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EARLY START

Kavanaugh Nomination In Jeopardy; Record Flooding In The Carolinas; NFL Player Quits At Halftime; Chinese Movie Star Vanishes. Aired 04:30-5a ET

Aired September 17, 2018 - 04:30   ET

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


[04:30:00] (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

DAVE BRIGGS, EARLY START SHOW CO-HOST: I feared he may inadvertently kill me. The words of woman accusing Brett Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct decades ago. Now even some Republicans want this week's committee votes delayed.

CHRISTINE ROMANS, EARLY START SHOW CO-HOST: The record flooding in the Carolinas in the wake of Florence. The death toll climbing with rising rivers. It keeps the threat alive well into this week. We are live this morning in North Carolina.

BRIGGS: And would you quit your job halfway through the workday? Why one NFL player says he ditched football for good at halftime on Sunday.

ROMANS: A dramatic way to go.

BRINKLEY: Yes. I mean, he went out on top, I suppose. 78 points they had given up in two games had been a rough start for Buffalo. Welcome back to "Early Start." I'm Dave Briggs.

ROMANS: And I'm Christine Romans, it I 31 minutes past the hour. It is Monday morning, let us begin with the Supreme Court latest. Brett Kavanaugh's nomination to the highest court in the land faces serious new concerns this morning. The woman accusing Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct, she is coming forward and adding explosive new details to her claims in an interview with the Washington Post. Her name is Christine Lacey Ford. Now that her identity is known and with the clock ticking toward the Senate confirmation vote, the Judiciary Committee is trying to arrange staff phone calls with her and with Kavanaugh.

BRIGGS: But already some Republican showing signs of concern here. Here is Senator Lisa Murkowski.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. LISA MURKOWSKI, (R), ALASKA: There are more questions that need to be asked than answered. I think it would be appropriate to allow for that time.

(END VIDEO CLIP) BRIGGS: Bob Corker and Jeff Flake believe the committee should hear

Ford out in person before voting. Republicans can only afford to lose just one vote.

ROMANS: Several top Democrats already calling for delay. Including senators Chuck Schumer and Dianne Feinstein. She is the Senator who Ford first reached out to with her allegation. She is a constituent of Feinstein, but the Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley calls the timing of the revelations is disturbing. And the Republican tells CNN, the committee's vote on Kavanaugh is still scheduled for Thursday afternoon. Supreme Court reporter, Ariane de Vogue has more for this morning on the allegations.

(BEGIN VIDEO)

ARIANE DE VOGUE, CNN REPORTER, SUPREME COURT: Christine and Dave, Christine Lacey Ford has publicly come forward in the Washington Post and alleged that Brett Kavanaugh assaulted her at a Party more than 30 years ago when they were both in high school. Kavanaugh categorically denies her allegations. She said she attended a party in a suburban Maryland home in 1982. Kavanaugh and a friend were drunk. She was allegedly corralled into a bedroom. At one point she said he tried to take off her clothes and he put his hand over her mouth. I thought he might inadvertently kill me, she told "The Post." She only shared the details years later in 2012 with a therapist and her husband.

According to the article, the husband recalls the wife using Kavanaugh's name. But the therapist notes reviewed by "The Washington Post" do not mention him. The other man who she alleged was in the room back then, told the Weekly Standard, last week that he never saw Kavanaugh act that way. Christine and Dave.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BRIGGS: Arianne de Vogue, thank you. Christine Ford struggled for months with her decision to come forward according to a source familiar with the story. She made up her mind not to go public fearing it would end her life while not affecting Kavanaugh's confirmation. Ford tells "The Washington Post" she reconsidered because people were repeating a lot of inaccuracies about her and her privacy had already been compromised.

ROMANS: The White House is standing by its nominee, a spokesperson says Judge Kavanaugh categorically and equivocally denies these allegations and that has not change. And no tweets from the President.

BRIGGS: Devastation meanwhile in the Carolinas this morning in the aftermath of hurricane Florence. And authorities say, the worst of the catastrophic flooding is yet to come. Hundreds of people remain trapped. 18 storm related deaths now confirmed. The latest, a 3 month old baby killed by a tree that fell on its family mobile home.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They were doing CPR for the last 30 minutes. They just want permission to stop. I said no at first. After another 30 minutes, he wasn't coming back.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMANS: Overnight, new mandatory evacuation orders for Hope County, North Carolina, where there is a concern of a possible dam breach there, in Lumberton, North Carolina.

[04:35:00] Residence are bracing for disaster right now as the Lumber River sips through a patch up gap in the levee system. The river now close at 20 feet -- 25 feet arising as it gets to 26 feet, it could overtop the permanent levee. If that happens, an official says quote, all bets are off.

