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New Day

Feds Seeking Cooperation of Ex-Girlfriend in Gaetz Probe; Sirens Going off in Israel as Violence Escalates; FDA Green Light Using Pfizer Vaccine for Adolescents. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired May 11, 2021 - 07:00   ET

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

CHARLES EGGLESTON, BOARD MEMBER, BLUE STAR FAMILIES: The actual persons that put this product together that save our lives, is -- it fungals me, the other countries are fighting to get the vaccine and we fight not to take, it makes no sense.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: It's not disinformation, a big issue with the military as well. And Charles, thank you so much for trying to combat that. We appreciate it.

EGGLESTON: I appreciate it. And I'm glad Blue Star Families stood up to the front and made sure we get the message out, hey, save a life. Save your own life, save your other man's life. I mean, life is too short, try not to make it shorter. That'd be an effective.

KEILAR: Very good, very good advice. Charles, thank you so much.

New Day continues right now.

Hello, I'm Brianna Keilar alongside John Berman on this New Day. We have some breaking news violence intensifying on the Israeli border with Gaza, a barrage of rocket fire. And CNN is there.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Brand new reporting just into CNN about the federal sex trafficking investigation into Matt Gaetz.

KEILAR: Panic at the pump concerns over gas supplies after that cyber attack on the nation's largest fuel pipeline.

BERMAN: And the first children could begin receiving their coronavirus vaccine doses today after the FDA gives the green light. Is this a game changer to the country's reopening?

KEILAR: A welcome to our viewers in the United States and around the world. It is Tuesday, May 11. And we're beginning with brand new reporting on the sex trafficking investigation of Congressman Matt Gaetz. This is a critical week for prosecutors as they press for cooperation from two key witnesses. CNN has learned that includes a former Capitol Hill intern who was once the Florida Republican's girlfriend.

BERMAN: Gaetz has maintained his innocence throughout as well as his America first campaign schedule.

CNN's Paula Reid joins us now with the latest from Washington in this breaking news. Paula, what have you learned?

PAULA REID, CNN SENIOR LEGAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Well, good morning. CNN has learned that investigators are nearly finished collecting evidence the investigation into whether Congressman Gaetz broke federal sex trafficking, prostitution, or public corruption laws and whether he had sex with a minor. Now this investigation has been going on for months. And at this point, investigators are seeking to speak to two key witnesses. One is a former Capitol Hill intern who was once Gaetz's girlfriend. Now the former girlfriend did not work in Gaetz' office on Capitol Hill. But she is of interest to investigators because she was on a trip the Congressman took to the Bahamas in 2018 and could have knowledge of drug use and arrangements with women to exchange sex for money and gifts.

The Justice Department views her as possibly being crucial to understanding the relevance of hundreds of transactions they have obtained records of including those involving payments for sex.

Investigators could also soon gain the formal cooperation of a second key witness, former Florida county tax collector Joel Greenberg. He's approaching the deadline this week to strike a plea agreement with the government on more than two dozen charges he is facing.

Now Congressman Gaetz has denied any wrongdoing including paying for sex or having sex with a minor. But decisions on whether to charge the Congressman have not been made yet and will likely fall to prosecutors in the public integrity section of the Justice Department. That decision is likely to take some time, a source tells CNN as the Justice Department considers whether it has gathered sufficient evidence to charge.

KEILAR: All right, Paula, thank you so much for that.

Joining me now is Democratic Congressman Jim Himes of Connecticut. He's a member of both the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the Financial Services Committee.

Sir, we have so much to talk about this morning. First, what's your reaction to this new reporting about Congressman Matt Gaetz?

REP. JIM HIMES, (D) CONNECTICUT: Well, you know, it's particularly ironic sitting here 48 hours before the Republican conferences apparently going to throw Liz Cheney from the leadership team, right? Here's a woman who has -- who shares pretty much nothing politically with me and I don't agree with her politics, but who is saying, look, we're going to tell the truth about what happened on January 6, we're going to be truthful, we're not going to support a seditious insurrection. And for that she's being taken out of her leadership post.

Meanwhile, you've got you know, Matt Gaetz under investigation with no consequences. So it says something sadly about my Republican colleagues.

