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@THISHOUR WITH BERMAN AND MICHAELA

Some Conservatives Want to Oust Boehner; Jeb Bush Forms PAC for Possible 2016 Run; GOP Takes Control of Congress; "USS Sampson" Helps Search for Flight 8501; Ferguson Grand Juror Sues to Talk about Case;

Aired January 6, 2015 - 11:30   ET

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


STEPHANIE CUTTER, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: It is democracy at work, and actually, I'm not looking at this with satisfaction because what this ultimately means is that John Boehner will be less open to compromise, less open to actually, as Tara said, governing. And governing means getting something actually done, signed into law. Not just sending the president message bills for the sake of strengthening their own party.

So John Boehner, over the past several years, has been held hostage by this same group of Tea Party Republicans in the House. As a result, we had a government shutdown, we had a default -- a downgrade in our credit rating. And Congress basically shut down, got nothing done.

So the strength of this Tea Party faction group in the House is very concerning, to all parties involved, not just John Boehner. It's more than just about his speakership; it's about our ability to compromise.

TARA SATMAYER, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, the government didn't shut down because of conservatives and things didn't get done because you had an obstructionist Harry Reid in the Senate that would allow every bill to die and not allow votes to come up for the White House. So we won't have that anymore because Harry Reid no longer has that job, Mitch McConnell does so it will be a whole new ball game when it comes to actually passing bills and getting them the president's desk.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Let's let them settle that in Washington over the next couple days and weeks.

Let me ask you this question about 2016. Jeb Bush, the former governor of Florida, he has set up as a few minutes ago a new leadership PAC, the Right to Rise PAC. This will let him raise money for -- to travel around the country and support other candidates and build up political favors. He's also asking for people to send him their Instagram addresses and he's now got a big Instagram account.

Stephanie Cutter, aside from partisanship here, as a political operative, are you impressed? What do you make of the steps Jeb Bush keeps on taking here?

CUTTER: Well, he's certainly doing it with a lot of energy and doing in the all the right ways, step by step, being extremely transparent about his record as governor in Florida. We might disagree about whether there are things that n that record that could be disqualifying but he is taking the right steps to prepare himself for a pretty aggressive and competitive run for the Republican nomination.

BERMAN: Tara, he's making a big deal out of setting up this Instagram account. Is setting up an Instagram account enough to get the kids involved? Shouldn't he be doing Snapchat?

(LAUGHTER)

Are they even using Instagram any more?

SATMAYER: Instagram is still in. It's funny to me to watch this. I lived in Washington for 20 years and I've seen many incarnations of different campaign strategies, and it's about time that Republicans got with it as far as the technology and being tech savvy is concerned. So I'm glad to see that. Jeb Bush is basically putting a stake in the fundraising game early on. He is the establishment favorite and by setting up this PAC it is it willing the other members know, "I'm going to raise money from big donors and I'm staking my claim." He already has fund-raisers set up in Washington, New York, Florida --

BERMAN: Connecticut.

SATMAYER: -- Connecticut, where there's a lot of money from.

BERMAN: I hear.

(LAUGHTER)

SATMAYER: This is what he's doing. This is the typical step-by-step process where he's going to run for president. It's not speculative anymore, let's be honest. This is just one of many steps. I assume the announcement will come.

BERMAN: Sure looks like it.

Tara Setmayer, Stephanie Cutter. Thanks for being with us.

Let's go to Capitol Hill because we have a member of the new incoming Congress standing by with CNN's chief Congressional correspondent, Dana Bash. Dana?

DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: John, 246 Republicans will make up this new majority. And we have one of the new members, Mimi Walters.

Congratulations.

REP. MIMI WALTERS, (R), CALIFORNIA: Thank you.

BASH: You told me you just came from getting your pin.

WALTERS: I did. I just got my pin. I'm so proud.

BASH: People are looking at this new Congress saying, really, we have a poll out this morning that shows that the expectations are not that high that things will be much better. As new member, how do you expect to try to make things better and change public opinion?

WALTERS: We're committed to having plan put forward and putting legislation on the president's desk that will move America forward. I'm very excited to be a part of it.

BASH: One of the big first votes you'll have to take is for speaker of the House. Will you vote for John Boehner?

WALTERS: I absolutely will vote for Speaker Boehner. He is the right man to lead us.

BASH: And have you gotten calls from those who are trying to dethrone him? Defeat him?

WALTERS: Yes, my office has gotten a few calls, although many people that have been calling my office think the former representative is still in that office and they don't know I'm the new representative.

BASH: How about from some of the people who are part of the rebellion, some of your Republican colleagues?

WALTERS: I haven't gotten any calls from my Republican colleagues about it.

BASH: And why do you disagree with some of those who say John Boehner is not the right leader right now?

WALTERS: Our conference voted for John Boehner in November and it would be a vote against our conference.

