Return to Transcripts main page

CNN NEWSROOM

Manhunt; Chris Christie to Announce Presidential Bid; Interview With Congressman Darrell Issa. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired June 25, 2015 - 15:00   ET

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


[15:00:00]

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: The court said that, yes, federal tax credits are valid in states that do not offer their own health exchange. So, these are all the states you see here on the map colored blue.

We're talking cash in the pocket of about 6.4 million Americans. So, without those credits, health insurance would have gotten a lot more expensive, even unaffordable for many of those people.

Here's the president of the United States today reacting to the news.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Today, after more than 50 votes in Congress to repeal or weaken this law, after a presidential election based in part on preserving or repealing this law, after multiple challenges to this law before the Supreme Court, the Affordable Care Act is here to stay.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Well, perhaps if -- it may be here to stay, not if my next guest's party is successful.

Let me bring in California Republican Congressman Darrell Issa, joining me from Capitol Hill.

Congressman Issa, wonderful to have you on.

REP. DARRELL ISSA (R), CALIFORNIA: Well, thanks for having me on.

And, obviously, this is an extremely important decision on two fronts, the Affordable Care Act, which is the subject, and the question of whether laws have meaning, whether words matter to this Supreme Court.

BALDWIN: Can I -- let me just stop you, because, listen, I did want to say there are a lot of people who like to spin and do talking points and we appreciate your honesty and truth here.

So, let me just hit -- let me hit that off the top, because, from what I understand, I know the House and Ways committee, they had already legislative text written. It was scored by the CBO if and when the court decided the opposite direction, which it did today. And had that happened, and you have this whole mess of what to do with that 6.4 million people who wouldn't be able to afford this.

So, my question to you, really, out of the gate is, is there some relief among behind the scenes among members of your party that you don't have to deal with that?

ISSA: Well, I think there may be. There are certainly some people that didn't want to vote for the fix that had been worked out carefully with Ways and Means and other committees.

The reality is, you can fix Obamacare, but you can't fix it by distorting what the meaning of words are, as the Supreme Court clearly chose to do. One of our challenges is that the president has not come to grips with the fact that these exchanges are not working well, that he's had to waive the mandates.

Obamacare has real problems and, at some point, a Congress and a president will have to start dealing with the real cost drivers of health care and making real changes that the American people can live with financially.

BALDWIN: But, Congressman, you say -- you used the word distort and this was all about interpretation today. It was not about constitutionality.

And when you talk about -- you have the chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, who is a Bush appointee, who sided on the Obama administration, as he did when it pertained to the constitutionality a couple of years ago. This is what Chief Justice John Roberts said today as part of his majority opinion.

"Congress passed the Affordable Care Act to improve health insurance markets, not to destroy them. If at all possible, we must interpret the act in a way that is consistent with the former and avoids the latter."

What do you make of that as a Republican?

ISSA: As a Republican, I would say, and to be honest, as a federalist, the Chevron decision, which courts have used for decades, in fact has a two-part test. First of all, is there ambiguity in the law? And then, second of all, is this regulatory decision reasonable?

The chief justice in the majority opinion decided to ignore the clear meaning of the law and go to, well, is this reasonable? Well, if you're going to have regulatory bodies, essentially the executive branch, do what is reasonable, but ignore the letter of the law, then do any of our laws have any meanings?

And this is going to be a challenge for future courts, because the next time a president decides it's in the best interests to take money from one pot and move it to another because he or she simply cares to do so, the test will not be, was it legal, was it within the law? It will be, was it reasonable for some good purpose?

That's not for the court to decide. So I do think the chief justice may very well have done something that was generally good for a great many of Americans. I'm not going to contest that, because we were prepared to fix Obamacare if he had struck it down and do it quickly.

The question, though, is, is this a good decision? And I think Justice Scalia in the dissent made it very clear that torturing or ignoring the English language in order to reach a good decision is not within the court's prerogative and that past case law under Chevron, which was a two-part test, is gone. We're now having a one-part test. Is it a good decision, rather than, is there ambiguity in the law?

And there is no ambiguity in the law -- and in this case, there was no ambiguity in the law, then they're not supposed to get to the question of, was it reasonable?

BALDWIN: OK. Congressman Darrell Issa, thank you so much.

