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Rest of Surfside Condo Building Demolished as Storm Looms; Fauci: Unvaccinated People Were 99% of Recent COVID Deaths; Trump Appears to Admit Facts of Case Against His Company, CFO; Armed Militia Group Shuts Down Highway in Roadside Standoff. Aired 6-6:30a ET
Aired July 05, 2021 - 06:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, I'm Brianna Keilar alongside John Avlon on this NEW DAY. The rest of the tower in Surfside coming down overnight as a storm approaches and families wait.
[05:58:32]
Plus, Donald Trump appearing to publicly admit to the facts of the case against his business and money man. What this means for his legal jeopardy.
JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST/ANCHOR: And they refuse to pay taxes, recognize government, and don't believe the law applies to them. We're going to take you inside the sovereign citizen militia group, the center of an hours-long standoff with police.
And the U.S. steps up evacuation plans for its embassy in Afghanistan as the threat of violence there rises with American forces leaving.
KEILAR: A very good morning to viewers here in the United States and around the world. It is Monday, July 5. John Avlon is in for John Berman this morning.
And this morning, nothing is left of the Champlain Tower South. Demolition crews detonating the standing portion of the collapsed condo building, bringing it down to the ground 11 days after its collapse.
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(SOUND OF TOWER COLLAPSING)
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KEILAR: Engineers were concerned the remaining structure was unstable and potentially dangerous, with Tropical Storm Elsa bearing down on Florida.
AVLON: Search-and-rescue operations will resume when the site is deemed safe. Officials are hoping that the demolition will open a new portion of the site to search teams. No one has been found alive since immediately after the collapse.
There are 24 confirmed deaths, with 121 people still unaccounted for.
Natasha Chen now joins us from Surfside, Florida -- Natasha.
NATASHA CHEN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: John and Brianna, that space between these buildings there where you see that blue-gray sky is where the Champlain Tower South building used to be. It is no longer there this morning.
That demolition happened at about 10:30 last night. Residents in the vicinity were asked to stay indoors, to keep windows and doors closed, to keep that dust cloud and debris outside of their homes.
As you mentioned, this is expected to help search-and-rescue teams actually access about a third of the pile that they couldn't get to before, because it was too close to the structurally unstable remaining building.
But as we know, sometimes demolitions can be spectacles, shows. Representative Debbie Wasserman-Schultz yesterday described how this is really the furthest thing from that.
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REP. DEBBIE WASSERMAN-SCHULTZ (D-FL): It's a very tragic situation not only for those who are still hoping to find loved ones that have survived but also to those survivor families who got out of the building and all of whom's belongings are in that apartment building.
And so this is tragic, not a celebration, not a spectacle, and we need to think about the loss, the further loss that the demolition of this building means for all of these families.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHEN: The families of 121 people still unaccounted for, and of course, families already mourning the loss of 24 confirmed people who have died in that collapse.
And the mayor of Surfside did say this coming storm, Elsa, that it may not directly hit this area, but it could have an effect, with high winds affecting the search-and-rescue mission. He said that that may have been a blessing in disguise, creating the urgency for this discussion to safely bring this building down so that search-and- rescue teams could be safer in continuing their work, John.
AVLON: Thank you very much, Natasha.
KEILAR: And this morning Tropical Storm Elsa is working its way toward Florida. It's expected to bring heavy rain, damaging winds and a potentially dangerous storm surge.
Let's check in with Chad Myers to see what the forecast holds. What are you seeing, Chad?
CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: I don't see it getting to hurricane strength, Brianna. It has to go over Cuba. It's still southeast of Havana right now at a 65 mile-per-hour clip. And that's close enough for many people if you get a close brush.
Tropical storm watches and warnings are posted for the Keys all the way up the west coast of Florida, and the east coast will still get wind on shore. You will still get the potential for a squally day today and for tomorrow. We're not seeing much on radar right now, but one storm after another may come through by your Tuesday. So that's what the officials were worried about.
Thirty-, 40-mile-per-hour winds on this side, 50, 60, 70, miles per hour gusts on this side of Florida. And still some rain and also some surge. The Keys may be one to two feet.
But on up here. A little bit farther up into Florida Bay, one to three. Then you get up to Port charlotte and also Tampa Bay, possibly two to four. Keep that in mind if you are close to the water. The water will be coming up with this surge.
Surf side, you're going to get storms today and tomorrow. Looks like it does get a lot better by Wednesday -- Brianna.