BASH: You are the only Republican female representative from California.

WALTERS: That's correct.

BASH: California has a lot of representatives. How do you see your presence here as different and special because of that?

WALTERS: Well, as a Republican woman, I hope I'm a mentor to other young Republican women to help get more Republican women elected.

BASH: There aren't very many. There are an historic number of Democratic women, the high 60s, I believe, and just a little more than a dozen Republican women in the House.

WALTERS: There's a great opportunity for Republican women.

BASH: Thank you and congratulations.

WALTERS: Thank you.

BASH: Pin looks good.

WALTERS: Thank you.

(LAUGHTER) BASH: Thank you very much.

John, back to you.

BERMAN: Thanks so much, Dana Bash. I know you have a busy day ahead of you.

Stick with CNN, everybody. Coming up at noon, Wolf Blitzer anchors our special coverage of the 114th Congress.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: We have new video into CNN a short time ago. This is our first look at the American warship the "USS Sampson" taking part in the search for AirAsia flight 8501. Bad weather again getting in the way of search operations in the Java Sea. A new effort to find the crucial black boxes. Searchers thought they spotted the plain's tale section where the black boxes reside, in the aircraft, but the official leading the search operation has ruled that out. No tail section, at least not yet. Recovery crews did manage to retrieve two more bodies today, bringing the total number found to 39. The prevailing belief is that most of the other victims are still strapped to their seats in the plane's sunken fuselage somewhere at the bottom of the Java Sea.

Joining me now is our safety analyst and former FAA inspector, David Soucie. He has written a new book "Malaysia Airlines Flight 307, Why It Disappeared and Why It's Only A Matter of Time Before This Happens Again."

David, I want to talk about the issue of time and why it's important. As these days tick off and they don't find the fuselage and they don't find the black boxes, what are they risking in terms of the investigation? Is it just a matter of the pings wearing out the batteries? If the pings are even going off at all. What are the other issues? Bodies -- as sad as its sounds -- decaying.

DAVID SOUCIE, CNN SAFETY ANALYST; Well bodies decaying is not that big of an issue at this point other than the fact that they need to get the bodies back to the families as soon as possible. So that's a lot of pain and suffering for these families. But with regard to the surface debris, I'm concerned a little bit about the surface debris. We get a lot of clues from surface debris, being able to tell us how the aircraft hit, whether it was a sudden tear, whether it was something that worked itself into a tear over time. All those clues are important and if they're floating in the sea and being tumbled over and over and over those clues are lost, really.

There's no way to track that back to determine what happened at the actual accident site. But with regard to the bodies being found, the fact that there's no further bodies being found, evidently, and they've followed the drift pattern as far as they should to have identified if there were bodies on top tells us again that a lot of people are still in the aircraft. From that you can glean that it's possible the aircraft is still in a very large piece under there. So it should help with being able to find it but it's disappointing when all we're finding are other ships that have sunk and other aircraft that have sunk years and years ago and not finding the actual aircraft right now.

BERMAN: David, let's talk about what they do know in the evidence that they have had found over the last week and a half or so. What does that all tell you. Can you tell anything by the pattern of what they found? The debris that was on the surface? The bodies that have been recovered?

SOUCIE: Well, at first I find it very strange that the first few clues that we found were the exit door, the over-the-window exit door and the slide which is right below that and the tank that fills that slide and it looks to me as though that tank had been discharged because the gauge was at -- down in the red or empty. So that tells me that there was something that went on with that and there was no other significant debris found with that. So that tells me that it's possible there was an attempt to exit the aircraft subsequent to it landing on the water because that slide can't be deployed in air nor can the door be taken out in air unless there's an in-flight breakup. But if it was an in-flight breakup, you would see more debris on the surface. So it's really -- raises an eyebrow to me as to whether there may have been actual attempt at survival after the aircraft had hit the water.

BERMAN: And, David, they are expanding the search area again today. That announcement came a while ago. What does that tell you? Again, at the stage where they should be narrowing in on possible finds?

SOUCIE: You would think so, John, but I think what they're expanding, and we went through this before, there's always two kinds of searches, the surface debris search and then the underwater search. The underwater search has that time clock, as you mentioned, with the batteries, there's only about 19 days left on those batteries as far as being able to put out that pinging signal. If you're far away from that pinging signal, there's a lot of other noises that are received by the hydro phone, so it's hard to distinguish that ping, that clicking noise. But as you get closer, which is really what it's designed for, as you get closer to bring that black box pinger, you can identify where it is within the debris. It's not really intended to be used as a broadcast signal that's picked up because of just too much interference in it. So I'm really concerned if they don't start narrowing in quickly they won't be able to find those black boxes once they get on top of them.

BERMAN: And there are people who doubt whether or not the black boxes are even sending off pings at this time, whether the technology works as it should.