KEILAR: What should they do to him? HIMES: Well, you know, this is not a new thing in the Congress. Sadly, my colleagues every once while find themselves in this or some other kind of hot water. I think the right thing to do is, you know, obviously due process is important and Matt Gaetz deserves his, you know, his day in quarter or whatever, you know the finalization of this investigation. But in the meantime, you know, they had to take him off his committees. At a minimum, I would think the leadership would say, hey, you're maybe not the best ambassador for the Republican brand right now. So shut down the Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz', you know, national road show. But again, that's just not where the Republican Party is today.

[07:05:25]

KEILAR: What does this say? Not just I mean, look, we can see the state of the Republican Party, but what does it say about the bigger picture of the state of American democracy that you have someone like Liz Cheney been ousted, just because she's telling the truth?

HIMES: Well, you know, it's funny. I reflect on that a lot. I was in the chamber on January 6, and when it was all over and when Biden was inaugurated, and when most of America came to believe that it was a fair election and whatnot. I thought, OK, it's time for a sigh of relief, but not really, right? I mean, the majority of Republicans in this country still believe the lie. And by the way, the easily disprovable lie, completely easily disprovable lie that the Joe Biden is not a legitimate president. That's a fundamentally corrosive fact about our democracy. And believe me, there are people in the wings of the Republican Party who are waiting to use that energy to bring us back to that moment, on January 6, where we become something that I'm not sure we recognize politically.

KEILAR: I want to talk about this cyber attack that has targeted the colonial pipeline, which provides so much of the gas and the jet fuel to the east coast. If we look at where Congress is, in all of this, Congress has failed previously here about almost a decade ago, to act to protect against some of these cyber attacks, what is Congress going to do to step up and actually get something done?

HIMES: Well, I would say that Congress has been behind the problem, right? Frankly, the U.S. government has been too late, too little too late is the way to think about it. And we know what we need to do, right? We need better, ongoing real time communication between the private sector, in this case, the colonial pipeline, and our people inside the government who know how to identify and deal with this sort of thing. These people live in places like NSA and FBI and the Department of Homeland Security.

Right now, there's no obligation for most publics -- for most private companies to report this sort of thing to the government, that's not acceptable. They need to be side by side in real time. And so people say, well, what about privacy and privacy is important, but I mean, this is not, you know, delivering pizzas to, you know, to American families, this is delivering the lifeblood of our economy, right? Jet fuel and diesel and gasoline, and because of that the public has an interest in having these private companies work very closely with the government.

KEILAR: And aside from, say, jet fuel or gas, I mean, what other industries are you worried about, that could be hit by this?

HIMES: Well, anything that is a sort of essential to the public welfare, we're talking about the health care industry, hospitals, if all of a sudden hospitals got shut down, the utilities, water, electricity, that sort of thing, anything that is essential, we need to have an ongoing partnership. And we worked on these years ago, in a bill that created the legal structure for the private sector to work with the government, we just have a long way to go.

And by the way, we have a long way to go in making sure that countries like Russia, and private actors like this dark side, if it appeared to be in Russia, that they come to understand that this is not a profitable venture. I, you know, I've only now just stop saying that solar winds, we did not respond adequately to that. Who then --

KEILAR: Which attacked multiple federal agencies and contractors?

HIMES: And until we start taking the aggressive action both in the sovereign realm, I would say that includes offensive cyber operations in the law enforcement realm, which is more when you're talking about dark side, really going hard after these people, we're going to wake up next week to yet another attack. We need to start fighting back.

KEILAR: Republican Congressman Adam Kinzinger came to the aid recently of Liz Cheney. And he warned, he said he warned the House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy about their party's rhetoric in the days leading up to January 6. Let's listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. ADAM KINZINGER, (R) ILLINOIS: I said you know, Kevin, with all this, basically B.S. we're saying about we can make sure the election isn't certified, it was stolen, et cetera. I really, really am concerned about violence on January 6. The response I got was basically that cricket sound and then OK, Adam. Operator, next caller.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: All right. OK. I mean, that's alarming to hear. So if true, then what? What should happen to McCarthy?

HIMES: Well, Kevin McCarthy is a man who desperately wants to be Speaker of the House. That's one of the great national leadership positions. What do we know about leadership? Leadership means protecting your people. There's a story of him not apparently, adequately protecting his people. Leadership means acting even when it's hard in a consistent and principled manner. Kevin McCarthy has been on all sides of Donald Trump, right, when January 6 was happening, and it felt like the place was burning down. He was apparently on the phone shouting at Donald Trump and being shouted at by Donald Trump. Now all of a sudden he's making these pilgrimages to Mar-a-Lago and booting Liz Cheney from leadership in a way that suggests he's on team Trump. [07:10:11]

Leaders speak with one clear voice and act from principle. And here's a man who is not demonstrating the characteristics that he needs to achieve his ambition of being Speaker of the House.

