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New Day

One Dead 8 Hurt in Colorado School Shooting; House Judiciary to Vote on Holding Barr in Contempt; NYT: Trump Tax Figures Show $1+ Billion in Losses; Iran to Stop Complying with Parts of Nuclear Deal. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired May 08, 2019 - 06:00   ET

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

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Eight students shot by two of their fellow students on campus.

[05:59:19] UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Someone said, "I have a gun. Get down on the ground." I started crying, because I was so scared.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: My daughter called me. She said, "Mommy, there's gunshots at the school."

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You never think that this would be the reality.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Every year that we looked at, he lost money. His businesses were doing horribly.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Are voters going to look at tax returns there are decades old? I doubt it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Trump built this mythology about who he was. This sort of explodes that myth.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right. Welcome to our viewers in the United States and all around the world. This is NEW DAY. It's Wednesday, May 8, 6 a.m. here in New York. And new details emerging over just the last few hours from Colorado, where just miles from Columbine, which seared school shootings into our consciousness, a student is dead this morning and at least eight others injured.

Police say two students opened fire inside a charter school. One parent tells "The New York Times" other students tried to stop the attackers after they shot at those inside two classrooms.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Officers say when they arrived on the scene, the shooters were still firing. Investigators say the officers ran towards danger and, after a struggle with the suspects, took them into custody.

This is the second deadly shooting at a school in the U.S. in one week. It is the 13th this year.

CNN's Ryan Young is live in Highlands Ranch, Colorado, with the latest. What happened, Ryan?

RYAN YOUNG, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Just very tough. You think about the pain in this community and the idea that the students started fighting back. They wanted to turn back these shooters, but still it wasn't enough and one of their classmates lost their life.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Attention all units. Getting information on a shooting, STEM School. All units, we have a shooter in Room 1-0-7, 1- 0-7.

YOUNG (voice-over): Emergency crews arriving to STEM School in Colorado after reports of a school shooting. Police say the attackers split up to target two different locations.

HOLLY NICHOLSON-KLUTH, UNDERSHERIFF, DOUGLAS COUNTY, COLORADO: As officers were arriving at the school, they could still hear gunshots and as they were entering the school.

YOUNG: Police arresting two suspects, identifying one as 18-year-old Devon Erickson; the other believed to be a juvenile. Authorities say both are students at the school.

TONY SPURLOCK, SHERIFF, DOUGLAS COUNTY: Our officers went in. And we engaged the suspects. We did struggle with the suspects to take them into custody.

YOUNG: One 18-year-old student was killed and either others injured. The father of senior Brendan Bialy telling "The New York Times" Brendan and two friends saw one gunman pull a weapon from a guitar case. The friends tried to tackle the gunman, and one of the boys was shot in the chest.

As the school went on lockdown, many students say they thought it was just a drill.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Usually, it wouldn't be so concerning. We could see people running out of the building. So we immediately knew that it was not a drill. So we went to hide inside of a classroom.

YOUNG: Some students running for their lives, others hiding until help arrived.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I heard two gunshots. Like, I was inside my classroom. Someone said, "I have a gun. Get down on the ground." I started crying, because I was so scared.

YOUNG: Young children seen leaving with their hands on their heads.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: She said, "Mom, I love you. It's not just a drill. It's a real lockdown, Mom."

YOUNG: An agonizing wait for parents.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: She said, "Mommy, there's gunshots at the school." I stopped what I was doing, and I just ran into my car.

YOUNG: Packing into a nearby recreation center, hoping for the best.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's the worst phone call or text message that you could ever get.

YOUNG: Emotional reunions for families.

But some, like Fernando Montoya, not as fortunate, saying his daughter is safe, but his son is one of the injured.

FERNANDO MONTOYA, FATHER OF VICTIM: I talked to him. You know, thank God he's OK. He told me that he was shot, like, three times. He said he was -- he saw shots from everywhere.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BERMAN: So Ryan Young back with us. Ryan, parents in this area, they were already on high alert after a scare just weeks ago. Isn't that right?

