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Russia Investigators Interview Reince Priebus; President Trump Unravels Obama's Legacy; Rescuers Search Ashes, Ruins For Survivors; Inferno Kills 36, Wipes Out More Than 221,000 Acres. Aired 6-7a ET
Aired October 14, 2017 - 06:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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[06:00:15]
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DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: We're very unhappy with Iran. They have not treated us with the kind of respect that they should be treating.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Iran is not in material breach of the agreement.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Here in the mountains of Central Puerto Rico many residents say they're settling into the reality that a normal day isn't even a flicker of light at the end of the tunnel yet.
PRESIDENT TRUMP: We're going to have great health care in our country.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think what the president did with respect to suspending Obamacare was the right thing to do.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Fix it. Mend it. Don't end it.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Reince Priebus, senior most member of Trump's inner circle to be interviewed so far.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He's really a central witness particularly on everything related to obstruction of justice.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Nearly 8,000 firefighters still working around the clock.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Come on. She's disabled.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Let me get her feet.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The house on fire.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You've got to get her up.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Sir!
(END VIDEO CLIP) VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning to you. Nine months now after taking office President Trump continues to aggressively dismantle his predecessor's legacy against the advice of his own cabinet members and key U.S. allies the president says Iran is no longer in compliance with the nuclear deal negotiated by the Obama administration and the fate of the agreement is now unclear.
A day earlier, it was President Obama's signature health care law coming under the president's pen. President Trump ordered an end to government subsidies that help the poor buy health insurance and signed this executive order.
CHRISTI PAUL, CNN ANCHOR: Meanwhile, we are learning that former White House chief of Staff Reince Priebus met with a team investigating alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 election. Mr. Priebus is one of several former and current staffers whom the special counsel's office considered witnesses.
CNN's Ryan Nobles is at the White House.
RYAN NOBLES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Christi and Victor, good morning. Friday was promise keeping day at the White House and for the Trump administration that meant going after a couple of key Obama administration accomplishments.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
NOBLES (voice-over): President is trying to make good on major campaign promises with two key policy moves that could have dramatic consequences.
PRESIDENT TRUMP: I am announcing a new strategy to address the full range of Iran's destructive actions.
NOBLES: Mr. Trump unveiling a new approach with the new clear agreement with Iran, decertifying the deal and forcing Congress to come up with a plan within 60 days.
PRESIDENT TRUMP: We will not continue down a path whose predictable conclusion is more violence, more terror and the very real threat of Iran's nuclear breakout.
NOBLES: In addition to forcing Congress to make the deal tougher, the president promised new economic sanctions and sanctions against Iran's Revolutionary Guard. He warned that if he doesn't like the congressional plan, he is prepared to pull out of the deal completely.
PRESIDENT TRUMP: In the event we are not able to reach a solution working with Congress and our allies then the agreement will be terminated.
NOBLES: This warning matches the president's strong condemnation of the Iran deal on the campaign trail.
PRESIDENT TRUMP: The Iran deal, forget about deals between countries. This is one of the dumbest contracts I've ever seen of any kind. NOBLES: But pulling out completely could potentially isolate the U.S. from key allies that support the Iran agreement. It also stands in contrast to the recommendations of the president's key advisors like Defense Secretary James Mattis, who argued the U.S. is better off in the deal.
JAMES MATTIS, DEFENSE SECRETARY: Absent indications to the contrary, it is something the president should consider staying with.
NOBLES: And it comes despite the fact that the administration concedes Iran has lived up to their end of the bargain.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: My view of on the nuclear deal is they are in technical compliance of the nuclear arrangement.
NOBLES: While the move may make U.S. allies and diplomats nervous, it will likely be welcomed by the president's supporters. Enthusiastically cheered during his speech at the Conservative Values Voter Summit.
In addition to pointing to his plan with Iran as an example of his plan to make good on campaign promises, the president bragged about his decision to hold cost sharing reduction payments to insurance companies as a first step in repealing and replacing Obamacare.