ISSA: Thank you.

BALDWIN: You brought up a lot of points.

I'm looking over at Jeff Toobin because I want to get to you on a lot of that. But hang on.

[15:05:03]

President Obama says the Affordable Care Act is here to say. Listen, obviously, not everyone agrees with that. No denying today's decision makes it is a lot harder for opponents of the law to repeal and replace it, at least until 2016.

So, there's a lot to marinate on here with Gloria Borger, who is our CNN chief political analyst, and also, next to me, who I have been eying as I have been listening to Congressman Issa, I have our senior legal analyst Jeff Toobin.

First, though, Gloria, to you. You heard the words I was jotting down as I was listening to the congressman, distort, ignore, and, again, I'm thinking politics, looking ahead to how this will be used by Republicans come 2016. This is a great read meat applause line kind of issue, right?

GLORIA BORGER, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Right. It is.

But, look, if you read what Justice Roberts said, it's the opposite of what Darrell Issa was saying. Roberts in a very clear opinion said, look, a natural reading of this law and the legislative input into it, and he said the plain meaning of it is that the intent of the law was as stated.

I mean, he says, you know, it's kind of like, we're not rewriting this line. I know what Scalia is saying and I know what Congressman Issa is saying, but Justice Roberts, who, by the way, is probably not a huge fan of the idea of Obamacare, was trying to be the small-C conservative that he is and say, look, I'm not going to rewrite the intent of a law passed by Congress just because they had an inartful way of stating it.

And I think, you know, he sort of shrugged and said, it is what it is here and just get on with it. This is what they intended to say.

BALDWIN: I have heard you say this before today. Get on with it. Move on.

(CROSSTALK)

BORGER: Right.

BALDWIN: Jeff, Jeff Toobin...

JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: That's usually good advice, right?

BALDWIN: I listen to Gloria Borger. I listen to her.

Listen, I think, for you, I'm looking at you and I'm thinking,I think we need to back up. Let me get the like 30,000-foot view, because I was listening to you. See, I listen to you people all day long.

TOOBIN: Good.

BALDWIN: And I think your point is, it was the constitutionality of Obamacare that was obviously upheld a couple years ago. This was about interpretation. This was about those four words, provided by the state. Can you just explain what they did here?

TOOBIN: Basically, the charge in this case was that the Obama administration violated itself the law by giving the subsidies to the people on the federal exchanges.

That's -- it's a straightforward claim. The law doesn't just allow for these subsidies. What Chief Justice Roberts did in his opinion, he said, look, we had this long debate in Congress. As we have all noted, not one member of Congress in that long, torturous ever suggested that the subsidies were not available to people on the federal exchanges.

So there are these four words which created some confusion, but Roberts said, when you take the statute as a whole, it leaves no doubt at all that Congress intended the subsidies to be available in all 50 states. That's it.

BALDWIN: I'm told that Congressman Darrell Issa has been listening. I'm glad he's been listening. I would love to bring him in and have him react to all of the above.

Congressman, the floor is yours.

ISSA: Well, I think Gloria makes a good point. And I want to make sure that we understand it correctly.

Yes, we did anticipate and the authors anticipated using the subsidy as a carrot to get the states all to participate. And when the carrot didn't work, now they want to change what the meaning was. Very clearly, provided by the states is a limitation. It wasn't provided by the states, and nowhere in the statute did we allow for a national federal subsidy to supplant the state subsidy.

And that's really where Justice Scalia was correct in saying they have had to ignore the ordinary meaning of provided by the states in order to skip under the Chevron's test to the second phase, which is a question of reasonableness.

BORGER: But, Congressman, my question is -- and I think Justice Roberts raised this question -- is why would Congress write a law that it would know in advance would never stand because you need to have more people subsidized, right?

In other words, even Congress wouldn't write a law that it would know would implode. And he made that case very clearly.

ISSA: Well, a good example is, no state refuses Medicaid money.

So the expectation was that states would in fact all participate and this would be a carrot to have them do it. Believe it or not, my home state, California, does not match enough to get the maximum benefit of Medicaid, so there are some differences.

But it was very clear that they were trying to work around the accusation of single payer and so on. Remember, not a single Republican was included in the Affordable Care Act.