YOUNG: Yes, you think about this. Just two weeks ago you had the Columbine anniversary, and then you had this Florida woman who was threatening harm on schools. So they put everyone on lockdown.

But I think something that stood out to me is the voice of the children in that story, talking about crying and being scared as the shooting was going on. You can understand that sort of sheer pain right there.

But on top of that, hopefully today at 8 a.m. we'll learn more information, because there will be another news conference here. Maybe we'll learn more about the motive. But so far, just a lot of unanswered questions.

CAMEROTA: All right. Please bring that to us when you have it, Ryan. Because obviously, everybody wants to know what would drive kids to show up at their school with guns.

This is madness. It's madness. And we don't have to live this way. You know, I remember -- let's bring in Joe Lockhart, because obviously, Joe, you were in the White House during Columbine in this, basically, same area.

You know, I remember before that, 20 years ago I was traveling in South Korea, of all places. And the question that the kids there all had for me is "Why do the kids in your country shoot each other at schools?" That was 20 years ago. We can -- we are better than this. We don't have to live this way.

BERMAN: And you told --

JOE LOCKHART, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes. BERMAN: You were the one who walked in and told Bill Clinton about the Columbine.

LOCKHART: Yes, I mean, I'll never forget the day.

And again, before Columbine, these things were seen as aberrations. They've now become something that, you know, are the norm.

And it was late in the afternoon. And someone from the Justice Department called me and gave me a heads-up that they had just heard that the FBI was involved. And for some reason, the chief of staff wasn't around.

So I went in and told -- I went into the Oval Office and told the president. And I'll never forget the look on his face. It was absolute disbelief. He just kind of looked at me, and then I watched the process, because you know, presidents have to then go and try to heal the wounds. And some of the toughest times, you know, whether it was in Columbine, whether it was in the shooting in Oregon, were going around with the president as he talked to each individual family, like, in a gym, set up in a gym -- 20, 25 families spending five or ten minutes with them. The tears, the hugs. And it just -- it would -- you -- He'd come out of the room, both the president and the first lady, I mean, emotionally wrecked.

[06:05:31] BERMAN: And to your point, I was writing for Peter Jennings. And we chartered to Columbine, because it was such a big deal. There was the sense this could never happen in America.

This shooting yesterday, the second in a week.

CAMEROTA: I know.

BERMAN: The second in a week.

CAMEROTA: I mean, it is just remarkable that now we are relying on the other students to have to take down the gunman. And just like the synagogue shooting that we recently saw, the congregants have to take them down.

We're now so -- "inured" isn't the right word, but we -- we accept this as a fact of life, that we may have to, at our workplace, at our synagogue, at our school, tackle a gunman.

LOCKHART: Yes.

CAMEROTA: Thank you very much, Joe, for weighing in on that.

Now to what's happening in Washington. There's a lot of news. In just hours, the House Judiciary Committee will vote to hold Attorney General William Barr in contempt. That was their plan, at least.

However, the Justice Department is pushing back. Last night they sent a letter to the committee's chairman saying that if that contempt vote happens, President Trump would invoke, or could, at least, executive privilege on everything involving the Mueller report. So CNN's Lauren Fox is live on Capitol Hill with what's next --

Lauren.

LAUREN FOX, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, that's right, Alisyn. In just a couple of hours, we expect, at this point, at least, for the House Judiciary Committee to move forward with that contempt vote in the Judiciary Committee.

But that comes, as you said, last night the Justice Department sent a dramatic letter to the House Judiciary Committee chairman, arguing that he may be forced to ask the White House to invoke executive privilege over the Mueller report and underlying evidence, writing in the letter, the Department of Justice said, "In the face of the committee's threatened contempt vote, the attorney general will be compelled to request that the president invoke executive privilege with respect to the materials subject to the subpoena."