KEILAR: All right. Better by Wednesday. Chad Myers, thank you so much.
MYERS: You're welcome.
AVLON: And Americans from coast to coast coming together to celebrate not just the 4th of July, but also return to something like normal as the country emerges from the darkness of the coronavirus pandemic.
At the White House, President Biden hosting the biggest event since taking office, about 1,000 people, including military families and workers involved in the COVID-19 response, attended a party on the South Lawn of the White House to watch the fireworks show at the national mall. Earlier, the president celebrated the nation's progress in fighting coronavirus.
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JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Two hundred forty-five years ago we declared our independence from a distant king. Today, we're closer than ever to declaring our independence from a deadly virus. That's not to say the battle against COVID-19 is over. We've got a lot more work to do.
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AVLON: Now, the U.S. did fall just short of President Biden's goal to vaccinate 70 percent of Americans by July 4. As of this morning, 67.1 percent of the adult population in the United States has received at least one vaccine dose. Fifty-eight percent of American adults are fully vaccinated.
KEILAR: And in a new interview, Dr. Anthony Fauci says that unvaccinated Americans now represent over 99 percent of coronavirus deaths.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: It's all the more sad and all the more tragic why it isn't being completely implemented in this country and whatever the reasons -- as you said, some of them are ideologic, some of them are just fundamentally anti-vax or anti-science, or what have you.
[06:05:09]
But you know, we just need to put that aside now. We're dealing with a historic situation with this pandemic. And we do have the tools to counter it. So for goodness sakes, put aside all of those differences and realize that the common enemy is the virus.
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KEILAR: CNN senior medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen is with us now. It is so sad, Elizabeth. These are preventable deaths that we're seeing.
ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: They are. That's what makes this so frustrating, Brianna. And you can hear the frustration and the sadness in Dr. Fauci's voice. We are handing Americans on a silver platter something that will save their life. It doesn't cost them anything. It is widely available, even in the most remote parts of the United States.
People are not taking advantage of it. A third of Americans are not taking advantage of it.
And let's take a look at those numbers that Dr. Fauci just discussed. So in the month of June, when you look at deaths, 99.2 percent of the people who died of COVID-19 in the month of June were unvaccinated. Just .8 percent were vaccinated. So nearly everyone was unvaccinated.
You do not need to be a genius to see that vaccines save lives and allowing yourself -- choosing to remain unvaccinated can kill you.
Let's take a look at where we are again with the vaccination process in the United States. When you take a look at folks who are partially vaccinated, in other words, they've only had one shot, that's about 67 percent. So in other words, about one third of Americans have chosen not to get a COVID-19 shot. About 58 percent of Americans are fully vaccinated -- Brianna.
KEILAR: And what did you think? You know, we heard the president there pleading with Americans. What did you think of that?
COHEN: You know, I think they need to come up with something better than pleading. Again, one third of Americans are choosing not to get a shot. They need to really figure out who are these people? And what will convince them to do it? Does it need to be some kind of incentive program? Do we need more of these lotteries? Do we need -- what do we need? What will -- wo are these people? Where do they live? What are their demographics? What will convince them? The pleading, I think, is not working.
KEILAR: The pleading is not working. Elizabeth Cohen, thank you so much for that.
COHEN: Thanks.
KEILAR: Did Donald Trump just admit to the crimes alleged against his business? What his words mean for the legal case here.
Plus, a highway standoff between an armed militia group and the police. So, who is this self-proclaimed Rise of the Moors group?
And as a top U.S. general warns of a civil war in Afghanistan, the U.S. making a dramatic move to prepare.
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DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: They go after good, hard-working people for not paying taxes on a company car. A company -- You didn't pay tax on the car. Or a company apartment. You used an apartment, because you need an apartment because you have to travel too far where your house is and didn't pay tax. Or education for your grandchildren. I don't even know. Do you have to -- does anybody know the answer to that stuff?
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KEILAR: Former President Trump at a rally this weekend, appearing to acknowledge the merits of the case against the Trump Organization and its chief financial officer while denying that those things are actually crimes.
Trump told the crowd that every company has, quote, "fringe benefits," and he mocked New York prosecutors for pursuing these charges. It's not the first time that Trump and his associates have seemingly admitted wrongdoing.
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TRUMP: We're supporting a country. We want to make sure that country is honest. It's very important to talk about corruption. If you don't talk about corruption, why would you give money to a country that you think is corrupt?
