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New Day

Cuomo's 11-Hour Grilling; Afghanistan Not Doing Well; Following the Trump Money; Heavy Rainfall in Gulf and Southeast; Haiti's First Lady Speaks of Assassination. Aired 6:30-7a ET

Aired August 03, 2021 - 06:30   ET

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

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[06:33:50]

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: New details this morning about the sexual harassment inquiry into New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. "The New York Times" reports Cuomo was questioned by investigators in his Manhattan office for 11 hours last month.

Erica Hill here with the details.

Erica, what do we know about this meeting?

ERICA HILL, CNN ANCHOR AND NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, and it's that -- it's that length that really got a lot of people's attention. Questioned under oath for 11 hours about his treatment of women. It's an interview that became tense at times according to "The New York Times," with the governor actually challenging one of the lead investigators' independence and fairness.

Now, Cuomo is, of course, facing multiple claims of sexual harassment and workplace misconduct, including allegations from one former aide that he was, in her words, grooming her. Charlotte Bennett first told her story to "The New York Times" in February. Another former aide has accused him of an unwanted kiss. The governor has denied touching anyone inappropriately, and in response to the allegations earlier this year, he acknowledged some of his comments may have been, quote, insensitive or too personal, and said he was sorry to those who may have, in his words, misinterpreted them.

Now, Cuomo's interview signals the investigation itself could be coming to a close. Although we should point out, the AG's office has not offered a timeline. "The Times" also reporting that members of the governor's inner circle, including his security detail, have been interviewed following the marathon session with the governor.

[06:35:09]

"The Times" reports investigators actually left the building through a loading dock so they could avoid photographers.

CNN has reached out to the governor's office for comment. In response to the new details of Cuomo's interview, a spokesperson for the attorney general's office telling CNN, the continued attempts to undermine and politicize this process are dishonest and take away from the bravery displayed by these women.

John, when the investigation is complete, the AG has said it will release a public report.

BERMAN: All right, Erica Hill, eleven hours, wow. All right, thank you very much for that.

More on our breaking news this morning, Simone Biles winning the bronze in her return to Olympic competition. Dominique Dawes will join us live to react.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: Plus, it's not going well. That is a grim, new assessment about the deteriorating security situation in Afghanistan.

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[06:40:14]

KEILAR: It's not going well. That is the grim assessment of the situation in Afghanistan from a U.S. defense official as Afghan security forces are trying to combat Taliban advances here in the week since most U.S. troops have left the country.

CNN's Kylie Atwood is tracking this story for us.

Tell us where things stand in Afghanistan.

KYLIE ATWOOD, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Yes, so as you said there, a U.S. defense official told our Barbara Starr that it's not going well with regard to the security situation as the Taliban continue to make these gains on the ground in Afghanistan, particularly making gains in recent days in the west and the south. And, of course, the areas that we are watching and, of course, that the Afghan people are watching are these population centers, these cities.

And one of those is Kandahar. It's the second largest city in all of Afghanistan. The Taliban are beginning to make gains on the outer edges of the province. So that is a really interesting one to watch.

And, of course, this could go back and forth, right? These are -- these are fights that are ongoing and so it's not necessarily going one way or the other for sure. But U.S. military officials are concerned as they are watching this happen and they're also concerned because they're seeing the Taliban numbers, the fighters, surge in large numbers. And just yesterday a senior Afghan general told the BBC that they have seen large numbers of al Qaeda fighters joining the Taliban in some of these fights for these larger provincial capitals.

Now, it's not a forgone conclusion that these provincial capitals fall to the Taliban, according to this defense official who spoke with Barbara Starr, but this is what we should be watching right now because if they start to fall, then the people start to lose confidence in the Afghan government. That would be a problem. That could then catapult into something that could be the unraveling of other capitals in the area.

And the other thing that I think is important to watch is the security situation at the U.S. embassy in Kabul.

So the State Department, the Biden administration, continues to say they want to keep the embassy open, but there are some security precautions that are in the region right now in case there is a need to evacuate that embassy.

KEILAR: Yes, that says a lot.

Kylie, thank you so much for that report.

President Trump has raised a huge political war chest of more than $100 million, so how is he spending it?

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[06:46:23]

BERMAN: Former President Trump has raised a huge amount of money. A political war chest of more than $100 million, mostly on the abject lie that the election was stolen from him. So, is that where he's spending this money?