So of course, that's the Mueller report, the unredacted Mueller report and the underlying evidence. They said that that subpoena was unreasonable and that this contempt vote today is meant just to provoke an unnecessary conflict between Congress and the executive branch.

Now Jerry Nadler, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, was furious. He fired back yesterday, quote, "The White House waived these privileges long ago, and the department seemed open to sharing these materials with us earlier today. The committee will proceed with consideration of the contempt citation as planned. I hope the department will think better of the last-minute outbursts and return to the -- return to the negotiations."

Now, this all comes after yesterday, when the White House stepped in to say that Don McGahn, the former White House counsel, could not turn over documents to the House Judiciary Committee. This is just an escalation between the executive branch and the House Democrats as they seek information on everything from the president's tax returns to documents related to immigration to, of course, the Mueller report -- John and Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: Thank you very much.

Joining us now to talk about this and more, we have John Avlon, CNN senior political analyst; Joe Lockhart, former Clinton White House press secretary; and Laura Coates, CNN legal analyst and former federal prosecutor.

Laura, help us explain where we are. If the House Judiciary Committee does hold Bill Barr in contempt, the Justice Department will then respond by asking the president to exert executive privilege on everything that Congress, lawmakers want to see: documents, people, records. And then what?

LAURA COATES, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Well, protracted litigation, essentially.

But you know what? It doesn't add up to me, Alisyn. Remember: one of the things, the reason they're asking for Bill Barr to actually comply with what the request is, is not for testimony. It relates to the Rule 6(e) material in the Mueller report. They want to be able to see that.

He says that he doesn't want to give it over because it's grand jury material. And of course, they can come back to him and say, well, then you can apply for a court order for a judge to release the information, which apparently, he is not inclined to do.

But now, unrelated to the Rule 6(e) and grand jury material, you have the president of the United States administration to the executive branch saying, "Actually, we are going to cover all the information that has not been discussed at this point about Rule 6(e) and instead say we don't want anything said, because it may undermine the candor that people are able to speak with the president of the United States about," which is why you have the executive privilege.

And so you see an unmatched reason and an unmatched request here. Particularly given that Barr and the DOJ have already said is there a more streamlined approach? Is there a more narrow request you can make to accommodate both of our interests?

And so what you're seeing is really the escalation of this tension between the executive branch of government and the legislative branch of government.

[06:10:03] But ultimately, this game of chicken will have to be resolved with at least one branch of government going to the third and making it a tripod to have the judiciary weigh in, to figure out what kind of weight a contempt proceeding will have. Will it be symbolic? Or will it actually move the needle towards transparency that Barr promised?

BERMAN: The word you used, "game" there, I think, is the most important. Because I think this is game on as of this morning. That letter from the Justice Department to Congress last night was saying, "OK, this is our last set of cards. And now it's up to Jerry Nadler," whom you'll be speaking with in just a little bit.

CAMEROTA: We are -- I think that we are at least first to speak to him. So it will be very interesting to hear how he is going to respond to that letter.

BERMAN: And I think -- the other thing, John, that's interesting is Laura is arguing about facts and law. Right?

JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes.

BERMAN: The actual facts and the actual law here.

AVLON: Good point.

BERMAN: But I don't think that, ultimately, this is about winning or losing for the administration. This is about the game. It's about making the game last as long as possible. It's just about the delay. AVLON: That's exactly right. Look, I think if you look at the Trump

team's strategy and the strategy of a total stonewall that Trump is pursuing, this is about suing for time. This is about push it to the courts. "We'll keep appealing it, and maybe we can even get this past the next election."

They may not be successful, because they're going in the face of pretty subtle caselaw, but if they demonize the opposition, play to the court of public opinion and sue for time, they're seeing that as a win right now.

CAMEROTA: Joe, John Avlon has often told us that we are living through a constitutional stress test right now. And do you see a constitutional crisis on the horizon with these latest two moves?