BRIGGS: Over 532,000 customers are without power in North Carolina. The State's Attorney General Office has received more than 500 complaints of price gouging for hotels rooms, gas and water and more than 15,000 people are in shelters statewide. Transportation officials are telling people not to travel anywhere in North Carolina. Flooding has already cut off the coastal city of Wilmington from the rest of the state. That is where we fin CNN meteorologist, Derek Van Dam. Derek, you are looking at communities suddenly becoming islands in North Carolina. What are you seeing?

VAN DAM: We are virtually cut off here in Wilmington, Dave. Yesterday, I went around for about 14 hours just trying to help and give assistance as much as possible. What I encountered is a lot of scared people. A lot of desperate faces out there. People coming across impassable roadways and kind of steering blankly into the distance knowing that their relatives down the road, the road that saw rising flood waters and they could not get to them.

So, what they would do, they would wait for help and we have the ability to get a civilian five-ton truck. And we had some supplies and gasoline and generators to bring to people who were stranded in homes. As we try to navigate the waters ourselves, even we became part of the story. We had to abandon ship and leave that five ton truck behind. That was the least of our concerns going forward. We saw that the flood waters continued to rise as the water filters into the rivers, the bayous and the creeks across these area. There were, for instance a large sinkholes, 30 foot wide on Interstate 40.

That is a major artery north and southbound out of Wilmington. I mean, any given Sunday, that particular roadway would be littered with tourists and residents coming home from the beach, a weekend away. It was deserted. It was basically quite literally a river of rushing water. You can imagine how difficult it is for authorities to bring in critical supplies like gas or also any kind of food supplies to the evacuation shelters. And the feeling of desperation for people here. You know, talking to some of the evacuees that the Middle -- Burdock Creek Middle School where we ended up seeing them getting evacuated for a second time, because their evacuation center that they rode up the storm was threatened by flood waters that were rising in the area. So, difficult moments for people here on the ground to say the least. Dave, Christine.

BRIGGS: Perhaps the worst is yet to come. Derek Van Dam, live for us this morning. Thanks.

ROMANS: Florence will dump more rain on parts of North Carolina over the next few days. And river levels will keep rising from most of the week. We have meteorologist Pedram Javaheri standing by live for us in the CNN Weather Center with the very latest. This is just a slow motion catastrophe here.

PEDRAM JAVAHERI, CNN METEOROLOGIST: It is. And you know, that is why when the storm was downgraded to the category two, you are trying to make a point that it really doesn't matter, because the water element that will not change. Certainly the progression and the slow movement of the storm hasn't changed and finally beginning to see this actually move up into the double digit miles per hour of motion out of these region. And we expect it to pick up further speed in the next couple hours.

But notice, a lot of the thunderstorm activity still pushing in directly where it made landfall almost 72 hours ago right here in Wilmington. We are still seeing plenty of rainfall across these region and moisture streams right up toward the area as well. But as the storm migrates a little farther towards the north, we will see at least the weather pattern begins to improve.

But notice how much rainfall came down. The highest observation we have access to almost 34 inches which shattered the previous state record that came from hurricane Floyd in 1999. That was two feet of rainfall and needless to say we have the ground water supply that has increase of all of the flooding and the rainfall at the surface and now we are getting that it becomes surface flooding as the soil is essentially is fully saturated. So, very little room left for additional rainfall across these region.

And of course, the rain is still forecast through at least today. But what has happened upstream with the Appalachians taking the brunt of the rainfall and squeezing all the water out. All that wants to ends up right back in the Atlantic and as it flows downstream back to sea level with the rivers and waterways here will see an increase in water levels through the middle of the week.

So the national weather service is widespread with over 35 million flood alerts in place right now. A lot of flood warnings as well and it stretches up to the parts of the northeast because guess what? That is where the system is going to be headed by this time tomorrow. What is left of at least will push right through the northeast. Much quicker progression should be out of it by Tuesday night across the northeast that will leave behind a bit of rainfall across the interior portions of New England. So, it is going to be a big broad expanded story before it is said and done. Guys.

[04:40:00] ROMANS: I hope people stay safe. You know, the winds may have died down and the initial storm surge may have died down, but there are still potential for loss of life. So, everyone should be careful and prepared. Thank you so much. Nice to see you this morning.

Time for an early start on you money this morning. The widespread flooding caused by Florence is expected to inflict costly damage to homeowners in North Carolina and other states. Many homes are not covered by flood insurance to help offset the cost of to rebuilding this damage properties. Standard homeowner insurance policies it exclude storm surge and flooding related damage. Property owners must buy separate policies typically from the government. In North Carolina, just over 134,000 households have policies with the National Flood Insurance program. Around 2 to 4,000 are covered in South Carolina, but most of the policies are for properties in the special flood hazard areas of the insurance. There are some people who are far inland there, who you saw P.J. showing you those charts, those maps where far inland who didn't think they even needed flood insurance. That is going to be a real problem.

