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CNN NEWSROOM

Pressure Growing On White House Over Labor Secretary; Sen. Nancy Pelosi (D) California Suggests House May Take Criminal Contempt Action Against Barr And Ross; House Judiciary Moves To Subpoena Trump Officials On Immigration And Potential Obstruction Of Justice; Jill Biden Takes On Husband's Critics In New Interview. Aired 10-10:30a ET

Aired July 9, 2019 - 10:00   ET

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


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POPPY HARLOW, CNN NEWSROOM: All right, top of the hour. Good morning, everyone. I'm Poppy Harlow in New York. Jim Sciutto has the day off.

And this morning, U.S. Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta job is still in intact, but for how long as pressure grows on Capitol.

Soon, sources tell us Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer will take to the center floor and call for Acosta's resignation. This follows House Speaker Nancy Pelosi calling for him to resign overnight. Acosta is under fire for his role getting a sweetheart plea deal from multimillionaire Jeffrey Epstein when Acosta was a prosecutor in Miami over a decade ago.

The deal essentially saved Epstein years in prison despite the FBI identifying dozens of underage girls who say they were sexually abused by Epstein.

On Monday, federal prosecutors unsealed two new sex trafficking charges against Epstein. He has pleaded not guilty in court. Listen to the reaction from one of the women who says that she also was sexually abused by him.

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COURTNEY WILD, ALLEGED EPSTEIN VICTIM: Just to hear that they're standing up for the victims, you know what I mean, it's just like so overwhelmingly -- it's past due.

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HARLOW: Tears obviously that she has from what she endured.

Lauren Fox is with me on Capitol Hill. So, Lauren, how loud are the calls growing for Acosta to resign, and particularly are they across party lines? LAUREN FOX, CNN CONGRESSIONAL REPORTER: Well, no. And, you know, for democrats, this is a time where they are calling for Labor Secretary Acosta to step aside.

You saw Nancy Pelosi tweeting last night, quote, Secretary Acosta must step down. As U.S. Attorney, he engaged an unconscionable agreement with Jeffrey Epstein, kept secret from courageous young victims, preventing them from seeking justice. This was known by POTUS when he appointed to the cabinet.

And, Poppy, in just a little bit, we expect Chuck Schumer, the leader of the democrats in the Senate, to also call for Acosta to resign.

But I will tell you, you know, the White House, republicans are arguing that this is just another attack on the Trump administration and his cabinet. Here's what Kellyanne Conway, as Senior Adviser to the President, said earlier.

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KELLYANNE CONWAY, WHITE HOUSE SENIOR COUNSELOR: It's classic for the Democratic Party to not focus on the perpetrator at hand and instead to focus on a member of the Trump administration. They're so obsessed with this president that they immediately go to Alex Acosta rather than Jeffrey Epstein.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOX: And I will tell you I went yesterday to Lamar Alexander, who is the Chairman of the Committee that confirmed Acosta for that job at the Labor Department. He told me that he thought there was, quote, no need for Acosta to step aside. He said that these issues about the settlement more than a decade ago were already litigated in his committee during that confirmation hearing. That's what we're hearing from a lot of other republicans if they've seen the latest reports at all. Poppy?

HARLOW: Yes. Except for the fact that Julie Brown, a great reporting in the Miami Herald, came out after those confirmation hearings, so a lot of it wasn't publicly known then. Lauren Fox, thank you very much.

Let's talk about the politics and the legal side of this. Julie Hirschfeld Davis, Congressional Correspondent for The New York Times, is with me, Elie Honig, a former state and federal prosecutor.

So, Elie, just on the legal case here, you say Epstein has three legal options and they are all bad.

ELIE HONIG, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Yes. He's in a world of trouble here. Option number one, he can go to trial. That will take several months. But if he goes to trial, odds are he's going to get convicted. We saw the indictment yesterday. We saw the Southern District's bail memo. They appear to have a very strong case against him. If he goes to trial and he loses, he'll never get out of prison.

HARLOW: With cooperators this time.

HONIG: Yes, cooperators, victims, I'm sure they have travel records, phone records, other things to corroborate.

Option number two, he can plead guilty without cooperation. But I don't think the Southern District is going to give him anything near what he got in Florida. If I'm in their position, I'm not even thinking about anything less than a decade.

And option number three is cooperate. Now, usually cooperation leads to the lowest sentence for defendants. He'd have to give everybody up. It's not pick and choose in the Southern District. And I'm not sure the Southern District wants to cooperate him.

HARLOW: But if he were to give people up, remember, there were four unindicted co-conspirators in this who in the last deal, that sweetheart deal, it was agreed that they would never face federal prosecution for this. So if he even cooperated and gave up those names because it's on the public corruption division in New York that is handling this, could those people be charged given the previous deal?