LOCKHART: Well, I think it is a constitutional crisis, potentially, unless, you know, cooler heads prevail. But the -- the players in this crisis are politicians, and politics are driving it.

So I think John accurately described what the president is trying to do. And let's not pretend that the Department of Justice is threatening Congress, you know, with executive -- This is coming from the White House.

BERMAN: Right.

LOCKHART: This is coming from the president. Only he can exert executive privilege. And it's his and his team's strategy.

Let's look at what Nancy Pelosi is trying to do. She understands how -- how divisive and politically risky going to full-on impeachment is. So what she's with Jerry Nadler and Adam Schiff and others is saying, "We're going to be reasonable. We're going to give you every chance to cooperate with this. And if we have to go to impeachment, it's because you've given us no other choice."

That is the strategy. Both sides now pointing to the public. But Trump pointing to his base; Pelosi playing to 65 percent of the country. That's why I think Trump's strategy is flawed.

BERMAN: It's interesting. We talk about a constitutional crisis. The Constitution doesn't lay out what happens in congressional investigations. It's not explicit there. Yes, it lays out who's got power -- Congress or the executive.

CAMEROTA: Do they talk about anything about Twitter and what those things are in the Constitution?

BERMAN: Alexander Hamilton writes extensively on Twitter, and that's why Aaron Burr shot him. I saw the play.

AVLON: Yes.

BERMAN: That's what led to that. But Laura Coates, what have the courts said about the issue of privilege and congressional investigations? Where is the line? Do we know for sure when it comes to things like these documents?

COATES: First of all, that's exactly why Aaron Burr shot Hamilton. It was because of a Twitter feud. You're absolutely right about that, Alisyn, No. 1.

No. 2, You think about what the courts have talked about, executive privilege is one of those concepts that needs to actually be even more developed in the courts, in the Supreme Court in particular.

We know that it harkens back to the era of Nixon when the court essentially said you cannot use executive privilege as a sword and a shield when it comes to areas of corruption or criminality. So we know there are some parameters in place.

But really, this is going to be a battle royale about really shaping and figuring out the boundaries of the separation of powers.

AVLON: Right.

COATES: Because while the Nixon era also talks about no one being above the law, at this point in time, unless Congress has some teeth behind its actual bark, then they will actually, essentially, elevate the executive branch above the legislative branch and make the president above the law by their own inaction, perhaps timidity or strategy. So one of the key things for the courts to resolve is whether, as

everyone has been talking about, whether this is a truly political matter that they don't want to wade into or one that can resolve and rely on their constitutional interpretation.

We're really in the wild, wild west, essentially.

AVLON: Yes.

COATES: We have a couple of things to point to for analogies, but we do not have anything precisely on par. And lucky for Donald Trump, you just see the two Supreme Court justices.

BERMAN: Yes, he's got two judges sitting at that saloon in the wild west, the way he thinks about it right now.

AVLON: Yes. And just -- not only that, I mean, the Nixon v. United States case you just referred to was unanimous. But one of the justices Trump appointed has a pretty skeptical view of it. His name is Brett Kavanaugh.

CAMEROTA: All right.

LOCKHART: And the one thing is, when you're looking at whether this is a constitutional case, I think the courts will look very seriously at this -- this letter and this threat to cover everything. This isn't -- they haven't made a legal case for this or that. They've said everything. That makes it clear for the courts.

CAMEROTA: OK. Joe, John, Laura, thank you all very much. And as John Berman mentioned, coming up in our 8 a.m. hour, House

Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler is going to join us to talk about the letter that he received late last night. Is he going to continue with this contempt vote and the threat of executive privilege?

BERMAN: And by the way, I made the joke about Burr shooting Hamilton.

CAMEROTA: And then I got credit for it.

BERMAN: You got credit for it. That's just the way things go around here.

CAMEROTA: I like how that works.

BERMAN: All right. New this morning, how is this for a headline? Donald Trump lost more money than nearly any other individual taxpayer. At least in some years. That's just one of the explosive new details in a "New York Times" investigation.