Republicans have argued for some time that the payments to insurance companies were unlawful. Today, Mr. Trump argued that the payments were just making insurance companies rich.
PRESIDENT TRUMP: As far as the subsidy is concerned, I don't want to make the insurance companies rich.
NOBLES: But Democrats contend that the White House is personally attempting to dismantle Obamacare in an attempt to force Congress to take action, a move that could result in many Americans paying higher insurance rates.
[06:05:07] Democratic Leaders Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer called the move, quote, "A spiteful act of vast pointless sabotage leveled at working families and the middle class in every corner of America." The president argues he's just following through on his campaign pledge.
PRESIDENT TRUMP: In the last ten months, we have followed through on one promise after another.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
NOBLES: And it's not a surprise that the Trump administration is focusing on health care and the Iran deal, a key theme during the Trump campaign was the implied promise that they were going to undo much of the Obama legacy. And with these moves, they are taking direct aim at two after Barack Obama's most significant accomplishments -- Christi and Victor.
BLACKWELL: All right. Ryan, thank you very much. Sarah Westwood is White House correspondent for "The Washington Examiner" and Errol Louis, CNN political commentator and political anchor for Spectrum News. Good morning to both of you.
Sarah, let me start with you and pick up with what Ryan just ended with, undermining and undoing President Obama's legacy, to what degree is that of the purpose of what we are seeing because even Secretaries Mattis and Tillerson disagree with what the president decided to do although they now offering some support at least rhetorically.
SARAH WESTWOOD, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, "WASHINGTON EXAMINER": Well, more broadly, President Trump has tried to undo Obama's legacy, but specifically, the Iran deal and Obamacare were two promises that made up a significant chunk of his campaign platform.
And with the Iran deal, he has been consistently critical of it since he took office. He had more or less backed himself into a corner particularly at the U.N. General Assembly when he called the deal an embarrassment to the U.S.
It would not look good for him if he continued to certify a deal that he described as something that was dangerous to U.S. national security. So, he had to do something that gave the appearance that he was dismantling the JCPOA.
And I actually think what he laid out yesterday was a much more moderate approach than at one time a lot of Republicans thought Trump was going to pursue. This was not a unilateral withdrawal from the deal.
He wasn't even really decertifying Iran's compliance. He was just inviting Congress to weigh in on additional restrictions on Iran. That is more or less a middle past and a testament to the power of people like Mattis and Tillerson, who encouraged President Trump to moderate that approach.
BLACKWELL: All right. So, Errol, let's talk about Congress. Now gives Congress 60 days necessary for 60 votes on some of this legislation out of the Senate. What's the likelihood that you're going to get Democrats to sign on to legislation to impose sanctions, these snapback sanctions potentially on one of the tent poles of President Obama's legacy?
ERROL LOUIS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, you know, it's interesting. I don't think it's likely to answer your question directly, but the reason to me is not so much partisan politics, but the fact that it's just a very difficult thing to sort of figure out in something as short as 60 days.
And it doesn't really break out neatly along partisan lines so we had for example Senator Chuck Schumer who's now the minority leader in the Senate, the top Democrat, he was very much a skeptic about the deal in the first place. It wasn't thing that he came to easily.
So, he won't necessarily try to preserve the Obama legacy at all costs. He's going to have to sort of pick through this, see what's what, talk to his conference and figure out where they are on all of this stuff.
We're going to have I think in some ways the president giving it to Congress in order to sort of keep his campaign promise without actually destroying the deal immediately because it's very unlikely that Congress can make that happen in as short as 60 days.
BLACKWELL: Is that what you're also hearing out of the White House, Sarah? I mean, has the president said if they can't make a decision after 60 days on sanctions or strengthening the deal, that the U.S. will be out? Is that just a negotiating starting point or is that likely the reality in two months?
WESTWOOD: Even Iran hawks like Senator Tom Cotton have said that the 60-daytime line is likely too short to make any significant additions to the Iran deal which is what President Trump is essentially asking Congress to do is supplement the Iran deal with additional restrictions against Iranian behavior.