HONIG: Yes, they can still be charged. First of all, that whole deal that Acosta made where he immunized people around Epstein is completely unprecedented. I've done so many deals like this. I've never even heard of that idea.

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There is no such thing as immunizing co-conspirators around the defendant. And second of all, it's not blinding, certainly not binding on the Southern District of New York, so they should not rest easy.

HARLOW: Okay. So, Julie, let me talk to you about the politics of this on two fronts, first with the republicans. So as you just heard from Lauren Fox, these are not bipartisan calls for Acosta to go. It's Schumer, it's Pelosi and it's not republicans. Is that politically risky for republicans here when you're talking about dozens of underage young girls who say that they were sexually abused for years?

JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, listen, I mean, I think this is going to become a pretty untenable position for them, but it's not clear that that is going to move them off of their position.

Their line on this is that, yes, you know, Jeffrey Epstein may be a despicable human being, he may have done horrible things, but the Labor Secretary wasn't responsible for those things and this was a plea deal that he made when he was in a different job. It was known and he was confirmed anyway.

And I think we're going to see them pretty much stick to that position. It may become a very unappealing one for them to some degree. But we have seen them stand behind the President particularly when it comes to issues of personnel.

I think the bigger issue is whether the President is going to continue to stick behind Secretary Acosta. He clearly is now. You heard Kellyanne Conway earlier today. They're presenting a pretty united front.

But at the point where this becomes a distraction and President Trump he begins to feel -- if he begins to feel like this is taking away from him and his administration and his ability to do things and make his points, we may see him take a turn, and then I think we may see republicans follow.

HARLOW: So what about democrats? Because you had -- it was nine total, you know, senators, eight democratic senators, Angus King who caucuses with the democrats, who voted to confirm him back in 2017, Julie, and six of them are still in the Senate, including West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin.

And here's what he just told Politico about this, quote, about Acosta, if he made a mistake or a judgment call or something like that, does that affect the way he's doing his job now? I'm going to basically judge him on what he's doing and how he's doing it, again, for someone whose job it is to oversee any human trafficking.

DAVIS: Right. I mean, I do think that we are going to see acceleration among democrats of the calls for Acosta to resign. I don't know if they're going to -- if Joe Manchin is going to change his mind.

He was one of the less controversial of President Trump's nominees back in 2017 when he was confirmed. There were only a handful that got bipartisan support and he was obviously one of them.

But as you pointed out earlier, this was before Julie Brown's great reporting and all of this was known before these new charges, and the really atrocious details that are coming forward about what Mr. Epstein is alleged to have done, all of which we have to assume at least part of which Secretary Acosta knew at the time when he was working out this plea deal.

So I think for democrats, particularly with both of their leaders now in the House and the Senate calling for him to step down, we're going to hear that spread a little bit more broadly and it's going to be -- I think it's going to end up being a pretty unified front on their side.

We don't know though whether that will influence the White House and what Secretary Acosta will do.

HARLOW: That's true. Okay. Thank you very much, Julie and Elie. We appreciate it very much.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says the House could vote this week to hold Attorney General Bill Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in criminal contempt. This comes after Barr and Ross refused to turn over those documents related to the administration's push to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census. And this is all happening as Attorney General Barr says President Trump plans to continue that fight. One option on the table is an executive order.

Our Justice Correspondent, Jessica Schneider, joins me live from Washington. So, very soon, it sounds like we're going to hear from Barr essentially a completely new legal argument from the administration as to the why factor here.

JESSICA SCHNEIDER, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Right, and it could happen within the next day or two, Poppy, because we have learned that the President is now considering either an executive order or a presidential memorandum directing that this citizenship question be included on the 2020 census could come as soon as this week.

Of course, the President has been pushing this despite the Supreme Court's ruling that the administration's initial rationale was, as they put it, contrived. But, of course, the President believes that this ongoing fight will only strengthen his support among conservatives.

And the Attorney General says he has been in constant discussions with the President and is confident that there is a path to getting the citizenship question on the census and that a plan forward will be announced in the next day or two.

But, really, that doesn't factor in the reality here that the census has already gone to print without the question and the legal fights are still going strong.

And then you've got something playing out on Capitol Hill. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is saying that this is all part of an effort by the administration to shut out diverse voices across the country. She said yesterday it's part of the administration's plan to, as she put it, make America white again.

And now, Speaker Pelosi is even sending a warning that she could schedule a full House vote soon to hold Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and A.G. Barr in criminal contempt.

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So, Poppy, this is all playing out on multiple front, the administration promising that the question will appear, but those fights are playing out in court and now, of course, on Capitol Hill. Poppy?