"The Times" obtained details from his tax returns from 1985 through 1994 showing losses of more than a billion dollars.

Joe Johns at the White House with much more on this. I'm not sure the president will enjoy reading that overnight, Joe.

JOE JOHNS, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Probably not. Look, the significance of this issue, John, is that it advances the issue of the president's -- the tax returns in a way we haven't seen before and it also may indicate, at least partly, why the president has been so reluctant to give up his tax returns.

Important also to say "The New York Times" did not report that it got ahold of the president's tax returns. What they say they got ahold of are transcripts, summaries of the president's tax returns from the middle of the 1980s to the middle of the 1990s.

And what those transcripts show is massive losses for the president: 1.17 -- $1.117 billion dollars during that period. And that the president apparently did not pay income taxes during that period for eight of the ten years. He was able to get write-offs. He has a lot of business in mortgages and real-estate interests. Some of that interest, of course, has been called into question.

The president's tax lawyer, contacted by the newspaper, did say this information is incorrect, inaccurate and questioned whether transcripts dating from that period are as reliable as they are today.

So that fight continues.

Also important to point out that this is very different from the fight that is going on between the White House and the House of Representatives over the president's tax returns. They have asked for tax returns from a completely different period. The treasury secretary has said he's not giving those tax returns up. So that impasse continues. CAMEROTA: Yes, who know what those would reveal. Joe, thank you very much for pointing out that distinction and all of the reporting.

Now to some breaking news. Iran announcing that it will stop complying with some parts of the nuclear deal exactly one year after President Trump withdrew the U.S. from that historic accord.

CNN's Michelle Kosinski is live in Washington with the breaking details here. What's happening, Michelle?

MICHELLE KOSINSKI, CNN SENIOR DIPLOMATIC CORRESPONDENT: Alisyn, well, the U.S. has been putting this intense pressure on Iran, trying to choke its government of cash; severely limiting its oil sells -- sales; trying to get Iran to renegotiate the nuclear deal that the U.S., the Trump administration, pulled out of.

So now we're seeing one more angry reaction from Iran. They're now saying this morning, "Well, we'll give the original signatories of this deal 60 days to get this thing back on track. And if not, then we're not going to comply with parts of the deal, and we're going back to sales of enriched uranium and heavy water."

So the U.S.'s closest allies, the Europeans, have been trying to hold together the shreds of what is left of the nuclear deal. They've been trying to facilitate trade with Iran, trying to keep this thing going. It hasn't been easy.

But even now we're hearing some rumblings from Europeans that, if Iran really does this, then they, too, are going to have to put sanctions back on Iran. That, then, could see this entire thing fall apart. And the U.S. would be happy with that because, again, they -- they want a new and better deal.

Another reaction we've been seeing from Iran, though, is this increased threat posture. According to Barbara Starr's reporting here on CNN, Iran has been moving ballistic missiles around in the Persian Gulf.

The U.S. sees that as a specific, credible, direct threat to U.S. assets in the region and its allies. And that precipitated this strange secret trip that Secretary of State Pompeo did yesterday to Iraq. This was shrouded in secrecy for hours. He goes there, meets face to face with the president and prime minister.

He took this a step further and called the Iranian threat imminent to U.S. assets. And he said he wanted to meet face to face with the Iraqi leadership to make sure that they could protect U.S. troops and U.S. assets and also make sure that that relationship is strong, again, to counter the influence of Iran -- John.

[06:20:12] BERMAN: Michelle Kosinski, we're watching this very closely to see how the White House responds to that this morning. Thanks, Michelle.

Other news: as one "New York Times" reporter put it, the reason the president does not want us to see his taxes has become abundantly clear. Strange accounting, staggering losses. The president loves superlatives. "The Times" reports the president lost more money than almost anybody.

CAMEROTA: Very bigly.

