Powerful Tornadoes Kill 23 People In Southern U.S.
WATT: It looks like pretty much every single aspect of president Donald Trump's professional life is now under investigation. Democrats who took control of the U.S. House of Representatives in January are now launching numerous inquiries, demanding information from dozens of Trump associates. Manu Raju reports on what lies ahead.</s>MANU RAJU, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The House Judiciary Committee today announcing a sprawling investigation into the president's inner circle, trying to uncover evidence that the president obstructed justice and abused his power. The chairman of the committee, Jerry Nadler, sent letters to 81 individuals and entities connected to the president, including family members like his sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner, former aide Hope Hicks, longtime Trump Organization chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg and his current campaign manager, Brad Parscale.</s>REP.  JERROLD NADLER (D), NEW YORK: It's very clear that the president obstructed justice. It's very clear.</s>RAJU: The scope of the probe is breathtaking, looking into everything, from whether the president is benefiting financially from foreign interests, as well as campaign contacts with the Russians, the firing of then FBI Director James Comey and demanding from the head of the parent company of "The National Enquirer," and hush money payments the president made to silence stories in 2016 about his alleged affairs with a porn star and a former "Playboy" Playmate.</s>REP.  NANCY PELOSI (D-CA), SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE: I think what they're doing is exercising their constitutional responsibility for oversight. To do anything less would be delinquent in our duties, than to exercise their oversight.</s>RAJU: Asked today if he would cooperate, Trump said:</s>TRUMP: I cooperate all the time with everybody. And you know the beautiful thing? No collusion. It's all a hoax.</s>RAJU: Republicans contend it's all part of a Democratic effort to take down the president.</s>SEN.  JOHN KENNEDY (R), LOUISIANA: I think there a lot of House members that just decided they wanted to start the election early. And they're going to do everything they can to tear down the president. I'm not saying that the Republicans wouldn't do it if the shoe were on the other foot.</s>RAJU: But Democrats who have called for impeachment are giving House committee some breathing room to first investigate the president, at least for now.</s>REP.  ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ (D), NEW YORK: I understand that the leadership perhaps may want to build a stronger case and subpoena more records or figure out what's happening perhaps in the Mueller investigation. And so I defer to the chair. I defer to the party leadership.</s>RAJU: The Judiciary probe is one of a number that House Democrats are intensifying in just their third month in power. House Oversight Chairman Elijah Cummings is threatening to subpoena the White House for records over Kushner's security clearance, after a "New York Times" report revealed that the president overruled concerns from intelligence officials to give Kushner access to classified information.</s>REP.  GERRY CONNOLLY (D), VIRGINIA: I would certainly support a subpoena issuance if we don't get cooperation from the White House.</s>RAJU: The 81 names is just a start; expect far more names to be added to that list in the days and weeks ahead. Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee say this is just the beginning of the investigation, certainly not the end. At the same time a new line of inquiry going forward; three powerful Democratic committee chairmen demanding a range of documents from the president's communications with Putin. There were several face-to-face interactions and Democrats are concerned there are no records of those interactions. They're asking the White House and the U.S. State Department to provide more records about exactly what happened there. And they're --</s>RAJU: -- asking for transcribed interviews with some of the people who were present and aware of what happened, including the American translator at the Putin-Trump meetings -- Manu Raju, CNN, Capitol Hill.</s>WATT: Let's get more on all this with Daniel Dale, he's the Washington bureau chief of the "Toronto Star." Daniel, I heard Republicans saying this is all just a deep-sea fishing expedition and the Democrats have a suspect and they're now just looking for a crime. What do you say to that?</s>DANIEL DALE, "TORONTO STAR": Well, that's what they have consistently said about every investigation into Donald Trump's activities. That's what they say about the Robert Mueller investigation, which was triggered by a deputy attorney general who was appointed by Donald Trump himself. So that's their go-to line. But there is perhaps more of an argument this time because of how broad this investigation is. Democrats have sent an unusually wide-ranging set of requests to literally dozens of people in Donald Trump's orbit. So perhaps the argument will gain more traction this time than it did with the more focused Robert Mueller investigation.</s>WATT: Those 81 names, which of those names jump out to you?