HARLOW: Okay. Jessica Schneider, thank you for the update. I appreciate it as always.

This just in, the democratic-led House Judiciary Committee ratcheting up their fight with the Trump administration, they are making it clear they plan to target their subpoena power on two different issues. Our Manu Raju has the reporting and he joins me now.

What can you tell us? MANU RAJU, SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, that's right. One on immigration. The committee is going to move on Thursday to authorize subpoenas to get information regarding the President's policies, about zero tolerance policy at the border that resulted in the child separation, the policy for migrant families crossing, they're going to demand records and testimony from current and former administration officials, but also the committee is moving to authorize subpoenas for 12 different individuals as part of its investigation into potential obstruction of justice.

Now, on that obstruction probe, that includes people like the President's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, is going to be soon hit with a subpoena. Also, the President's former Chief of Staff, John Kelly, as well as his former campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, former Staff Secretary Rob Porter, Michael Flynn, the former National Security Adviser, who, of course, pleaded guilty to his conversations with the Russians for lying to the FBI about those conversations. Those individuals will be -- Jerry Nadler will have the power to serve those individuals with a subpoena after the committee votes on Thursday to move forward.

But also, Poppy, interesting people on this list including David Pecker. He was the head of AMI, the parent company of National Enquirer. And the questions that the democrats have is his knowledge and involvement in that hush money scandal to keep silent those alleged Trump affairs that were about to come out in the run-up to the 2016 elections. Democrats on that committee have been trying to dig into the issue. They've sent letters to individuals like Mr. Pecker. They've gotten resistance. So this is why they're moving to compel production of documents and testimony.

But, Poppy, like all of these matters, the question is will they get cooperation. They've seen time and again resistance from the administration, which is why we're seeing a likely fight in the courts on all of these matters. Now ,we will see even more people potentially being fought in court, so the democrats can ultimately get compliance, but, yes, a ratcheting up of this fight between the House Democrats and the White House over all these investigations, Poppy.

HARLOW: And it certainly is. Manu Raju, thank you so much for the reporting.

Still to come, Jill Biden defends her husband after political attacks target his record on civil rights.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JILL BIDEN, JOE BIDEN'S WIFE: The American people know Joe Biden. They know his values. They know what he stands for. And they didn't buy it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: Much more of CNN's exclusive sit-down with the Bidens ahead.

Plus, Obamacare faces a major test in court today, and this matters as the administration pushes to do away with all Obamacare, and that means protecting pre-existing conditions with no articulated plan on how to replace it.

Also, President Trump taking new shots this morning at the British government after the leak of those unflattering memos from the U.K. Ambassador.

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HARLOW: All right. Now, to a CNN exclusive. Chris Cuomo got a fascinating one-on-one interview with former Vice President Joe Biden and his wife, Jill Biden.

Biden says he is opposed to his fellow candidates' push for a Medicare for all program. He is the only one of the top four polling democratic presidential contenders right now to not support that.

Biden and his wife, Jill, are also opening up about their son, Hunter's, battle with addiction. Watch this.

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CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: Hunter came out in a magazine article talking about his struggle with mental health. I say bravo for him. And I'll tell you what, hearing how the campaigns and negotiate, what does it mean, points to a stigma. Nobody would have ever said that if Hunter Biden came out and said he had leukemia, God forbid.

JILL BIDEN: Yes.

CUOMO: We'd all be like, oh, geez, you know, I hope he can get the treatment. I hope you're all right with the mental illness, mental health issue, what does it mean? What has Hunter's health meant to you and what do you want it to mean in terms of what you put into the campaign about it?

JILL BIDEN: Well, we've seen the struggle. You know, we've seen the struggle and we know that most American families are dealing with some sort of struggle like we are.

And I think they can relate to us as -- you know, as parents who are hopeful and are supportive of our son and we will continue to be supportive. And I think that makes us more empathetic about helping other Americans.

And I think --

JOE BIDEN, FORMER U.S. VICE PRESIDENT: He's going to beat this. This kid, I'm telling you, as you know, you knew Beau, Beau is my soul. Hunter is my heart. And Hunter has been through some tough times, but he's fighting. He's fighting. He's never given up. He's the most honorable, decent person I know.

And I read that article and all I could do is think, my God, he gives me so much more credit than I deserve as a dad. But it took enormous courage. I knew nothing about that article, nothing about that article, except he told me toward the end he was having this long interview, but it's a catharsis for him.

[10:15:08]

And, look, everybody has to deal with these issues in a way that is consistent with who they are and what they are. This guy is the most generous, honorable man that I know. And I am confident, confident he's going to make it.

And, look, it's -- the idea that we treat mental health and, quote, physical health as somehow they're distinct, it's health. It's health.