David Soucie, always great to have you with us. Appreciate it.

Ahead @THISHOUR, grand jury proceedings are secret by law, but one Ferguson grand juror is suing now, because he or she wants to speak out in the name of transparency. Will this reignite the controversy there? Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) BERMAN: We want to take a quick look at the markets now. Why? Well, because they're dropping, down 153 points today. This follows a bad day yesterday, down 331 points in the Dow yesterday. The selloff is happening because oil prices have been plunging. The energy sector just getting crushed right now with the price of oil down below $50 a barrel for the first time since the spring of 2009. We will keep our eye on this today to see where it is headed.

In the meantime, a surprising new lawsuit that could reignite much of the debate over what happened in Ferguson and specifically what happened inside the grand jury that decided not to press charges against Officer Darren Wilson. A member of that grand jury is suing to lift the lifetime gag order saying, among other things, that he or she wants to contribute to the national conversation about race relations.

We want to discuss this with CNN commentator and legal analyst, Mel Robbins; and legal analyst, Paul Callan, as well.

Paul, I have never heard of anything like this before, someone on a grand jury suing to go public with what went on inside. Is there a chance that he or she could win this suit?

PAUL CALLAN, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Well, of course, there's always a chance they could win and there have been similar cases but in situations where many years later somebody's writing a book about an old case and maybe it was on a grand jury, that sorts of things maybe you could make an argument that the secrecy rule has no application. But in a case like this, in a fresh case where a grand juror wants to talk about what went on. We've always had this concept of grand jury secrecy in the United States. To assure grand jurors can testify in a sensitive case, a rape victim or something like that, that their anonymity and testimony will be preserved.

BERMAN: Well, the testimony isn't secret any more. The transcripts were released so that's already out of the bag.

CALLAN: But the statute -- there's a law in Missouri that says if you're a grand juror and you talk about evidence that you've heard and the vote of the grand jury, it's a crime. So what do we do? Put the law in a wheel barrel and wheel it out the door because TV wants to know? I mean, Mel --

(LAUGHTER)

(CROSSTALK)

CALLAN: We've been arguing about this for a day. Mel things you throw these things out the window because well, gee --

(CROSSTALK)

MEL ROBBINS, CNN COMMENTATOR & CNN LEGAL ANALYST: That's not what I think, Paul.

BERMAN: Let Mel answer beyond the sock puppets. What do you have?

ROBBINS: I think this will be successful for four main reasons which we can get into in a minute. First of all, it's only a misdemeanor.

CALLAN: Two misdemeanors, by the way.

ROBBINS: Why two?

CALLAN: There's two statutes, one is talking about the evidence and the second is disclosing the deliberations.

BERMAN: Go ahead, Mel.

ROBBINS: But they're not necessarily going to talk about the deliberations. They only wanted to talk about their own personal experience. So it's a misdemeanor which means punishable by up to a year in jail. Sometimes in life, it's better to ask for forgiveness than permission. Don't tell my kids that, by the way.

BERMAN: So you thought this person should have gone out and done it before filing a lawsuit?

ROBBINS: I find it hard to believe there's a scenario where the person talks and then they arrest and throw them in jail for a year to make an example.

BERMAN: I want to ask one more quick question then we have to move on. It seems as if this person is coming forward based on the fact that they've hired the ACLU to handle the case because he because he or she doesn't agree with the way it was presented by the prosecutor, because there was an unanimity, because there's something they want to get off their chest.

ROBBINS: One of the things this grand juror says is the way the law was presented was muddled and untimely. The grand juror also says is the way that the law was presented was muddled and it was untimely. This is a grand juror who had multiple other cases. They had been seated for months. And they talked about how the presentation of this case was markedly different than how they presented every other case. And the grand jurors also upset about the fact that the prosecutor has been out in the public discussing evidence, discussing what the grand jurors concluded and it is at odds with what this grand juror believes --

(CROSSTALK)

BERMAN: We have to move on unfortunately. But we have learned a lot -- the mere fact of the filing tells us lot about the thinking of the grand jury.

Mel, Paul, thank you so much.

I have to cut you off because we have news just in to us about the search for AirAsia flight 8501.

I want to bring in David Molko in Surabaya for more.

There are new questions right now about how AirAsia handled the preflight weather information. We know the weather was crucial here.

DAVID MOLKO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, John, that's right. This just in. I want to be absolutely clear now. This is not necessarily about how the pilots of 8501 got their information. We don't have those details. What I can tell you is more information about how pilots at AirAsia got their weather information. What I'm holding up here, this is a -- the actual report put out on December -- late on December 27th by Indonesia's weather agency. This is actually -- shows cloud cover, wind speeds, all sorts of things. This is the information the pilots of 8501 would have had access to.