So, even folks who want those restrictions to be put in place, who are prepared to introduce that kind of legislation don't think the 60-day timeline is long enough and it's likely that President Trump will have to find a way to extend that.
Because there's already so much on Congress's plate that they're not likely to get to by the end of the year, that adding something as complicated like a major foreign policy agreement is not likely to pass in the legislative working days that they have left.
BLACKWELL: All right. Errol, let's turn to another topic here, former White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus speaking with investigators working with Bob Mueller, who is looking potential obstruction of justice and also any potential collusion between the Trump campaign, Trump transition and Russia.
[06:10:13] He was in the White House when the president fired the former FBI director. He was there when the Russian foreign minister and the Russian ambassador were there in the oval office and he called Comey, James Comey, a nut job and this could go to the obstruction of justice case. This -- this interview could lend a wealth of context and information to investigators.
LOUIS: Well, that's right. I mean, we should remind your viewers once again that Bob Mueller is not conducting an academic exercise into whether or not the Russians had any influence. Bob Mueller is a prosecutor first and foremost.
He is looking for evidence that a crime was committed and the crime of obstruction is the one where Reince Priebus could most easily shed some light not because he was involved in any particular way. He was relatively new to the team and was never a central member and eventually fired anyhow.
But because he was as chief of staff aware of the movements, who was coming in, who was going out, what was said to whom and as a fly on the wall, he could provide very valuable information for a team that once again is looking for evidence of a crime. There are going to be I suspect some conclusions that are drawn from this very valuable information that Reince Priebus undoubtedly has.
BLACKWELL: All right. Errol Louis, Sarah Westwood, thank you so much for being with us this morning.
LOUIS: Thank you.
PAUL: There is a shocking new claim this morning from that family that's been freed from militant captivity in Pakistan. Joshua Boyle, a Canadian along with American wife, Caitlin Coleman and their three children, all of whom were born while in captivity are safe now in Canada.
They got there last night, but Boyle told reporters his kidnappers authorized the killing of one of his children and that they raped his wife.
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JOSHUA BOYLE, HELD CAPTIVE BY TALIBAN AFFILIATED NETWORK: The stupidity and the evil of the Haqqani Networks, kidnapping of a pilgrim and his heavily pregnant wife engaged in helping ordinary villagers in Taliban-controlled regions of Afghanistan was eclipsed only by the stupidity and evil of authorizing the murder of my infant daughter as retaliation for my repeated refusal to accept an offer that the criminal misgrants of the Haqqani Network had made to me.
And the subsequent and the stupidity and evil of the subsequent rape of my wife, not as a lone action by one guard, but assisted by the captain of the guard and supervised by the head of the Haqqani Network, God willing, this litany of stupidity will be the epitaph of the Haqqani Network.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PAUL: Now there's some confusion here as you can tell. Boyle said that the murder of his infant daughter was authorized. He did not say whether a death actually occurred though.
BLACKWELL: An emergency meeting is being held today to discuss the fate movie producer, Harvey Weinstein. Will he be kicked out of the film academy? Will they take back his Oscars?
PAUL: Also some desperate storm survivors in Puerto Rico are waiting hours for drinking water from a hazardous waste site. CNN has some exclusive reporting for you here.
BLACKWELL: And look at these flames in California. The wildfires are burning in wine country. More homes, more buildings burning to the ground in this desperate search for people who are unaccounted for continues right now. We'll talk about it next.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Where are you at? UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Come on. Over here. Screw your shoe.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: She's disabled.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Let me get her feet.
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[06:17:55]
PAUL: There is just riveting video coming in from Northern California. You see the massive infernos that are wiping out parts of wine country there and any progress in containing what you're looking at there is about to be reversed by this weekend's intense winds.
BLACKWELL: More than or nearly a quarter million acres burned now and this is now the deadliest wildfire in California's history. So far 36 people across four counties have been killed and that's only since the wildfires began a week ago.