MICK MULVANEY, FORMER WHITE HOUSE ACTING CHIEF OF STAFF: It's like, look, this is a corrupt place. I don't want to send them a bunch of money and have them waste it, have them spend it, have them use it to line their own pockets. Did he also mention to me in the past the corruption related to the DNC server? Absolutely. No question about that. But that's it. And that's why we held up the money.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What you just described is a quid pro quo. It is funding will not flow unless the investigation into the -- into the Democratic server happens, as well.
MULVANEY: We do -- we do that all the time with foreign policy. I have news for everybody, get over it. CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: So you did ask Ukraine to look into Joe
Biden?
RUDY GIULIANI, FORMER ATTORNEY FOR DONALD TRUMP: Of course, I did.
CUOMO: You just said you didn't.
GIULIANI: And you want to cover some ridiculous charge that I urged the Ukrainian government to investigate corruption. Well, I did. And I'm proud of it.
Having something to do with paying some Stormy Daniels woman 130,000, I mean, which is going to turn out to be perfectly legal. That money was not campaign money. Sorry. I'm giving you a fact now that you don't know. It's not campaign money. No campaign finance violation. So --
SEAN HANNITY, FOX NEWS HOST: They funneled it through a law firm.
GIULIANI: Funneled through the law firm, and the president repaid it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KEILAR: So let's talk about this now with J.W. Verret. He's a professor of law and accounting at Scalia Law School. He's also a former member of former President Trump's transition team.
So, I mean, we see this pattern of Trump and his associates, J.W., where they're admitting wrongdoing. What do you think about this latest admission?
J. W. VERRET, PROFESSOR OF LAW AND ACCOUNTING, SCALIA LAW SCHOOL: Well, he does have an awkward habit of not only making awkward admissions but of hiring advisers who make awkward admissions in public about alleged wrongdoing.
I'm not sure about this one. It could go either way. I mean, this is probably a clip that Cy Vance will play to a jury in a future prosecution, maybe even in the one against Mr. Weisselberg. I don't know. But it could go either way, and he could claim that he was ignorant. He was demonstrating ignorance of what is and is not tax deductible with respect to fringe benefits.
[06:15:11]
It's not as clear cut an admission as it might seem when you first listen, especially given the high bar a prosecutor would have to bring a tax fraud case directly against Trump.
KEILAR: OK. Do you -- speaking of, do you think that Trump is still at risk in this case?
VERRET: Everything indicates that Mr. Vance's strategy is clearly to bring the first case against the CFO of the Trump Organization, Mr. Weisselberg, and to eventually flip him. I mean, he's the one with all the knowledge of the allegations that this district attorney has previously been investigating that we've seen from public -- publicly available information.
Weisselberg has the knowledge about the potential fraud cases against Trump for fraud in bank loan applications. Tax fraud, as well. And potential fraud with respect to insurance fraud, insurance companies that the Trump Organization dealt with. Weisselberg would be all over all three of those things.
And so it seems that Vance is bringing the case first against the CFO. It's a pretty strong case. And by the facts, it seems to be one that favors the prosecution. We'll see what happens in the event of trial or the event of a plea bargain, which I think is probably Vance's strategy.
KEILAR: Yes. I mean, it is rare for prosecutors to bring a case that is solely on this basis, though. I wonder if you think that works in Trump's favor as he is arguing, as we heard him at his rally over the weekend, that this is a political attack.
VERRET: I think stand-alone tax fraud prosecutions are rare, but it's also rare for a company to fail to -- to commit a $1.7 million tax fraud here and particularly one in which a second set of books is kept internally.
I mean, that's the kind of thing accountants hear about and lure from the old days, pre-computers where criminal organizations kept a second set of books. I mean, I was just shocked that it did this. And this is one of those cases that I think I might teach to my fraud class. That was just kind of incredible to me.
KEILAR: Yes. No, it's a very good point. And one of the things I know that stood out to you in this indictment was that there were other beneficiaries besides Weisselberg of these non-tax benefits. Benefits that should have been reported to the IRS. What questions does that raise for you?
VERRET: Well, like everything else Donald Trump is involved in, this is very dramatic. And kind of -- you know, I think audiences should be very interested in what happens here, because this is just the first act of a multi-act play here.
The indictment has two mysteries contained in the indictment. One of the mysteries is that other individuals who were employees of the Trump Organization other than Allen Weisselberg were the recipients of fringe benefits that were not taxed or the recipients of this tax fraud. But they were not mentioned in the indictment.