[15:10:00]

Remember, not a single Republican was included in the Affordable Care Act. It was done by one party. And when you say the meaning, you have to realize they are entitled to the words, not their later intended meaning. Justice Roberts unfortunately allowed a non-tax, a penalty to become a tax, which certainly the English language doesn't view a tax and a penalty as synonymous.

In this case, he had to view provided by the state and he had to replace it with provided by the federal government when a state refuses to provided. Understand that I'm concerned about this decision, but I'm more concerned about the fact that a president is able to now say, if it's good for the people, I'm going to move money anywhere I want, even if the language of an appropriations bill, for example, doesn't allow it. And you take me to the Supreme Court and see if you can overturn this decision, which will take years.

That is the real danger in -- rather than saying Congress didn't say it, therefore, I can't do it, I'm limited. Instead, he said, Congress didn't say it, but I'm going to say even though they said the opposite, I'm going to take their true meaning.

One might say that the author of this bill certainly intended to make sure every -- all 50 states had a program that was subsidized, but they did it with language that specifically made it sure that it was a certain way, and they wanted all 50 states to buy in and they used this as a carrot. When it didn't work, they then said that they wanted to do this.

And to be honest, Republicans were very much looking forward to providing governors with dollars and an opportunity to have a diversity of programs with the same amount of dollars that could do a better job for the citizens of the United States, which is really where we want to get. I think that's where people in these states want to get.

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: OK. Let me jump in to all three of you, because I actually -- I need to turn the page on the conversation, but, Congressman Issa, I truly appreciate you leading the hour.

ISSA: Thank you.

BALDWIN: And I wanted to hear your perspective because it's very, very important

As we mentioned, when it comes to Obamacare and so many other issue, we're already hearing from a lot of these candidates, right, throwing their hats in the ring come 2016. I just got handed a piece of paper. And this is key, because I just -- we now have learned and we can break in and say that Governor Chris Christie, we have just learned, thanks to our chief congressional correspondent, Dana Bash, who just got this intel, he will announcing that he will be running for president.

We know that he will be doing this Tuesday morning from Livingston, New Jersey. This is where Governor Christie was raised. He will make the announcement at 11:00 in the morning at the high school. A source familiar with his plans tells Dana that they expect him to talk extensively about his upbringing and how that has shaped the person and leader he is.

So, with that, Gloria Borger, listen, some time ago, we were all talking about Chris Christie like could be very well guy, but ever since Bridgegate, I mean, you look at how he's been polling, my, how times have changed.

BORGER: Right.

I think what Chris Christie wants to be now is the comeback kid. And he's going to start talking about his biography, his kind of -- the way he was raised, very close to his mother, how he got into politics, how he's governed in a -- as a two-term Republican governor in a Democratic state.

And he's going to try and get back on that stage as somebody who doesn't tell you what you want to hear, but tells you the truth. That's where he had the problems with Bridgegate because he had to start defending that brand when people didn't believe him. His advisers hope that is now in the rear-view mirror and that Chris Christie can reemerge as somebody who will appeal to people in those town halls. He's going to head to New Hampshire in those town halls.

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: Which he's so well-known for. ISSA: And he's done 138 of them in his own state. He's done 10 of

them in the state of New Hampshire already. And he's going to try and work it voter by voter, the same way John McCain kind of did in the state of New Hampshire.

BALDWIN: Jeff Toobin, want to weigh in?

TOOBIN: Well, just about Bridgegate...

BALDWIN: Yes.

TOOBIN: ... it's sort of over and it's sort of not over, that two of his very senior subordinates have been indicted, but he's not been indicted.

The federal government, U.S. attorneys are not in the business of clearing people. They don't announce in advance that someone is cleared. But -- so the issue is out there and the question is, are people now bored with it? They have moved on? Or has it so stained his reputation that in this very crowded field he can't get any traction?

But the other people have been charged, but he certainly has not been charged.

BALDWIN: We talk about the staining, Gloria Borger, and you mentioned this being in the rear-view mirror, and to Toobin's point, it perhaps, perhaps is not. Polling wise, and I know we -- I don't know if we have a poll to throw up. But polling wise, where is he?

BORGER: He's sort of in the 4, 5 percent range, depending on what you're looking at.