Right now, first responders are searching what's left and there isn't much of the nearly 6,000 destroyed homes and businesses. The Sonoma County Sheriff's Office released really dramatic body camera footage of what they called five minutes of hell. Deputy running through ash looking for survivors.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Where are you at?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Right here.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Come on. Screw your shoe. Come on.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: She's disabled.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Let me get her feet. Let me get her feet. Her husband is right behind you.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're doing a carryout.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Ready?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hold up. We have a house on fire.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You got to get her up. You got to get her up. OK. Hold on. There we go. OK. Watch your leg. Watch your leg. Watch your leg. Watch your leg. Watch your leg. Sir, you got to go!
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BLACKWELL: You can imagine that the conditions are changing around them so quickly with the wind whipping and sending these ashes and cinders in other places starting fires. CNN meteorologist, Allison Chinchar standing by with the details on the intense winds that are fueling these fires, but first let's start with Ryan Young live from Santa Rosa, California.
Ryan, as I said, thousands of homes and businesses are destroyed. Hundreds of people are still unaccounted for. Talk to us about these rescue efforts and in some unfortunate cases these recovery efforts as well.
RYAN YOUNG, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Absolutely. Victor and Christi, something I want to say a lot of times we're watching those videos and it's for all the wrong reasons and it's great to see this video play out this way.
[06:20:06] Firefighters and police officers were risking their lives to save people. When you watch it over and over again, that five minutes of hell is so scary because as we've been up here we feel the wind and we've seen some of the shifting fires.
In fact, just over this ridge line and you can't see it here because it's so dark, we see a large fire up in the mountains over there. We know the firefighters are fighting this fire. I'm wearing the mask because the air quality is just so bad at this point.
It's almost like someone's constantly smoking in this area. We have just been covered in ash since we've been up here. In fact, we went out with firefighters yesterday. We'll show you some of this video as they were trying to burn some of the brush to stop some of this fast- moving fire.
These guys have been working nonstop. I talked to one firefighter yesterday who said they've been working four days straight and you can understand the exhaustion as they are clearing this brush, sometimes by hand, sometimes with machinery and we got to see them kind of set a line to make sure that the fire couldn't move toward other homes.
But the reality is, this fire moves so quickly, some people barely had a chance to escape. We are hearing stories of survival, so many times a dog might have alerted somebody or someone's husband came running in.
We met a woman at our hotel telling us her husband getting burned slightly as they were trying to save the dog and throw it into the back of the car to get away from the fast-moving fire. And she talked to her insurance company and they're saying it's going to be two years before they have a chance to rebuild.
But then there are other neighbors who think about neighbors they haven't heard from and they're going to bring in cadaver dogs to look after and find some of the 200 people missing still out there.
So, when you look at the death toll, you look at the missing, you understand the magnitude of what this has done to this area and then you know there are 17 active fires and the sad news is this morning you can feel the wind blowing right through about 25 to 45-mile-per- hour winds up until 1:00 so these fires could skip and move again. If there's one good note right now is everyone's aware of the fire so it won't catch everyone off guard like it did a few days ago.
BLACKWELL: It's important to say that seconds matter when those flames are approaching a property, those flames can hop from tree top to tree top and be closer than you imagined in seconds. Ryan Young there for us in Santa Rosa, California. Thank you so much.
PAUL: All right. So, Allison Chinchar at the CNN Weather Center, what are you seeing today? These poor firefighters too just doing everything they can.
ALLISON CHINCHAR, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Unfortunately, higher winds. The winds are on the increase. It started just a few hours ago and will go until tomorrow morning. The red flag warnings are out across California. Here's the entire state. Notice it doesn't just impact a small area.
We're talking both Northern and Southern California. We start in the northern tier. This includes cities like San Francisco and Sacramento but also that wine country region, Sonoma, Napa Valley, places like that and also Southern California, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara stretching down toward even farther south so it's not just a small area.
This is pretty wide in terms of expanse, 23 active large fires. This does not count the small fires. Here's some of the big one, up to 44 percent containment. The atlas fire 45 percent containment.
The problem is going forward as these winds increase they may not be able to see much of a higher amount of containment going from there. Now, here's the one thing to note. OK? Victor, Christi, when we talk about, you know, the rain, a lot of people want to know, hey, but last year they got so much rain. Doesn't that help with the fire season?