KEILAR: So, last week, a federal judge ordered the DOJ to make public a memo that then Attorney General Bill Barr had cited as the basis for his decision when it came to clearing Trump of obstruction of justice charges. The judge accused Barr and his justice department of misleading the court and the public. What should happen to the former Attorney General, should he be charged? What do you think?

HIMES: Shocker of shockers, right? I mean, you know, it made me think of when he released that memo, he gets the Mueller report from Special Counsel Mueller and he releases three or four days later, a memo that is so misleading, that Bob Mueller not known for going public with these sorts of things as you've mischaracterized my investigation, my report. Again, this is not a new story. Attorney General Barr, and we knew this at the time, regarded the Department of Justice as a defense firm for Donald Trump. And that is a profoundly dangerous place for this country to be looking at what Joe Biden has done, Joe Biden has said, I will not be involved in any way shape or form with decisions in the Department of Justice, because he understands how important it is, right to be independent.

KEILAR: This is a judge saying this, right?

HIMES: Right.

KEILAR: So this is, it's not new, necessarily, in what we suspected had happened or what we saw, but it is new in the voice that is saying it, which is key. So what should happen to Barr?

HIMES: Well, you know, that's a tough question. My best answer, you know, it's not evident that he committed a crime. If he committed a crime, I think he lied any number of times, including about things like the Chinese being involved in messing with the 2020 election, it just went on and on and on the lies. But I think it's for history to judge.

Personally as the guy who's got to go up to the Capitol every single day and hope for, you know, some ability to govern this country through compromise through, a future looking, let's move forward kind of thing. Do we want to drag former Attorney General Barr, you know, before the Congress do, do we want this to be the story or do we want to move on in the way I think President Biden is trying to move on? I would argue that let's let history judge Attorney General Barr and history will not judge him well.

KEILAR: All right, Congressman Himes, we really appreciate you joining us in the studio this morning. Thank you.

HIMES: Good to be with you.

KEILAR: John.

BERMAN: All right, we're following breaking news. Escalating violence in Israel, just moments ago, our CNN crew was forced to run for cover as airstrikes sirens went off in Ashkelon, which is near the Gaza border.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Guys, we have sirens, let's go, let's go.

(INAUDIBLE)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: Now Palestinian health officials say Israeli airstrikes have left at least 24 dead including nine children. Israeli Defense Forces say they have killed 15 militants. Both sides have been trading rocket fire and airstrikes.

Joining us now, Aaron David Miller, CNN Global Affairs Analyst. Aaron, thank you so much for joining us. Look, a lot of analysts think that this is spiraling out of control and could get worse in ways we haven't seen in years. What makes the situation we are seeing right now so combustible?

AARON DAVID MILLER, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: Well, first of all, you've got a confrontation, John, along three fronts, you've got the tense situation Jerusalem, which is produced hundreds of Palestinian wounded 24, 25 Israeli police over any number of incidents that have been building over the course of the last three or four weeks.

Second, you now have rioting among Palestinian citizens of Israel, Israeli Arabs in load in Ramallah. And finally, you have, and I think the Israelis are somewhat surprised by the harsh Hamas response. You now have a kind of wash rinse and repeat cycle that we saw in 2008 and '9, 2012, 2014, which could go on for quite some time. Hamas clearly decided and again, I think the Israeli Chief of Staff all been admitted. I think that this was a surprise to basically escalate not in symbolic demonstration of support for Jerusalem but to launch an intensive rocket barrage. So now you have large numbers of Israelis covered by Hamas rockets, and you have the very real possibility. We've already seen it in the last 24 hours of significant Palestinian casualties, among them civilians.

BERMAN: Very quickly, Aaron, U.S. roll here, what do you expect to see from the Biden administration?

[07:14:58]

MILLER: Yeah, they had -- they made a judgment. I think it was a right judgment that they've got all kinds of priorities at home. The Israeli Palestinian issue is not ready for primetime. The Middle East often opens up surprises which no one is ready for. They have to work with the Egyptians to try to get brokered ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, get the Israeli system stand down and work with the Palestinian authority to the degree that it has control over Jerusalem to common situation there.

BERMAN: Right. Not clear at all. What authority the Palestinian authority literally has at this point, if they could stop it, if they wanted to. But Aaron David Miller, we appreciate you being with us. We're going to keep our eye on this throughout the entire show.