John Avlon with a "Reality Check."

JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes, America's battle against the virus continues, not just the delta variant, but the virus of lies that continues to course through our country. From attempts to deflect blame from the January 6th attack, to almost daily disinformation about the COVID vaccine.

But if you're looking for a reason why these lies are so contagious among Republican elites, don't look for logic, just follow the money because ex-President Donald Trump's built up a war chest of more than $100 million. But as with all things Trump, it's not quite what it seems.

I'm not even talking about how he inflated his totals for the first half of the year. No, I'm talking about how it's evidence of the grift that goes on even as Trump cows Republicans into staying in an abusive relationship. Because for all the fundraising over non-existent mass voter fraud, Trump has spent no money on the fruitless fraudance (ph) that continue to keep the big lie alive in the heart of his hard core supporters.

Quite, the president deceived his donors, a former FEC official told "The Guardian." He asked them to give money so he could contest the election results, but then he spent their contributions to pay off unrelated debts. Now, he's not going to waste his money on what Arizona Republican Jack Sellers recently called an adventure in Never- Never Land. Now, he wants his small dollar dark money minions to do that. While he fights for the umpteenth time the release of his tax returns, while still somehow charging taxpayers 10 grand a month for Secret Service rooms in his hotels.

Now, PACs are generally supposed to support likeminded candidates. But Trump's special election endorsements didn't see a dime from him for weeks after his endorsement. Too late to save Susan Wright in the Texas special election. But even with insanely coercive joint fundraising appeals, like the RNC warning donors that if they uncheck a reoccurring donation box, quote, we will have to tell Trump you're a defector. Owe.

Trump makes America -- Trump's make America great again committee saw a decline from 13.8 million in January to 2.6 million in June, almost all of that due to those reoccurring donations "The New York Times" found.

It's not like he's winning new converts with all his seditious lies, but the GOP is caught in a trap. They fear they can't win primaries without him and yet they can't win general elections with him. That's because he's still massively popular with the base but really unpopular with the American people.

Get this, a mid-July APNRC (ph) poll, Trump had a 76 percent approval rating from Republicans, but just 37 percent among all Americans. And in April, an NBC poll broke it down further. With just 21 percent of Americans saying they have a very positive view of Trump, while another 11 percent said they had a somewhat positive view.

Trump's money haul succeeds in freezing the field and keeping all the attention on him and his talk about a possible 2024 run. So other ambitious GOP aspirants seem to have retreated to a strategy of trying to suck up to Trump in the hopes that if he doesn't run he'll benefit from his endorsement.

This is lunacy. Combined loyalty with Donald Trump is a one-way street, folks. George P. Bush sold out his family to kiss the ring and still got stuck with the shif (ph). Rudy Giuliani ruined his reputation pedaling Trump's lies. And even with all Trump's cash on hand, he still can't get his legal fees paid.

And despite all of that, the GOP remains cowering in the wings, willing to undermine democracy in a desperate search for a bully's approval.

[06:50:09]

It ain't going to happen. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Republicans will still be stuck in this repeat cycle until they learn the key lesson, expressed in Phil Rucker and Carol Leonnig's new book. Most of Trump's failings, they say, can be explained by a simple truth, he cares more about himself than the country.

And that's your "Reality Check."

BERMAN: You know, cheap and honest don't always -- cheap and dishonest, I should say, don't always go hand in hand, but when they do, you know, it's a doozy. AVLON: Quite a doozy. Yes.

BERMAN: All right, John, thank you very much.

KEILAR: And there is some heavy rainfall that is expected in the Gulf and southeast coast this week to bring cooler temperatures to the region, but also we could be seeing the threat of flash floods.

So let's check that out now with Chad Myers.

All right, this is concerning.

CHAD MYERS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: You know, we always get the rain where we don't need it. Every time I talk about flash flooding, it's in places that just had flash flooding a couple of weeks ago. But it's up and down the East Coast again for this week. An awful lot of rain.

This weather is brought you by Servpro, helping make fire and water damage like it never even happened.

And so we're going to see a lot of rainfall. There may be spots that see 6 inches of rain along the Gulf Coast and up the East Coast into the Carolinas, maybe even getting as far north as Cape Cod.