Sure, in essence the water has been great. It helps the agriculture business but it also adds vegetation. Then you go into the summer, that vegetation dries out and that's the fuel for these fires so ironically actually we have more new brush now to burn for fuel than we did the last few years when we were in a drought.
PAUL: Allison Chinchar, thank you so much for keeping us up to date.
BLACKWELL: All right. More than three weeks now since Hurricane Maria and people across Puerto Rico are desperate and the daily struggle is now what's the new normal there. A lot of storm survivors are using some makeshift piping to get water and others are drinking water that's simply making them sick.
PAUL: Also employees are comparing it to "The Titanic." We're talking about the future of the Weinstein Company. Of course, that future up in the air after dozens of accusations of sexual assault and harassment against Harvey Weinstein.
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[06:29:08]
PAUL: So glad to have you with us this morning. I'm Christi Paul.
BLACKWELL: I'm Victor Blackwell. Good morning to you.
We have some new CNN exclusive reporting from Puerto Rico where right now more than 1.2 million people do not have clean drinking water, and some are now turning to potentially risky sources to get some. Yesterday, CNN saw people in Dorado waiting for hours for water pumped from a federally designated hazardous waste site.
PAUL: The EPA confirmed the location of this well water is from part of what's called a superfund site. They plan to do testing in this area this weekend. The local water authority apparently wasn't aware this was a superfund site until CNN provided maps to them and they maintained the water safe to drink. The long-term health effects are still unknown.
BLACKWELL: Now thousands of people have left the island. There are still so many people trying to get from day-to-day and get the basic necessities and as our Ed Lavandera reports the decimated infrastructure is isolating entire communities from that help that they so desperately need.
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ED LAVANDERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Along a winding road high in the mountains south of San Juan, this stream of water is a lifeline, a pit stop now in the daily routine for thousands of people.
Beverly Cancel and her husband pull up under the makeshift waterspouts, PVC pipes dipped into this stream overhead to divert the water into massive tanks.
BEVERLY CANCEL, NARANJITO RESIDENT: Every day is a struggle. He wakes up at 4:00 in the morning, and he comes here, he fills up and he takes it to our neighbors.
LAVANDERA: The water isn't safe to drink, but people use it to take showers, wash clothes and cleaning. And for some like Adrian Santiago who've lost their jobs since the storm delivering this water to residents is a way of making extra money.
Santiago delivers the water to Nelson Vazquez who lives several miles away. He keeps two large 55-gallon barrel drums in his garage next to a generator to power the basic necessities in his home. He says living in the storm's aftermath is like traveling back in time.
NELSON VAZQUEZ, NARANJITO RESIDENT: Our great grandmothers used to carry cans of water on their hip from the lake to wash clothes.
LAVANDERA (On camera): The roadway into this neighborhood was washed away by the storm. There are about 40 families that live on the other side, essentially cut off from the rest of the town. So they're having to figure out ways to get in and out. And this is one of those makeshift ways, a path so that people can walk in and out of their own neighborhood.
(Voice-over): And on the other side of the road collapse is where we found Elizabeth Diaz caring for her newborn baby boy. Diaz gave birth two days before Hurricane Maria struck. And when she left the hospital, she walked out into the ruins left by the storm. Her only focus now is caring for her baby who was born prematurely.
(On camera): Her house where she normally lives is unlivable right now because of the hurricane damage. So she's living here. No place for take a newborn baby.
(Voice over): Here in the mountains of Central Puerto Rico many residents say they're settling into the reality that a normal day isn't even a flicker of light at the end of the tunnel yet. One man put it this way. "We're prepared for a dark Christmas, there will be no holiday lights decorating the island this year."
Ed Lavandera, CNN, Naranjito, Puerto Rico.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLACKWELL: Our thank to Ed Lavandera there in Puerto Rico.
Up next, projects have been cancelled, members of the Weinstein Company board have resigned and now police are investigating. There's more fallout after more than a dozen women have accused Harvey Weinstein of sexual harassment and assault but now Weinstein is asking for a second chance.