BRIGGS: Still a lot worst ahead. OK. Meanwhile in Southeast Asia, at least 54 people are dead as the world strongest storm this year, typhoon Mangkhut lashes the Philippines. Government officials say, many of the deaths were caused by landslides with dozens more people still believed to be buried under the mud.

In Hong Kong, utter devastation and fierce winds ripped homes shreds and uprooted the trees. The storm blame for four deaths in China. Nearly 2.5 million people have been evacuated in China's Quangdong province. And more than 18,000 emergency shelters have been evacuated.

Coming up, the U.S. Border patrol agent described as a serial killer. Arrested in the deaths of four people. His capture made possible by a woman's daring rescue.

[04:45:00] (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ROMANS: FEMA administrator Brock Long siding with President Trump questioning studies that show far more people died from hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico than the initial death tolls. The President tweeted several times over last week casting doubt on the study showing thousands died. Not just dozens. And he blamed Democrats for inflating those numbers to make him look bad. The series of Sunday's shows, appears long did not dispute the President.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) BROCK LONG, FEMA ADMINISTRATOR: There's a lot of issues with numbers

being all over the place. It is hard to tell what is accurate and what's not. You may see more deaths indirectly occur as time goes on because people have heart attacks due to stress. They fall off their house trying to fix their roof. They die in car crashes where, because they went through the intersection where the stop light is not working.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMANS: Long also says Sunday that he has no plans to resign at the Homeland Security Probe into personal travel using government resources. The Wall Street Journal reports the White House was considering replacing Long, before hurricane Florence hit. BRIGGS: Joe Biden says he is sorry he gave President Trump the

benefit of the doubt in the early days of his administration. Here is what the former Vice President said at a weekend dinner hosted by human rights campaign LGBTQ advocacy group.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, FORMER VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Barack and I agreed to remain silent for a while to give the administration a chance to get up and running the first year. God, forgive me.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BRIGGS: Biden told the audience he could no longer remain quiet once the President said there are fine people on both sides after that deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville last year.

ROMANS: All right. BMW unveils a vision for its self-driving car, we will tell you about just some of the technologies they have considered. CNN Money is next.

[04:50:00] (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BRIGGS: 4:52 Eastern Time. One of China's most famous actresses has vanished without a trace. He is on tax evasion by wealthy celebrities. Fan Bingbing is one of China's highest paid and most bankable stars. She has appeared both in Chinese and western films. Including the "X men" franchise. But the film stars has not been seen in public since early June. Let's go live to Beijing and bring in CNN's Matt Rivers. Matt, this is a bizarre story. Good morning.

MATT RIVERS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, it is very weird. Good morning, Dave. This would be like if Meryl Streep or Jennifer Lawrence just disappeared in the United States and no one has any idea. It is hard where they went. It is hard to overstate how famous Fan Bingbing is here in China. That is why the story is really taking off. It is a huge talk here in China.

Basically it goes back to her being alleged to be involved in a tax avoidance scheme. Basically signing fake contracts in China in order to avoid paying taxes. She was accused of that publicly in late May. The Chinese tax authority here says they would launch the investigation into the industry of overall, Fan Bingbing denied the allegation. But other than one social media post in June and she has not been seen or heard from since.

So, we reached out to the tax regulators, the media regulators, the ministry of foreign affairs, Fan Bingbing's people, themselves no one knows where they are or has not commented. None of the government agencies comment. The only clue that we have to her whereabouts is a now deleted state-run media article that was posted on September 6th that she is brought under control and about to receive legal judgment by the government.

So, that is the only thing we have. But the government is not commenting. So where this actress is, no one has any idea at this point. She is one of the most famous actresses in China. She is one of the highest paid actresses in the world and no one has any idea where she is.

BRIGGS: So bizarre. All right. Matt Rivers, live for us in Beijing, thank you.

ROMANS: Authorities in Texas describing a supervisory U.S. Border patrol agent in their custody as a serial killer. Charging documents say Juan David Ortiz, who is also a Navy veteran, has confessed to killing four people. Who's bodies where discovered over the past two weeks. Authorities say all of the victims worked as prostitutes. Officials say the case broke on Friday after a woman escaped Ortiz. She ran to a nearby gas station where she found a state trooper. A customs and border patrol spokesperson says the agency is fully cooperating with state investigators. It is not immediately known whether Ortiz has an attorney.