Brianna.

KEILAR: All right, Berman, you're going to like this news now that the FDA has approved the Pfizer vaccine for 12 to 15 year olds. It is up to the CDC to officially give the green light that is expected to happen tomorrow. But some states are not waiting. In fact, CNN's Nick Valencia is joining us now live from a vaccination site in Georgia. What is happening there, Nick, tell us?

NICK VALENCIA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, the FDA authorizing the vaccine for 12 to 15 year olds, was welcome news for eager parents here who are already lining up to anticipate the shots going into arms as early as 8 a.m. And Brianna, under normal circumstances that medical providers would likely wait until the CDC recommends this, but you know, we all know that these are not normal times. These are highly unusual times here. So the states are going to take their discretion. Medical professionals have to have the ability to exercise their judgment. So this is why we're seeing sites like this pop up. This is viral solutions here in Decatur, Georgia. It's been a COVID vaccine site all along. But today they're expanding that to 12 to 15 year olds, which is why we're seeing here a 14 year old Jacob Laney.

Jacob, how are you? Welcome to be on CNN. So what went into the decision today for you to get vaccinated? Why are you here? I mean, I know why you're here. But you know what went into the decision?

JACOB LANEY, 14-YEAR-OLD IN LINE FOR COVID VACCINE: Well, my friend got COVID. And it looked really bad. And I just did not want to get it.

VALENCIA: Yeah, yeah. So what do you think how is life or, you know, is your life, you think it's going to change at all after you get vaccinated, after you get your second dose?

LANEY: After I get my second dose? I think I might be able to see more people, but not actually go see them a lot. But I think I'll be less scared of getting it and less scared of having issues involved with COVID-19.

VALENCIA: Sure, maybe a little bit more protective, you know. What's life been like for a 14-year-old during the pandemic? I mean, how weird is it been for you?

LANEY: I have been out of school for a year even though I've gone through two grade levels. And I haven't been able to see a lot of people that I used to know. It's really hard to see some people. I mean, we do go back to school now. But we have to be really far away and can't always talk to each other and everyone has masks on. It's very confusing. VALENCIA: It's confusing for a lot of us. You're not alone, man. So thank you so much for taking the time. Good luck, best of luck. What shot are you going to get the arm in, do you know really quick?

LANEY: Pfizer, probably left.

VALENCIA: That one. OK, that's your weak arm or your strong arm maybe.

LANEY: Weak arm.

VALENCIA: OK. Jacob, thank you so much for taking the time with CNN, I really appreciate it. So people are already lining up, Brianna and John. You see that shots and arms as early as 8 a.m. And I talked about this discretion that states are using if you go on the Georgia Public Health website, you could already see they've changed the eligibility to 12 to 15 year olds. So that's the green light a lot of parents are waiting for. We're going to see this pump up into high gear across the country sites like this behind me. But today, Georgia is open for business for 12 to 15 year olds, getting a vaccine. John, Brianna.

KEILAR: Nick, that just hit me in the heart when he said, I've been through two grade levels, not going to school. So, you know, Jacob can rest assured that he's going to be able to, you know, be safer here. It's very good news.

Nick, thank you for bringing that to us.

VALENCIA: You bet.

KEILAR: Nick Valencia in Georgia for us.

VALENCIA: Thanks, Brianna. You got it.

BERMAN: Right on, Jacob. Good for you.

So the vote to remove Congresswoman Liz Cheney from House Republican leadership takes place in days. In his big giant justification for ousting Cheney, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy wrote this letter to Republican colleagues which said, "Unfortunately each day spent re litigating the past is one day less we have to seize the future." Kevin McCarthy said that about Liz Cheney accused her of relitigating the past. But as Aaron Blake in the Washington Post noted, the biggest relitigator of them all, well, that title belongs to one man and one man only, a guy McCarthy might recognize from his worship full pill pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago.

The former President has made a total of 55 statements from his new yet 2006 era from the desk of Donald Trump blog. Of those 25 are statements directly about the election, not the next one, the last one, the one in the past. He keeps bringing up the past and arguing about it. There was a word for that, relitigating. He is the real litigator in chief. He is making relitigating great again, like yesterday, he wrote, "If a thief robs a jewelry store of all of its diamonds, the 2020 presidential election, the diamonds must be returned." [07:20:11]

He's not talking about future diamonds, but 2020 big election lie diamonds, all diamonds in that vein is suggest someone else is re litigating, take some stones. If you add in a tax on Liz Cheney, Mitt Romney, Mitch McConnell, Lisa Murkowski, and others who oppose the big lie, a full 30 of his posts are about the last election. That's 55%, well, over half, most of his blog time is spent on the past. He is living a majority of his life, at least digitally in the past.