PAUL: First though, despite the current controversy surrounding football, the passion that millions of you have for this national past time, we know it runs deep. Well, this week's CNN Hero is sharing his love of the game with kids who don't get to experience the excitement at the grid iron firsthand.
Meet Blake Rockwell here.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BLAKE ROCKWELL, CNN HERO: When you have a child who is dealing with a life threatening illness, their treatment protocol might be two, three years, and their tanks start to go dry.
Are you a big OU fan?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I am.
ROCKWELL: Awesome. Our game day experiences provide an opportunity for a family to get out as a family, just being there together. In days like this, they really motivate the kids to continue their fight.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PAUL: See the full VIP all-access experience that Blake gives to these children. Go to CNNHeroes.com.
We're back in a moment.
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[06:38:36] BLACKWELL: Well, there's an emergency meeting scheduled for today to determine in part the future of Harvey Weinstein in Hollywood.
PAUL: The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science hosts the Oscars and in just hours the body's Board of Governors may vote to strip Weinstein's membership after dozens of women have come forward with accusations of sexual harassment and assault against the producer. One of those women, a former employee for Weinstein's company, talked to CNN about her accusations against him.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
IVANA LOWELL, WORKED WITH HARVEY WEINSTEIN; ALLEGES HE HARASSED HER: I was willing to forgive him until I heard all the allegations and there were so many. And then the rape word was mentioned. And at that point, my heart just, oh my God, I just wish I'd said something before. I could have perhaps stopped this.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PAUL: Now representative for Weinstein says the disgraced mogul is headed for rehab but before he's headed out of town Weinstein pled for a second chance.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HARVEY WEINSTEIN, ACCUSED OF SEXUAL HARASSMENT: Guys, I'm not going OK.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: You're not?
WEINSTEIN: I'm trying. I got to get help, guys. You know what, we all make mistakes, second chance, I hope, OK?
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: No problem.
WEINSTEIN: Thanks, guys. And you know what, I've always been loyal to you guys, not like those (EXPLETIVE DELETED) guys that treat you like (EXPLETIVE DELETED). I've been the good guy.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PAUL: OK. And all of this puts the future of the Weinstein Company at risk with board members quitting, employees comparing this to the Titanic in terms of the future of the company.
[06:40:08] CNN legal analyst and criminal defense attorney Joey Jackson.
Joey, first of all, in conjunction with what we just heard from weinstein himself there, that's some of the latest video, his statement said, "Mr. Weinstein has begun counseling, has listened to the community and is pursuing a better path. Mr. Weinstein is hoping that if he makes enough progress he'll be given a second chance."
Here's the thing, I know that he's showing -- he's not admitting to anything, and I'm sure that's legally strategic in this statement because he doesn't want to do that. But there's no remorse. He's focusing on a second chance. Don't the eight settlements that he had prior to this constitute more than a second chance at this point and do those settlements affect anything going forward?
JOEY JACKSON, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Good morning, Christi. It's a wonderful question. And so as to the settlement agreements, of course in the event that he is prosecuted, we don't know. We know that there are investigations underway looking at his conduct. There will be nothing, I presume, that would come into the court of law regarding those settlement agreements because they would not have anything to do with what he's being accused of.
And what happens is in any potential prosecution what you want is a jury to focus on the allegations existing at that time. So I don't think -- certainly his lawyers will make a motion to preclude that and it won't be used at all in any proceeding as it moves forward.
However, Christi, in a the court of public opinion you want to look for people who don't let that cloud their judgment with respect to what he did or did not do, and yes, to your question, eight different settlement agreements constitutes much more than a second chance.
PAUL: New York City prosecutors chose not to charge him a couple of years ago after an accusation came out that he groped a young woman. Was there enough in your opinion at that time for charges to be brought?
JACKSON: There was more than enough. That's my former office, Manhattan District Attorney's Office. Generally they are on point. They do their job thoroughly.
PAUL: So what happened here?