</s>DALE: There's the ones that everyone knows, like Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, Hope Hicks, the former communications aide to the president. I'm very interested in some of the lesser known names as well. There are several figures affiliated with the Trump Organization, the president's company, like Allen Weisselberg, the CFO; Rhona Graff, who's the president's assistant and scheduler. Another employee name Ronald Lieberman. These are all people who likely know interesting information, at least interesting, about the activities of Donald Trump when it comes to financial dealings and, as we know, his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, tested to Congress this week that some of those financial dealings were at least underhanded and possibly criminal. So I think there's a lot to learn from those individuals as well.</s>WATT: Is there any chance that this backfires politically on the Democrats? The way that President Trump spins it, as he says, the Democrats are after him, they're trying to silence me but he also says to his supporters they're trying to silence you. And his approval ratings right now aren't bad.</s>DALE: No. They're better than they had been as recently as a few months allowing. So they have bounced back a little bit. I think there is always a chance when you launch a wide-ranging investigation, that it will backfire, especially when you have a president who is this aggressive in trying to prompt that backfire in firing back at his critics and the people who are investigating him. I think the Democrats would counter that. Look, we were investigated by a significant majority of the vote in the midterm elections by people who wanted us to provide a check on the president, who wanted us to our oversight powers. So they will say that the president can say what he wants but we're doing what the voters wanted us to do.</s>WATT: At the end of the day, we will remember on the campaign trail when Donald Trump said I can stand on Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I would still get the votes, at the end of the day, this is also a political issue, not a legal one. And to impeach him, the Democrats could get half of the House but they're not going to get what they need in the Senate to actually get rid of Donald Trump. This is political.</s>DALE: Yes. It is important to remember that. When we think impeachment, impeachment is only the House process to actually remove someone who has been impeached, you need the Senate as well. So Democrats will not have that. I think what they're trying to do at the very least is keep damaging stories alive. There's kind of an avalanche problem with Donald Trump in that one scandal gets buried by the next scandal because there's so much happening. But what Democrats can do with these subpoenas and investigations is at least keep these controversies alive in the public mind longer than they otherwise would and create a drumbeat of negative stories that wouldn't exist if they weren't doing this.</s>WATT: I just want to get your thoughts on that Trump two-plus hours CPAC speech at the weekend. We have been covering it here quite a lot. I'm interested to hear what your impressions were of that performance, I suppose.</s>DALE: We know it was the longest speech that Trump has ever given as a candidate or as president. I thought it was the strangest speech I had ever seen him give. He bounded from topic to topic. He ranted about his crowd sizes, I believe for at least five minutes, maybe 10. He revived grievances, some of which were 14 months and some of which were two years old. He showed almost no interest in the policy content that his advisers had written for him. I just thought how haphazard and unfocused he was and in his jumping from tone to tone, mocking the Southern accent of his former attorney general, Jeff Sessions. I just thought it was comprehensively bizarre.</s>WATT: Daniel Dale, thank you very much.</s>DALE: Thank you.</s>WATT: As those congressional investigations move forward, there is also a new report from "The New Yorker" magazine about President Trump's opposition to the AT&T-TimeWarner merger. Our Brian Stelter has the details.</s>BRIAN STELTER, CNN SENIOR MEDIA CORRESPONDENT: Hey, there. Yes, on a day when House Democrats are launching a brand new investigation into alleged abuses of power by Donald Trump, this may be another line of inquiry. The reporting comes from "The New Yorker" magazine, backing up suspicions that AT&T executives have had for a long time. AT&T sought to buy TimeWarner, the parent company of CNN, shortly before Election Day in 2016. Then candidate Donald Trump said he was opposed to the deal. Once Trump took office, according to "The New Yorker," he took steps to get the deal stopped. This is the description from Jane Mayer (ph), recounting a conversation that Trump reportedly had with Gary Cohn, who was the director of the National Economic Council at the time. According to the story here, according to a well informed source, Trump called Cohen into the Oval Office along with John Kelly who had just become the chief of staff, and said in exasperation to Kelly, "I've been telling Cohen to get this lawsuit filed and nothing has happened. I've mentioned it 50 times and nothing has happened. "I want to make sure it is filed. I want that deal blocked." That's reporting from "The New Yorker." Jane Mayer goes on to say that Cohen refused to do it and he said something to Kelly to the effect of, "Don't you dare call the Justice Department." Of course, what is common in American politics, whether it is Republican or Democratic president, is that the Justice Department had is a wide degree of autonomy. The idea that a president would try to block a business deal, perhaps because he didn't like the television network, in this case, CNN, that was involved, is something that is disturbing not just to a lot of Democrats and liberals but also to a number of Republicans and conservatives. We've heard from the husband of White House aide Kellyanne Conway, George Conway, saying on Twitter that, if this reporting is true, it is an impeachable offense by President Trump. Now the administration has always denied that the president tried to interfere. The Justice Department has always said the same thing. But this reporting in "The New Yorker" may open up another line of inquiry for Democrats. They may want to try to speak with Gary Cohn, John Kelly or others who may have been involved -- Brian Stelter, CNN, New York.