the confirmation for his pick to be the top lawyer for the IRS, he wanted that to be a high priority. Why such a high priority? Could it be having to do anything with his own tax returns? Maggie Haberman joins us next.

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[06:20:23] BERMAN: So "The New York Times" reports that President Trump urged Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to make the confirmation vote for his pick to be IRS chief counsel, the head lawyer at the IRS, the president wanted that to be a top priority. Why? Why could that be?

There are serious questions raised about that. Might it be about the president's tax returns?

CAMEROTA: No.

Joining us now is one of the authors, the reporters who broke that story, "New York Times" White House correspondent Maggie Haberman. Thank you so much for being here. Nick Fandos wrote it with you also.

So what exactly are the questions that are raised here? And how hard did the president push to get this lawyer on, and how does he know him?

There's a lot there. Sorry.

MAGGIE HABERMAN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: There's a lot there. I'm going to start at the beginning.

The president had this conversation with Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, in February when this nomination for Matt Desmond to be the IRS chief counsel had been delayed; it had been languishing. Desmond had become frustrated, the president told Mitch McConnell. He might withdraw his nomination, because it was taking so long.

At that point, the Senate was very focused on getting Bill Barr through as the attorney general. And the president told Mitch McConnell that getting Desmond through was more of a priority over Barr. That should happen first if they could make it happen. The Senate did not do that. They did not switch order. They had Bill Barr go, and then later in the month, Desmond was confirmed.

Now, one could argue that it was because, as the White House has said for a while, that they wanted people at the IRS in place, because they knew they were facing the first tax return season after the tax bill, certainly possible.

Another reading of it might be that a motivation was that the president knew that there was going to be this fight by the newly Democratic-controlled House to get control -- a hold of his tax returns which he has refused to make public, citing an audit for many, many years now now. And at minimum, the conversation with Mitch McConnell raised a lot of eyebrows.

Is there a back story between President Trump and Matt Desmond? Do they know each other?

HABERMAN: I don't know if they personally know each other. Desmond's client work at one point included doing some kind of project involving the Trump Organization. And he works at a firm or came from a firm alongside the president's tax lawyer, Sheri Dillon. So he doesn't come, you know, absent some -- some Trump curriculum vitae. Usually, the president is aware of these things.

Look, it would seem to, again, depending on the president's motive, it would seem to fit a pattern where the president tries to put people in places throughout the government where they could potentially be helpful to him with what he perceives as a threat from the outside.

CAMEROTA: Did Matt Desmond perhaps submit an unsolicited 19-page memo about how presidents should never have to give up their taxes?

HABERMAN: I don't think that was Desmond. I think that was the IRS. I think that was -- I think that was someone else. But I think the fact that he had -- he had worked on some aspect of the Trump Organization's business at a previous point, I suspect was not lost on the president.

BERMAN: At a minimum, it does raise questions, because he wants his guys to be in positions where they could influence questions about the the president's own issues.

HABERMAN: Look, this has come up repeatedly, it has been a pattern with the president. We have seen him try to put people who he perceives as loyal to him, whether they are or not, but who he perceives as loyal to him in positions where he believes they could be more favorable, potentially, than someone else.

CAMEROTA: And very quickly, does -- is Mitch McConnell amenable to this? Is Mitch McConnell going to speed up, now that he's introduced the nuclear option. Will he speed up the confirmation of this person who is maybe an associate somehow of someone in President Trump's orbit for this confirmation? HABERMAN: So this person was confirmed, eventually. After this phone

call, a month later, he was confirmed. The process certainly did happen after this phone call. It was not moved ahead of Bill Barr, which had been the president's push. But I don't think that Mitch McConnell is looking to sort of roll out the president's bidding quite that specifically. Again, I think a lot of people who learned of this phone call found it strange.

BERMAN: So at the top of the show, Maggie, I called this week the three "F's" of the apocalypse: flipping, fighting and fibbing.

But let's look at the flipping here, because --

HABERMAN: The end times and I missed it? OK. I'm just curious. OK.

BERMAN: You know what? It just -- don't knock alliteration, Maggie. But on the flipping, the president had promised he was going to close the border. Let's just listen to what he said he was going to do and we'll talk about what he didn't do.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I'm telling you right now, we will close the damn border.

There's a very good likelihood that I'll be closing the border next week.

We're going to give them a one-year warning, and if the drugs don't stop, or largely stop, we're going to put tariffs on Mexico. And if that doesn't stop the drugs, we close the border.

I don't think we'll ever have to close the border.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[06:25:11] BERMAN: So he went from "I'm going to do it, I'll likely do it, I might do it someday," to "I'm never going to have to do it."

HABERMAN: I mean, we've seen this pattern with him, frankly. There's been a lot of talk about is this new? Is this a more accelerated version of Donald Trump?

We've seen some version of this over time the last two years. I do think this is a bit more of a pronounced form of what he does.

But he tends to take a variety of positions on the same issue, and then he is able to say he was on each side of it and then says, "I wasn't flipping, because I said, you know, we might -- we might do it. I didn't say what you saw me on camera saying."

The confusion that he creates around these negotiations, he likes to think of it as an advantage, because it does keep people off-balance. That is true. But it also creates confusion all across the board. So on something like the border, you've got confusion about when people can come in. There is a slowdown at the border right now. You didn't even need this threat from him to make that happen.

I think he is bumping into reality at various points on these threats that he's making. So he starts out here, and then he works his way back.

But, you know, this is the second time we have seen him do this in the last several days. He flipped on health care, as well, while claiming that he didn't. So we'll see what the next few weeks are.

CAMEROTA: We're out of time. But because this is, I agree with you, his long-standing style, does his staff spring into action when he says things like this, or do they wait, knowing that he'll vacillate?

HABERMAN: There's a lot more letting Trump be Trump these days than there was in the previous two years. In the beginning, there was of sort of gridlock, in part because there was so much infighting that it delayed things from happening. What I hear from lots of people is it's just catch as catch can right now.

CAMEROTA: Maggie Haberman, thank you.

BERMAN: Coming up on NEW DAY, we'll speak with former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci. We'll ask him about the three "F's" of the apocalypse.

CAMEROTA: Meanwhile, Jeff Bezos making details of his divorce settlement public. His ex-wife is now one of the richest women in the world. We explain what she got next.

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