JACKSON: I really couldn't tell you. There's speculation. There was something having to do with $10,000 that apparently one of Harvey's lawyers or Harvey Weinstein's lawyers had given to the contribution to the D.A., again not his criminal lawyer, but David Boies, whether that had anything to do with it I don't know.
I can just tell you based upon an allegation, when a person comes in, Chris, as a former prosecutor, it's not my job to be the judge, the jury or the executioner. It's my job to assess the credibility, look at the complainant, see what the facts are. If there's not enough we do something.
And now you have a sting operation and on tape I could count three times where he's making admissions. I won't do it again. Well, if you did it again, well, what did you do the first time? I will never do another thing. Well, what is another thing in the event that you never did anything?
And so there were plenty of admissions to corroborate what she said. Why they didn't move forward is a question that he'll have to answer. He has tried to but I don't know -- in evaluating his statement I really cannot support what he's saying.
PAUL: I have a really quick question. I only have a couple of seconds. But the rape cases that are coming forward, the rape charges, the accusations, I should say, can they be prosecuted depending on how old they are?
JACKSON: Well, put it this way, Christi. In New York state, there is no statute of limitations on rape. And so the issue then becomes, could it be prosecuted practically speaking, it could be. California, there's a 10-year statute of limitations. It's now no statute but he would apply under the 10-year and so that, assuming it's within that 10-year period it could be prosecuted and finally, Christi, it then becomes a question of proof.
What information? Is it a he say-she say? Did anybody present information who was a victim to their friends or family members that would corroborate them? And so we'll see what the investigation unfolds moving forward.
PAUL: All right. Joey Jackson, always appreciate your input and your expertise, sir. Thank you.
JACKSON: Thank you, Christi.
BLACKWELL: The crisis in Puerto Rico is seemingly getting worse as the days and weeks go on now with people struggling to find basic necessities. CNN's Bill Weir was there and witnessed the devastation up close. And we'll have his firsthand account after the break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[06:48:37] BLACKWELL: There's a new episode of "THE WONDER LIST" with Bill Weir tonight at 9:00 p.m. and Bill tonight explores the majestic island of Madagascar.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BILL WEIR, HOST, "THE WONDER LIST" (voice over): The locals call them Bobakutu (ph). After an ancient story about a boy name Kutu (ph) who lost his father to an accident in the forest and was nursed by lemurs.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: As soon as the boy was healthy again, then they brought him to the village. And so the village said, well, it's very sad that your father died, but you actually have a new father now which is the Invi (ph). So that became the father of Kutu (ph), Babakutu (ph).
WEIR (on camera): Babakutu (ph). It's the Madagascar version of Tarzan.
(LAUGHTER)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: More or less, yes.
WEIR (on camera): Raised by the lemurs.
(Voice-over): Because they eat such a wide variety of plants, injury cannot survive captivity. You will never see one in a zoo. So to help lemur lovers get a closer look, Regis (ph) spent months earning the trust of this family and that is no easy task in a land where subsistence hunting is common.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
PAUL: So I spoke with Bill earlier and asked him about subsistence hunting because that's hunting for survival as opposed to for, you know, sport, and here's what he said about why they do that.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
[06:50:09] WEIR: They eat them. Yes. They'll eat them. Yes, they'll use the skin or sometimes there's exotic pet market that they can actually make more money that way, but yes, this is a really poor place. It's like going back in time centuries and folks, you know, live on what they can catch or grow and unfortunately that has also both hunting and farming, slash and burn agriculture which turns those lemur habitats into, you know, devastated landscapes.
It's just pure human need. And so, you know, it's a really tough lift to convince somebody that lemur is worth more to our community alive in the tree than it is in the pot for dinner because these are one of a kind species. They don't exist anywhere else in the world and the ecotourism dollars that could come if that was managed well could really help people's lives.
PAUL: Yes, you know, I was fascinated to read it, first of all, Madagascar was the fourth largest island in the world, but the plant life and the habitats.
WEIR: Yes.
PAUL: That are specific to this island and then seeing what is happening to them because of deforestation. What did you witness in that regard?