JILL BIDEN: We have to put more money into mental health, whether it's for our education system, whether it's for our veterans, whoever it's for, we have to start to look at it, talk about it and put more money into it.

CUOMO: Talking about it is huge. That's why I bring up Hunter. You've been hearing about your son. You got in this race, you knew everything they could find about Hunter was going to come back and be revisited on you.

JOE BIDEN: Sure.

CUOMO: Business, we'll see what they do with him having a mental health struggle. But discussing it as something that you can beat, something you can treat, already, that's a different dialogue than we're used to hearing. Curing cancer, that would mean so much across so many levels. Getting people to accept that mental illness and mental health awareness is the same as any other malady, that could be huge as well.

JOE BIDEN: It's gigantic. And, by the way, it's doable. It is doable. The idea that somehow -- I mean, think of all the people out there, Chris, who don't -- I mean, one of the things we should be debating in this campaign is healthcare, whether or not we have the adequate, and what's the best way to get healthcare.

When Barack and I -- What Barack did, I helped with the Affordable Care Act, we made a priority between mental health and physical health, it was a fundamental breakthrough in how we thought about how things should work.

So, look, I just think the --

CUOMO: The party now wants to get rid of the ACA. Medicare for all cannot exist with the ACA.

JOE BIDEN: It cannot, and that's why I'm opposed to any republican who wants to dismantle it or any democratic who wants to dismantle it. The idea that you're going to come along and take the most significant thing that happened that any president has tried to do, and it got done and dismantle it, it makes no sense to me. CUOMO: Four of the top five people on your polls right now are on the complete opposite side of you.

JOE BIDEN: Well, I understand that, and that's worth debating about. That's about the future. What are we going to do? I believe they're totally sincere. I think they think they have the right answer. But, look, starting over would be, I think, a sin.

CUOMO: They say you're either all in or it's half measures that don't work if it were removed (ph).

JOE BIDEN: Well, let me tell you something. I noticed the measures in the Affordable Care Act worked pretty well, put 20 million people back in getting healthcare, 100 million who had pre-existing conditions. And you notice none of them are saying they want to do with any of that, right? And you notice none of them are saying that -- but they are saying they want to -- if you're satisfied with your employer-based healthcare, you've got to give it up.

Look, we provide a Medicare option. That's exactly what Barack and I talked about in the beginning.

CUOMO: You couldn't get it through though.

JOE BIDEN: No, we couldn't get it. But now, things are changing because guess what's happened? You know, the thing Barack and I would talk about -- and God love him, he never took credit that he should have, because it was like everything was dropping on his desk. And I said, we ought to make the case that people know what you did. It wasn't until they started to take it away they even realized it was a consequence of what Barack had done.

And so now, if you noticed in '18, we went out in all those campaigns, you find republicans saying, I want to get rid of preexisting conditions covered. I want to get rid of that. So it's a different place.

And the public has been educated in a way that I believe they've embraced it and I'm ready to take that on.

CUOMO: One more question for you, if you don't mind. You're much more interesting.

JOE BIDEN: That I agree with.

CUOMO: One more question. You mentioned Senator Harris, the debate. I'll talk to the V.P. about that as well. But when you were listening to things, well, here are the things we're going to have to fight against in this. All right, here we are, they may not think you have this and this. You did not imagine, I would think -- or I'll ask it differently. Did you imagine that one of the things you would have to deal with early on is whether or not your husband's past is basically bigoted?

They can say, I don't think you're a racist. But as soon as that comes out, the crime bill, working with people who were seen to be obviously extreme thinkers and bigots themselves, busing, did you anticipate those and does it make you feel differently about where this could be headed?

JILL BIDEN: You know, I think that they were looking at the past. I mean, the one thing you cannot say about Joe is that he's a racist. I mean, he got into politics because of his commitment to civil rights. And then to be elected with Barack Obama and then someone is saying, you know, you're a racist? As soon as I heard those word --

CUOMO: Or they say you're not a racist, but this all stinks.

JILL BIDEN: I know. But as soon as I heard those words, I thought, what's coming next?

And I think the American people know Joe Biden. They know his values, they know what he stands for. And they didn't buy it.

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CUOMO: You don't think -- because you took a hit in the polls and some of the African-Americans.

JILL BIDEN: But the polls are coming back up. The polls are coming back up. So we just saw that today. And I think the more people get to know Joe, the higher the polls will get.

CUOMO: I want to thank you for your time.

JOE BIDEN: He is not sure.

CUOMO: Thank you. No, no.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HARLOW: It's a fascinating interview. You should watch the entire thing.

All right, ahead, Obamacare on trial, the lawsuit happening in court today. If the administration wins on this one, it could jeopardize healthcare for millions and millions of Americans.

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