One storm after another driving along the same front. Rain showers after another rain shower. And everywhere you see the yellow or the orange or the red, that's where the heaviest rain will be.

Now, it's going to keeping temperatures nice across the Northeast. That same front will keep you nice and cool. It will warm up a little bit, but nothing like we're seeing out West. The West is baking again. Phoenix today will be 111 degrees in the shade. Warming up a little bit by the weekend, but not too much.

Brianna.

KEILAR: All right, Chad, thank you so much. You're right, it's always where you don't need it. Occasionally -- occasionally where it is needed. But thanks for keeping an eye on us things there.

We've learned that two more police officers who defended the Capitol on January 6th have died by suicide. We'll have more on what we're learning.

BERMAN: Plus, an exclusive interview with the first lady of Haiti. Her chilling description of her husband's assassination and her questions about why security guards were nowhere to be found.

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[06:55:59]

KEILAR: Nearly a month after the assassination of Haiti's president, the widowed Haitian first lady is speaking out for the first time. In a TV exclusive with CNN's Matt Rivers, she describes chilling details of the attack and calls on the world for help solving the murder. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MATT RIVERS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): When gunman stormed Haiti's presidential residence and assassinated President Jovenel Moise, just one witness was there when he died.

RIVERS (on camera): Madame First Lady, how are you? Thank you so much.

RIVERS (voice over): His wife, Haiti's first lady, Martine Moise. Flanked by private security, she agreed to go on camera for the first time with her side of a story that's left her shaken.

RIVERS (on camera): You have armed security here at this interview. We've been asked and agreed not to disclose the location of where we're talking right now. You're, obviously, at least thinking about threats to your life. Do you feel like your life right now is at risk?

MARTINE MOISE, FIRST LADY OF HAITI: Yes, it is, because I wasn't supposed to be alive.

RIVERS (voice over): In a long conversation that switched between Haitian creole (ph) and English, Moise described in vivid detail what happened the night her husband was killed.

It was around 1:00 a.m., she says, when the shooting started. It wasn't something small. It was the sounds of automatic weapons.

Bullet holes still pockmark the compound at the time she and her husband hid in their bedroom. But just minutes later, she says the door burst open, gunfire ripped through the air, and at first only she was hit. Face down and bleeding, she thinks about a dozen men ransacked the room looking for something specific.

They came to find something because I heard them saying, that's not it, that's not it, there it is, which means they found what they were looking for.

She doesn't know what they found. But after they did, an attacker approached her husband, at this point still alive and unhurt, and got on the phone.

She says, that person called someone and described what my husband looked like, saying he was tall, skinny, and black. Maybe the person on the phone confirmed to the shooter that was him, and they shot him on the floor.

The president was dead, and the attackers left soon after. Moise believes they thought she was dead too. Critically wounded, she lifted herself up.

RIVERS (on camera): When you stood up and you saw that he was dead, did you say anything to him?

RIVERS (voice over): In my heart, I said something I used to tell him when he was alive, we are married for better or worse, and even beyond the grave. Her left side bleeding and her right arm shredded by gunfire, she's

eventually led out of the house by police and comes to a quick conclusion, the dozens of security guards normally on hand to protect the president, either let the attackers in or they abandoned their posts.

There's no other explanation, she says. You're there to protect a president and the president is dead and you're nowhere to be found. Adding that she was amazed, apparently not a single guard was injured. Moise believes it's part of a much larger conspiracy.

RIVERS (on camera): At your husband's funeral, you said, quote, the raptors are still out there watching and laughing at us.

MOISE: Yes, they are.

RIVERS: What did you mean by that?

MOISE: Yes, they are because no one is being arrested yet. The people that they arrested is the people that pulled the trigger. They won't pull the trigger with no orders. So the main character that we need is the people that paid for that, and the people that gave the order.

RIVERS: And you think that that person or persons has not yet been arrested.

MOISE: No. No.

RIVERS (voice over): The official investigation has led to the arrest of more than 40 suspects, but has still not provided a motive for the president's killing or identified a mastermind behind it all. That has left a vacuum. Haiti flooded with theories about who killed the president, who, at the time of his death, was an embattled, largely unpopular leader.

[07:00:04]

Even still, for his widow, this was an unimaginable ending.

MOISE: I never thought.