</s>WATT: Next, the children in Syria are paying the price for the sins of their ISIS parents. What will be their fate? That's coming up. Plus the U.S. response to a dual U.S.-Saudi citizen, allegedly tortured and still held in the desert kingdom. What we know about the detention of Dr. Walid Fitaihi -- coming up.</s>WATT: Welcome back to CNN Newsroom. I'm Nick Watt with the headlines this hour. Former Nissan Chairman Carlos Ghosn has been granted bail in Tokyo set at almost $9 million U.S. He could be release in the coming hours. Ghosn has been held since late November accused of underreporting his salary the auto maker for nearly a decade. Prosecutors are appealing the bail decision. And opposition leader Juan Guido is now backed home in Venezuela despite the threats of arrest form Nicholas Maduro's government. Giudo's has been out of the country meeting regional leaders shoring up support for his self-proclaimed presidency. Now he is calling for another day of nationwide protests on Saturday. Hundreds of people, including ISIS Fighters and their families have been surrendering to U.S.-backed forces in Eastern Syria. Still unclear when this last teetering ISIS enclave will fall, but there are reports that those U.S.-backed Kurdish fighters are getting ready to celebrate victory. The collapse of ISIS is raising a major dilemma for many countries. What to do with the foreign fighters who joined the terror group and what to do with their children. CNN's Melissa Bell reports on how France is handling the children of ISIS, some of them orphaned and right now adrift in Syria.</s>MELISSA BELL, CNN PARIS CORRESPONDENT: This is the last known picture of Jana who is now seven. Ismail who's family doesn't want his face shown is nearly three. Both are in Syria, orphans of the falling ISIS Caliphate. Ismail grandmother hopes to see him soon. The Red Cross sent a picture of Ismail to his grandmother. He is one of around a hundred children captured from ISIS territory that France is preparing to bring home. For now, they're being kept in Kurdish camps. At first the adults were to be brought to France and tried, but now the President Mahmoud says, they should be tried in those countries and could face the death penalty. But the children will come to France most are younger than seven. Nadia has been preparing a home for Ismail the grandson she's never met. Her daughter ran away to Syria when she was just 14, secretly brainwashed says Nadia by the propaganda she found online. Nadia believes that she is dead and is now desperate to bring home the son she bore in Raqqa. But she says French authorities have been slow to bring them home the children of the ISIS enemy. Nadia she is not alone. Other French families have been fighting a long and lonely battle for the children, either taken to ISIS territory or born there.</s>SAMIA MAKTOUF, LAWYER: It is already too late. We waste one year and since last year we know in which count they are, we know that they are French, we know that they have families in France and we haven't yet done nothing.</s>BELL: With France has scoured as it is by years of terrorism, the authorities have struggled with idea of the returning Jihadis. We reached out to French authorities but they did not respond to comment. Nadine Ribbed Reinhart who lost her son in the Bataclan believes that a distinction needs to be made between those who chose ISIS and those that did not.</s>NADINE RIBET-REINHART, MOTHER OF BATACLAN VICTIM (through translator): Just because we are the parents of the deceased and wounded victims of the November 13th attacks, that doesn't mean that we have lost our humanity. So, of course we wish for the children to be brought home, to find a foster family, grandparents, but their parents, they must be judged. Yes, that is our wish</s>BELL: But for some children the problem is more complicated still. Jana is still thought to be in ISIS territory. Her father died after kidnapping her from her mother and taking her to Syria. Jana's uncle says he believes that she is in the hands of a Libyan family</s>MUSTAPHA, UNCLE OF ISIS ORPHAN (through translator): This pain has caused tensions between everyone. What we should be doing now, what we should have done, but unfortunately fate chooses something else for this child to be kidnapped and to find herself today in a warzone.</s>BELL: Children stuck in a warzone and in another no man's land. Caught between the sins of their parents and their rights as French citizens and as children. Melissa Bell's CNN, Paris.</s>WATT: For more on what might now happen to those Westerners who joined ISIS, go to CNN.com. We look at if and how they will be tried and the countries that might take them back. Now, a dual U.S.