[15:15:03]

The big question everybody has now is whether they can get in that top tier for the first debate on FOX News. This is a candidate who has gone from the top of the pack to the bottom of the pack. And he's got to work his way up.

I was talking to somebody who has known Chris Christie for 20 years who said to me, look, don't count him out. He's a great brawler, he's a great debater. He's somebody that if people give him another shot, you know, they might like him.

I think there are questions that are raised about Chris Christie's temperament and how that wears well with voters. We will have to see all of that. But what he's trying to do now is jump back on the stage and play a lot of catchup here. And his problem really is that his part of the field is really crowded right now.

There are a lot of folks who would be moderate/conservative, not the least of which is Jeb Bush, who wasn't there a year ago, when he was at the top of the pack. So that's another problem he's got.

TOOBIN: You know, 4 or 5 percent sounds like you're way back. BORGER: You're not.

TOOBIN: This is such an unusual race.

BORGER: Right.

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: Would this make number 12?

BORGER: Yes.

TOOBIN: The leaders are at 13, 14 percent.

BALDWIN: Right.

TOOBIN: So, 4 or 5 percent really is not that bad, and it does give him the chance to get right back into it.

(CROSSTALK)

BORGER: You're just single digits away from the lead.

TOOBIN: That's right.

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: There you go. Tuesday morning 11:00 a.m., Chris Christie, Livingston High School. I'm sure we will take it live.

Gloria and Jeff, thank you both very much.

Coming up, bizarro developments here in this daring prison escape with this manhunt still under way. You now have the second prison worker, this time is a guard, has been charged in this plot as well. Hear what he's accused of doing as he gets ready to appear in court within this next hour.

Plus, an interview you cannot miss. I will speak with a former female prison worker who not only helped this one inmate escape. She fell in love with this guy. She got him out of the prison. They were on the run, hiding out in a cabin, until it all came crashing down. She will join me, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:20:31]

BALDWIN: Minutes from now, a second prison employee will be facing a New York court, accused of passing along hamburger meat jampacked with hacksaws to two fugitives.

Folks, it's been 20 days now since these killers tunnelled their way out of a prison in Upstate New York. And now police say they have reason to believe that Richard Matt, who turns 49 today, and David Sweat may be armed. But as the search net widens yet again, the focus is turning to those who may have helped them get out.

Right now, this here is the man getting in this car right here in the blue shirt, this is the guy in the spotlight, Gene Palmer, a guard at that prison for nearly 30 years. This is the person expected in court any minute now arrested for apparently giving these two convicts a screwdriver and needle-nose pliers and supervising as they rewired electrical breakers in the catwalk behind their cell walls.

And, remember, as I mentioned, the blades in the hamburger meat? He's the one who allegedly delivered that to Matt and Sweat. His lawyer saying his client was swindled into this whole thing by the prison seamstress, Joyce Mitchell.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANDREW BROCKWAY, ATTORNEY FOR GENE PALMER: He had no knowledge beforehand that there were any kind of tools inside. The only mistake he made was trusting Joyce Mitchell. He could have run it through a metal detector. That was his mistake, Anderson. He didn't run it through the metal detector. He feels extremely guilty about that. He's regretful. He apologizes for that.

But Ms. Mitchell was just as manipulative as these two inmates were.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Gene Palmer spoke with a reporter during a tour of the prison a couple of years ago. And he was brutally honest about how much pressure these guards are under, how little money they make, and how difficult the job really is. I want you to listen just to these remarkable comments.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

GENE PALMER, PRISON GUARD: With the money that they pay you, you will go bald, and you will have high pressure, you will become an alcoholic, you will divorce, and then you will kill yourself.

It's a negative environment and long-term exposure to a negative environment. You become hard on issues as in when you see someone get cut in the face and they are bleeding and stuff.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

BALDWIN: I want to bring in Brian Mann. He's the Adirondack bureau chief for North Country Public Radio.

Brian, great to have you.

BRIAN MANN, NORTH COUNTRY PUBLIC RADIO: Thanks for having me.

BALDWIN: So, I have a lot of questions for you, because, this is so amazing that you actually spoke with this man Gene Palmer. I mean, you were inside this Clinton Correctional Facility, what was this, more than a decade ago.

MANN: Right.