In baseball terms, he's batting 550 on relitigation. Ted Williams hit 406. So he's like Ted Williams on steroids, which is something Trump understands. One of the few other things he blogged about was the Kentucky Derby doping scandal, calling the horse a junky. And just the last few weeks he has relitigated, Michigan, Michigan, New Hampshire, Arizona, Arizona, Georgia, Arizona, Arizona, and Arizona, just to name a few, yet the Mar-a-Lago travel club still says things like.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. JIM BANKS, (R) INDIANA: Every day that we're focused on something else means that we're not focused on winning back the majority.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: Except as of last Thursday, Trump is focused on what he calls, "The greatest fraud in the history of our country."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. KEVIN MCCARTHY, (R) HOUSE REPUBLICAN LEADER: We want to be united in looking moving forward.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: Except two days before that Trump blog, has the Michigan State Senate started their review of the fraudulent presidential election of 2020 yet?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: But we talked a lot about the future of the country.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: Future, what exactly? Future Easter's filled with pastel sweets and lies about stolen elections? Because, yes, on Easter, a time of rebirth. The master blogger wrote Happy Easter to all including the radical left crazies who rigged our presidential election. The only connection his lies might have to Easter might be peeps, the Easter candy with an infinite shelf life, they never go away. They just get crusty, crusty but irresistible for Kevin McCarthy and others.

So millions of Americans struggling to find jobs and some governors say the government's extra unemployment benefits are to blame. We'll speak with one Republican governor about his state's plan to get people back to work.

KEILAR: And the vote scheduled tomorrow to officially oust Liz Cheney from House leadership but she is not going down without a fight.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:26:41]

BERMAN: More states are announcing plans to end increased federal unemployment aid, North Dakota, Alabama and Mississippi joining the growing list. Their Republican governors argue the benefits discourage people from returning to work. Friday's disappointing jobs report only added fuel to the fire and President Biden is pushing back on the Republican claim.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, (D) U.S. PRESIDENT: So let's be clear, our economic plan is working. I never said and no serious analyst ever suggested that climbing out of the deep, deep hole our economy was in would be simple, easy, immediate, or perfectly study.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: Joining me now is Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson. He announced his state will end the extra $300 per week payments at the end of next month.

Governor, thank you so much for coming on New Day. Explain to me how and why you reach this decision to halt the enhanced unemployment benefits?

GOV. ASA HUTCHINSON, (R) ARKANSAS: Well, the extra compensation was very helpful during the dark days of the pandemic when unemployment rates are so high. But now our economy has come back. We have jobs of plenty. We have employers that are begging, workers to come to their place of business. And we cannot pay extra compensation for workers to stay home. We need them in the place of employment. And so that's a simple rationale for it. If they need assistance and finding a job, we'll provide that to them. If they need childcare assistance, we have more than ample resources to assist in that as well. So we want people to work. People of Arkansas want to work, but we found that that enhanced benefit was simply an impediment. And we still continue to have the ordinary unemployment benefits. But this is a good step to help people get back to work.

BERMAN: Well, a couple things. First, let's start with the idea that the benefit works as a disincentive. Janet Yellen and others point out that on the lower wage jobs there actually hasn't been a decrease in hiring. There's an increase in hiring. The decrease in hiring came in higher wage jobs. You would expect the opposite if the added benefit was actually serving as a disincentive?

HUTCHINSON: Well, you're looking at service jobs in the hospitality industry. You're looking at laborers and manufacturing. These are all jobs that are unfilled. And so we have the skilled workers for those positions. And if they average $15 an hour, then you're getting more than that to incentives to stay home. And so obviously, obviously, that is a discouragement to do that. Human nature kicks in. Do I want to get the same amount of money by going to work every day and working hard? Do I want to get that amount of money by sitting at home? And so we want to avoid that inclination of human nature, incentivize them, work should always reward more than unemployment. And that's what we're trying to accomplish.

BERMAN: Couldn't the companies raise their pay?

HUTCHINSON: Oh, sure, they can raise their pay and that would raise consumer cost, but we want to make sure, and they have raised their pay, employers all across our state in the country.