BERMAN: We have experts who know the president's taxes inside and out. That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:25:18] BERMAN: So overnight Michael Barbaro, who does "The New York Times" broadcast, wrote, quote, "The reason the president does not want us to see his contemporary taxes has now become abundantly clear."

"The Times" reported Donald Trump lost more money than nearly any other individual U.S. taxpayer from 1985 to 1994. The total loss is more than $1 billion, and that's just the beginning of it, according to "The Times."

Joining us now is Michael D'Antonio, Donald Trump biographer and CNN contributor; and David Cay Johnston, author of "It's Even Worse Than You Think: What the Trump Administration is Doing to America." David previously obtained two pages of Trump's 2005 federal tax return.

And David, I want to throw up on the screen here just the charts of the president's losses, as reported by "The Times" over this decade. That is a ton of red. You know, more than a billion dollars' worth of red at a time when Donald Trump was bragging about being this big dealmaker. I get the sense this doesn't surprise you this morning, David.

DAVID CAY JOHNSTON, AUTHOR, "IT'S EVEN WORSE THAN YOU THINK": No. And notice that five of the 11 years "The Times" got his tax transcripts are the go-go '80s, when lots of people were making lots of money. But as we can see, Donald Trump, who pushed himself right into the front of that pantheon through smart marketing efforts, in fact was in the opposite direction.

I calculated this morning that every time Donald Trump took a breath, for 11 years, he lost more than $3.

CAMEROTA: So that's a funny way to do math, David. But I like it.

Michael, it's the opposite of the Midas touch. Whatever the opposite of everything you touch turning to gold is, that is the opposite of what Donald Trump had for these ten years.

I mean, as John said, he -- it appears he lost more than any other American during that time. Everything, from his casinos, his hotels, his retail space, his airline. It -- all were bad bets.

MICHAEL D'ANTONIO, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Well, the marvel of all of this is that time and again Donald Trump could go back to lenders, go back to the markets and find cash to pour into these enterprises, because he was proving that he was a bad operator of these big businesses. You know, we now see that the emperor had no dough. People thought

that he was very rich. They thought that he carried this vast portfolio that was really an illusion.

But in the American tradition, you sort of marvel at a guy who can build up his image so fully all on illusion and make that his construction project. He talks about, "I'm a great builder." But what he really was, was a great builder of an image that eventually made him president of the United States.

BERMAN: So David, you have a word for that. You have a word for someone who can build up an image like that despite the facts, correct?

JOHNSTON: Con artist. And Donald is without question the greatest con artist in the history of the world. He conned his way into the White House.

Now, whether his supporters are going -- are going to begin to accept that they were conned, that he's a fraud, we don't know yet. They certainly should begin to question what's going on, now that it's very clear from IRS records that "The Times" obtained, and obtained, they say, by the way, from someone who properly had them. I don't know whether people will recognize the reality. But Donald Trump has always been a con artist and a fraud, and now it's very clear that the -- the wizard has been exposed as a con artist.

CAMEROTA: But I think that they'll see it completely differently, David. I mean, with all respect, I think that they'll see the fact that he had these losses and didn't have to pay taxes for ten years as a badge of honor. So he got to claim all of these big losses, and the fact that he wasn't contributing to the United States, you know, tax base, I think that they'll see as somehow him winning.

JOHNSTON: Well, Alisyn, you know, people are very good at rationalization. One of the things I hope that we turn some attention to is all the small businesses Donald Trump destroyed, all the people he cheated out of their money, all the bank losses that occurred. I mean, this didn't take place without a lot of damage to other people.

BERMAN: And Michael, there is the other side of that, though, which is that these records stop in the mid-90s. And David -- the record that David obtained actually showed a net income for 2005. I can't remember what it was. David, it was like $35 million?

JOHNSTON: A hundred and fifty-three million dollars.

BERMAN: A hundred and fifty-three million dollars.

So his business, Michael, after this in the 2000s, once he started doing "The Apprentice," once he started going the licensing, his business changed after the taxes that we're seeing this morning.

END