BALDWIN: What was Gene Palmer like?

MANN: Yes. You know, he was this guy who was assigned to give us a tour of the prison. And what became more and more apparent as he sort of showed us through this remarkable place -- Clinton-Dannemora is a very strange world -- was that he, like a lot of corrections officers, there are parts of his job that he felt were pretty terrible.

He complained a lot about the work there, about the pressure he was under. He said that that work had changed him, hardened him and, of course, at that time had no idea that he'd be at the center of this saga that we're in the middle of now. So, when his name popped up on the radar screen, I was shocked.

BALDWIN: When you're hearing these stories that he was the one that provided the hamburger meat with the hacksaws inside of it to help in this entire escape, did that surprise you? Did he seem like an overly trusting kind of guard or just the opposite?

MANN: No, you know, his colleagues have described him as being a real professional, a good corrections officer.

[15:25:05]

MANN: But here's the thing. When you talk to prison guards -- and I have reported on prisons for many years -- the truth is, is that they do enter into complicated relationships with inmates.

They work around them 24/7. They work with a single inmate for years or decades at a time, and so it seems bizarre to people hearing these stories about these relationships, about people getting paintings or allowing them these weird liberties, like going in and looking at that utility corridor. But prisons are little worlds and guards and inmates live in a kind of intimacy that when the rest of us get a glimpse of it, sometimes it's pretty shocking.

BALDWIN: So, the fact -- it is shocking all of us, right? Unless we're watching "Orange Is the New Black" or who knows whatever TV shows are out there -- we haven't -- not a lot of us have lived this, thank goodness.

So, when you hear that they are getting this access on the catwalks to look at the electrical wiring, or I know that you wrote that everywhere you went, prisoners are handling knives and power tools. How is that possible?

MANN: Well, one of the things that is true -- is this is true in maximum security prisons across the United States, inmates do a lot of the maintenance work.

You have guys who are serving hard time who are also working with tools. They're cooking in the kitchen. A lot of times, they get to know these facilities almost better than the guards themselves by doing things like going into a utility corridor and fixing the electrical system. And they also have more liberty than people realize, and so they have -- these inmates have the opportunity to share that information, to sort of compare notes about the design of a prison facility, about the structure of guard patterns. So, over a course of years, somebody like Richard Matt, this very cunning inmate that we're searching for right now up here, they can really compile a pretty good dossier on how a prison works and what its weaknesses might be.

BALDWIN: On -- you mentioned the information sharing. And one thing that has really befuddled me is whether or not other inmates were in on or aware of this plan that must have taken at least weeks, months of sawing and reconfiguring electrical. Was it just these two or would it have been others?

MANN: I think everyone here believes that other inmates had to know.

And, in fact, one of the things that's really still completely baffling to me is that Clinton-Dannemora has had a great system of snitches for more than a century. That's one of the ways that the guards manage this enormous population, nearly 3,000 hard criminals inside this facility.

They keep it under control in part through a great network of information. And so usually over days or weeks someone would rat these guys out. But somehow they managed to keep it quiet enough and work with just the right collection of inmates and also perhaps employees like Joyce Mitchell and Gene Palmer to get this job done, to break out of this facility without that sort of rat, snitch network turning them into guards.

And that's going to be a really interesting part of this story when these men are caught and we figure out how they pulled off that part of the scheme.

BALDWIN: And then, final question, when presumably these two return, if it is back to Dannemora and then presumably being in segregation, but knowing these or seeing some of these inmates, what kind of -- I think reception would be a light word to use -- what kind of reception would they have upon their return?

MANN: One of their incentives to stay on the run and to run hard is that they are going to serve the hardest time imaginable for the rest of their lives.

These guys are never going to see daylight again once they are caught. Wherever they land -- and I'm guessing it will be a different facility other than Clinton-Dannemora -- those corrections officers are going to have their number. These guys have made the corrections officer community, made their lives miserable. And the way prisons work, there will be payback for that.

BALDWIN: Brian Mann, thank you so much.

MANN: Thanks for having me.

BALDWIN: When we come back, this interview you don't want to miss. As I mentioned a second ago, we're talking to this former female

prison worker who not only helped an inmate escape. She fell for him. She spent days on the run. Her candid story, why she did it and what she regrets -- next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)