BRIGGS: The death of a swimmer at the Cape Cod beach this weekend believe to be the first fatal shark attack in Massachusetts and more than 80 years. Witnesses try to carry 26-year-old Arthur Medici to get medical attention, he and another man were boogie boarding some 30 yards off the beach in Wellfleet when the shark attacked.

[04:55:11] A statement from Bunker Hill community college says, Medici, an engineering major, was enrolled as a part time student in Spring. There was another shark attack of the cape last month, but no one killed. This is related to the increase population of seals on the cape.

ROMANS: Also Massachusetts, the governor there, Charlie Baker getting residents and communities in Boston the green light to return home after a deadly series of explosions and fires last week. The governor says, affected homes in Lawrence and Andover and North Andover have been safely cleared of gas. The NTSB says the underground regulator which measures pressure levels and adjusts gas flow was attached to a gas line that was being taken out of service before the explosions. The officials are looking into whether that have any kind of effects. Schools in Andover and North Andover will reopen today. Lawrence needs more time to restore gas and to its school buildings.

BRIGGS: A major study finds risk may out way the benefits of a daily regimen of low dose aspirin. Millions of healthy people takes small doses of aspirin regularly told they will prevent heart attacks and strokes, but researches from the University of Melbourne in the regimen has no real benefit for healthy older adults and may pose significant health risks. It actually increases the risk of internal bleeding. The researchers do not say whether healthy older people that were taking aspirin should stop.

ROMANS: The television's best in show beyond display tonight. The 70th Emmy Awards features the battle of two reigning champs for TV's best drama. "Hand maid's tale" won the EMMY last year. When 2016 winner Game of Thrones was intelligible. On the comedy side with the reigning winner "Veep" on the sidelines Atlanta and the Marvelous Mrs. (Inaudible) are the leading comedy contenders. Netflix has the most EMMY nomination over all this year surpassing the long dominant HBO. BRIGGS: And it is not exactly the way Vontae Davis drew it up.

Buffalo Bills quarterback retiring at halftime. On Sunday's game against the L.A. Chargers and Buffalo just left the stadium. The 10 year NFL veteran releasing a statement saying he meant no disrespect to his coaches and teammates. Davis said after multiple surgeries and playing through injuries, quote, today on the field really hit me fast and hard. I should not be out there anymore. Davis played for the Dolphins and Colts before signing a one year $5 million deal with the Bills in February.

ROMANS: All right. That is sports. Here is the money. Let us go check on CNN Money. Most Asian stocks markets slid as U.S. and China trade tensions weighed on investors. The Wall Street Journal reported this weekend, the President plans to impose new tariffs on Chinese imports despite proposed trade talks later this month. European stocks also opened lower amid those fears of an escalating trade wars between the world's largest economies. The U.S. futures right now mixed.

BMW unveiling its vision for a self-driving electric car. The concept for the BMW vision IMX, was presented at JFK airport in New York. BMW's executives displayed working versions of some of the technologies being considered. Including touch sensitive fabric and interactive projections. The fun end features a new version of the trade mark, kidney grill with two rounded rectangles connected by a broad center section. A major reason for this center section is to cover the front cameras and sensors that enable the cars self-driving capabilities. The showroom arrival is set for 2021.

All right. J.P. Morgan Chase, CEO, Jamie Dimon says he is done with politics now, after this trouble last week where he said he thought he could beat President Trump during the election. But he wasn't so sure of the progressives, the liberals, the Democratic Party. On ABC's "This week" Dimon also said he understands why some Americans think it is unfair for banks to get bailed out during a financial crisis.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JAMIE DIMON, CEO, JP MORGAN CHASE: Some caused the problem. I understand the American public looks at it and it is unfair. It was. OK. They look at it like the elite Washington banks got bailed out and they suffered. And there is some truth to that. And they did not see all testament justice. So, I understand why there is a lot of anger out there.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMANS: It is 10 years this week the financial crisis SALEM: matter of fact. So, why does Jamie Dimon always find himself saying, he won't run for President? It is because, people keep asking him. You know, Bob Iger who runs Disney. Same thing. People ask Bob Iger. We have sort of a business guy, more of a celebrity business guy, in the White House. A lot of people keep asking people like Jamie Dimon. He says no.

BRIGGS: It would be interesting that the financial crisis in a presidential debate to discuss what happened. But you take him at his word. No chance he runs?

ROMANS: I take him at his word. A lot of people around him want him to do it.

BRIGGS: Yes.

ROMANS: You know?

BRIGGS: All right. "Early Start" continues right now. The latest on the United States Supreme Court and Florence in the Carolinas.

I feared he may inadvertently kill me. The words of woman accusing Brett Kavanaugh of sexual --