WEIR: Yes. Well, that was really the whole pull. I've been around the world a few times and this place is by far the most exotic place I've ever been to. I went many years ago when they had a president who seemed like a real conservationist but it's been one failed government after another. They've been coups and assassinations since their independence. And as a result this crushing poverty and there's a lot of corruption, but what's at stake are these animals that do not exist anywhere else in the world.
You know, if you look at how Madagascar sort of broke off from Africa, while the African continent has monkeys, they have lemurs. While they have lizards over here, they have chameleons that exist nowhere else. So it's this little sort of eighth continent that evolved in a completely different way and we're just discovering new species all the time and as we discover them they go on the endangered species list. PAUL: I can't help but remember your reporting from Puerto Rico
recently after Hurricane Maria and you said -- in Puerto Rico specifically it looks like a bomb went off.
WEIR: Right.
PAUL: You showed us in fact a transmission tower that was destroyed there. Are you surprised that this many weeks later there are still people who are suffering, still going on there based on what you saw? You know, well, what is --
WEIR: Yes --
PAUL: How do you take that in?
WEIR: I've been sort of trying to scream it from the rooftops and I know a lot of our fellow U.S. citizens down there are doing the same, that they are in dire need. There are hundreds of thousands of American citizens drinking rainwater and eating plant life to survive because the response just does not match the need and by comparison, if you look at what happened after the Haiti quake in 2010 there were twice as many troops on the ground in a foreign country, another island nation.
You know, the feds were in New Orleans for seven years after Katrina and now the president is tweeting hints that it's not worth the trouble down there. So that is a big story and we're just at the beginning of what could be a disease season there, so there's a lot of need in Puerto Rico.
PAUL: Be careful as you go back there, Bill, and thank you so much for this report and for "THE WONDER LIST." I'm always in awe.
(LAUGHTER)
WEIR: Thanks.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
PAUL: All right. "THE WONDER LIST" tonight 9:00 Eastern right here on CNN.
We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[06:58:05] BLACKWELL: All right. Last night was Friday the 13th and for two top 10 college football teams, it proved to be a real nightmare. You see what I did there?
PAUL: Yes. I see what you did, Victor. Always. Christina --
(LAUGHTER)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Kind of leaves you nowhere to go with that, Victor. And that's a wrap. (LAUGHTER)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Clemson fans were waking up this morning obviously in denial wishing it was just a nightmare last night. This "Bleacher Report" is brought to you by the new 2018 Ford F-150.
The number two Tigers fell to Syracuse under the Friday night lights at the Carrier Dome in a stunner that handed Clemson their first loss since last November. The orange led the entire way in this one and quarterback Eric Dungey had quite a night. The three touchdown passing including this 30-yarder to Steve Ishmael. On the other hand Clemson's quarterback Kelly Bryant had to leave the game with a concussion in the second quarter but check out freshman running back Travis Etienne. He makes it 24 all in this 52-yard run.
The orange crushed would not surrender. They pull off the upset by a field goal and a sea of orange rushed the field at the end of the game. And 24-point underdogs came out on top, 27-24.
And number eight Washington State visited Cal. Everyone dealing with poor air quality there as the California wildfires rage on. On the gridiron it was a 37-3 blowout after a dominant defensive performance by Cal that forced seven turnovers and nine sacks.
Check out this ridiculous touchdown flip, though. Ross Bowers over the top for the score. Why not put on a show at that point? Unless you went down hard against the Golden Bears who beat a top 10 team for the first time in 14 years.
And the MLB post season rolls on with game one of the ALCS, going to the Astros over the Yankees 2-1. Stellar defense played a huge role in this one. Thanks to big plays by Jose Altuve and Marlon Gonzalez, who threw an absolute laser from left field. Check that out, with the Yankees runner out at the plate.
It was the biggest hell of a night for Houston. Dallas' Caico pitched a gem in seven scoreless, around your four hits with 10 strike outs.
You can catch game one of the NLCS tonight on TBS where the Cubs taking on the Dodgers.