What we're learning from the weather station officials here in Surabaya is that area did not come up to pick up a paper copy. Some airlines do. AirAsia did not. The airline says, however, that it got the report online, the weather agency says it does put the full information on their website. And airlines can choose to download that instead. I just have to redo a statement here from AirAsia clarifying that point. They say, quote, "AirAsia Indonesia receives and disseminates the weather report that comes from the exact same source as the hard copy version made available at the meteorological station."

Another thing we learned from AirAsia up until flight 8501, the pilots would get the information from the flight operations center in the cockpit. It would be printed out. They would do what's called a self-briefing, read the weather report and sort of decide what steps they needed to take during the flight ahead. Since 8501 crashed, that has changed. They now require -- AirAsia requires a face-to-face briefing with a flight operations officer. John, the transport ministry here has actually issued a directive requiring that face-to- face briefing. Not clear whether or not AirAsia is responding to that.

BERMAN: David Molko with these new questions about how weather information was handled prior to the flight of 8501. I know you'll be following this throughout the day. Thank you, David.

In just a few moments, Congress will be swearing in its next batch of representatives, members of the House and Senate. Our special coverage of the 114th Congress begins after a quick break.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, everyone. Welcome to our special coverage of the start of the 114th Congress which gathers for the first time this coming hour. I'm Wolf Blitzer, in Washington. Special coverage coming up.

ASHLEIGH BANFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Ashleigh Banfield, in New York, with the day's other top stories.

A manhunt is on right now in New York City. Police say this man on your screen shot two New York cops who were responding to a robbery late last night. And there is a very big reward for whomever can find this person. Also, more bodies now recovered from the Java Sea 10 days now into the

search for AirAsia flight 8501. We've got those stories and a whole lot more coming up.

But first, back to Wolf in Washington, D.C.

BLITZER: Historic day, Ashleigh, here in Washington.

New day up on Capitol Hill. Day one of the 114th Congress. It's the most Republican Congress since the Truman administration almost 60 years ago. The Republicans took back the U.S. Senate winning nine seats from Democrats strengthening their hold in the House of Representatives with an additional 13 seats.

Moments from now, both chambers will come to order. And after some technicalities and opening statements, the Senate will swear in its new and reelected members. The House will vote on a speaker. John Boehner will almost certainly be reelected by the House Republican caucus. But he does have opposition, some Tea Party favorites, including those from Texas and Florida. They don't have a real shot at winning the speakership but they hope that Boehner will be out of a job, that we won't get the majority at least on the first ballot. No such drama in the upper chamber. Mitch McConnell will become the Senate majority leader calling the shots in the first Republican- controlled Senate since back in 2007.

Joining us for our special live coverage this hour, our CNN chief Washington correspondent, the anchor of "THE LEAD," Jake Tapper.

There is some drama about Boehner, whether or not he will be the speaker of the House, almost certainly he will. But he faces some opposition. We don't know if that opposition has any momentum.

JAKE TAPPER, CNN CHIEF WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT & CNN ANCHOR, "THE LEAD": Probably they do not. But remember, you don't need a majority of the 435 members to throw a wrench into the works. You just need just over two dozen in order to throw a wrench into the works. Boehner has been challenged before. It hasn't really gone anywhere. But it is an opportunity for some of the Tea Party caucus or as Boehner and his aides refer to them, the "hell, no" caucus because they think they stand in the way of any compromise, to voice their opposition to Boehner's leadership.

BLITZER: This vote on the floor of the House representatives, you need a majority, 218 votes of the 435 remembers. The Republicans have a lot more than that. But if 29 Republicans decide they don't want Speaker Boehner to remain the speaker of the House, there could be a second ballot and then they have to caucus, they have to recess. We don't know what's going to happen after that. That's unlikely to happen.

TAPPER: Very unlikely. But you never know, especially with this Congress. Its members, the Tea Party caucus, has proved in the past to be unpredictable. At least from the perspective of Speaker Boehner, a tad unruly. So I think it's fairly certain that Boehner will be fine. But we have to wait and see. BLITZER: Boehner leads the House of Representatives, the Republicans

in the House of Representatives, to the biggest majority Republicans have had going back to the Truman administration. Maybe even earlier, 70 years. And he faces a challenge from some Republicans. Nancy Pelosi, on the other hand, she's the leader of the Democrats. She's facing no challenge from Democrats even though the Democrats suffered a shellacking in the midterm elections.

TAPPER: I think as has been said in great American literature before, you come after the king, you better hit the king. And that's the problem with Nancy Pelosi. And John Boehner. With Pelosi, the problem is there are plenty of Democrats who would like her to no longer be a House Democratic leader, minority leader. But they don't have the ability to effectively challenge her leadership. So why bother?

BLITZER: There's not really going to be a serious challenge to Nancy Pelosi at all?

TAPPER: No, not at all.