Who are these employees? Are they Trump family members who were certainly high-level employees of the Trump Organization? I don't know, but that's my big question, my first question.
My second question is someone from the Trump Organization was mentioned as an unindicted co-conspirator, somebody who the prosecutor believes was involved in the tax fraud. Who was that?
I mean, we know that the trustees of running the Trump Organization were this defendant, Allen Weisselberg, and then Trump's two older children, Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr.
So who were -- who was the unindicted coconspirator who was -- who the prosecutor believed was directly involved in the fraud? Was that a Trump family member? I think we'll have to wait, you know, to see what happens there.
KEILAR: All right, J.W., we will be waiting along with you. Great to see you this morning.
VERRET: Good to see you, too, Brianna.
KEILAR: A stand-off between police and an armed militia group shutting down Interstate 95 for hours. What we know about this so-called Rise of the Moors group, next.
Plus, hundreds of white nationalists marching through the streets of Philadelphia. More on the alarming rise of hate groups across the country.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Too scared to take the mask off. Too scared.
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[06:23:42]
AVLON: So, a group of heavily armed men calling themselves Rise of the Moors shut down a highway outside Boston for more than nine hours in a standoff with police over the weekend.
Now, a state trooper noticed them gassing up their car on the side of the road and stopped to help. But when they allegedly refused to show any identification or permits for their guns, the trooper called for backup.
Nine hours later, all 11 men were taken into custody without injury.
Now to help us understand who this group is and what they stand for, let's bring in Margaret Huang. She's the president and CEO of the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Margaret, thank you for joining us. So where is this group from and how long have they been around?
MARGARET HUANG, PRESIDENT/CEO, SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER: Good morning, John.
So this group is actually based in Rhode Island. They declare a part of Rhode Island to be their sovereign territory that they rule, not accepting any U.S. authority. And we're not sure how long they've been around. But we designated them last year in 2020 as -- on our anti- government extremist list.
AVLON: And give me a sense of what their beliefs are, the basic ideologies that seem to drive them.
HUANG: So, they claim that they are an independent sovereign nation. They claim territory that they do not actually have any legal right to here in the United States.
[06:25:03]
And they base that claim on a treaty that goes back to the 1780s between the early United States and the country of Morocco, which they claim gives them that territorial right.
AVLON: Well, I always appreciate a good Thomas Jefferson reference. But this sovereign citizens movement, these folks seem to be an outlier. I've done some reporting on the sovereign citizens over the years, and traditionally, it's very much wrapped up in some of the white supremacist ideology. This group seems decidedly outside that tradition.
HUANG: That's right. This group is primarily people of African descent, and their beliefs really -- really focus on their refusal to accept any authority from the U.S. government. They don't take driver's licenses. They don't seek gun licenses. They don't pay taxes to the U.S. government.
And they try to recruit followers or adherents to their country that they've declared by seeking people who might be down on their luck or having a hard time functioning in U.S. society and trying to recruit them into theirs.
AVLON: That's right. Well, the anti-tax pitch has always been a powerful recruitment tool for those kinds of groups. How many folks belong to this group, and do you think they represent anything resembling a significant threat?
HUANG: We don't actually know how many members they have. What we can tell you is the member of active followers they have on social media. And so actually, in the last year, they've added more than 5,000 followers to their YouTube channel. They're now over 20,000 followers. And they have a lot of followers on Facebook and Instagram, as well.
AVLON: I also want to ask about another group of extremists that caused a stir over the weekend. We had hundreds of white nationalists from a group known as the Patriot Front march down the streets of downtown Philadelphia Saturday evening, chanting, "The election was stolen" and "Reclaim America."
So what do you know about these folks, because their group's also been associated with defacing murals of George Floyd in various cities across the country in recent weeks.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Too scared to take the masks off! Too scared.
(END VIDEO CLIP) HUANG: So in the last year, the Southern Poverty Law Center actually documented 838 extremist -- (AUDIO GAP) -- in the country. And these groups embrace a wide range of ideologies, but it's very, very common that they are white supremacist, that they reject any kind of interaction with communities of color, and that they pose a real threat to everyone in our communities.
AVLON: They sure do. And it's on the rise, as you say. Thank you very much. Margaret Huang from the Southern Poverty Law Center.
U.S. officials are updating evacuation plans for the American embassy in Afghanistan as troops pull out. Got more on the rising threat, next.
KEILAR: Plus, the Duchess of Cambridge self-isolating after a COVID scare. We are live in London.
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