-Saudi Citizen has been beaten, tortured and remains jailed in Saudi Arabia. This, according to a source familiar with the fate of Dr. Whalid Fitaihi. He has been held for more than a year. The U.S. State Department says it has raised the case with Riyadh. More now from CNN's Nic Robertson.</s>NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: When Dr. Whalid Fataihi returned to Saudi Arabia, he never imagined he would end up in prison. Harvard educated, more than a decade in medical practice in the U.S. The dual national U.S.-Saudi, he might even have felt a little protected, but that wasn't to be. In 2006, his family had built a hospital in the Red Sea Port City of Jeddah, Fataihi was to head it. He was bringing his skills back to his roots help Saudis sick, he was popular. Proud of the human rights instincts he had picked up over 20 years living in the U.S. Suddenly, late 2017 as a desert kingdom's powerful young crowned Prince Mohammad Bin Salman rounded up top princess and businessmen accusing them of corruption. Fataihi found himself caught in the dragnet. He was imprisoned along with the others in Riyadh's Ritz Carlton hotel. His family says he was beaten and tortured. His lawyer says he was transferred to jail without due process and wrote to the State Department this January pleading for help. It is believed that Doctor Fataihi has been and is tortured at least psychologically during this imprisonment. But alarm bells were sounded long before. In January last year, Washington Post Journalist Jamal Khashoggi tweeted. How can someone like the Dr. Whaled Fataihi get detained? And what are the reasons for that? Khashoggi would not survive to find the answers. He was brutally murder by Saudi officials whom the C.I.A. concludes were acting on orders from Bin Salman. The young crowned prince still enjoys President Trump's favor and only last week was courted by his Mideast envoy and son-in-law Jared Kushner. Dual U.S.-Saudi national Fataihi has had to wait over a year to get the public's attention.</s>JOHN BOLTON, UNITED STATES NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISOR: We have had what's called, consular access, meaning American diplomats in Saudi Arabia have visited with him. Beyond that we don't really have any additional information at point.</s>ROBERTSON: Saudi officials have so far not returned CNN's requests for comment. They told the New York Times, they take allegations of ill treatment of defendants awaiting trial and prisoners serving their sentences very seriously. Nic Robertson's, CNN Islamabad, Pakistan.</s>WATT: After five years in jail, an Egyptian photographer is vowing to continue the work that landed him behind bars. Egyptian authorities on Monday released Mahmoud Abu Zeid, also known as Shawkan. He was arrested in 2013 while covering a sit-in that ended with security forces killing hundreds of protesters. Shawkan says, he wasn't protesting, but just doing his job. Either way, his family is just happy to have him home.</s>MAHMOUD ABU ZEID, EGYPTIAN PHOTOJOURNALIST (through translator): I feel happy after the release. I feel like I am flying.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE:  (through translator): He feels freedom.</s>ZEID: I feel free.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Newly born. His birthday is October 10th, but his new birth is today. What is todays date?</s>ZEID: March 4th, my new birthday is March 4th.</s>WATT: But his freedom is not unconditional. For next five years Shawkan must spend every night sleeping at a police station. Now, a developing story, we are following demonstrators in Algeria demanding the president withdraw his bid for reelection and allow some fresh faces to take power. But the 82-year-old, Abdelaziz Bouteflika who has rarely been seen in public since suffering a stroke back in 2013 appears to have other plans. CNN's Becky Anderson reports.</s>BECKY ANDERSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Public fires, armored vehicles in the streets. A sea of protesters. It was a weekend of one of the largest of displays of public dissent in Algeria in half a century since the war of independence from France. Protesters demonstrated across the country and in France in opposition to the President Abdelaziz Bouteflika.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): I am happy and emotional that the Algerian people are doing everything to try and put an end to 20 years of this mascaraed and to understand that this power is useless and it's only looking out for itself.</s>ANDERSON: Putting in a show of defiance on Sunday, the Presidents campaign manager announced he would be running for a fifth term. Despite being rarely seen in public since he suffered a stroke in 2013. The ailing 82-year-old has held office since 1999. Enraged by his continued two-decade rule, some Algerians have called for parliament to be dissolved to make way for new government.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE:  (through translator): A free and Democratic Algeria this will, God willing marked a second independence for Algeria.</s>ANDERSON: But the only change Bouteflika has been promised is in election timing, saying he will look amending the constitution to set a date for earlier elections, that's only if he's reelected first in April.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): The fifth term is not acceptable, because our president did what he could, and now he can't do anything else so we have to move on.</s>ROBERTSON: Bouteflika has vowed not to run if he calls an early election. Becky Anderson, CNN, Abu Dhabi.</s>WATT: After decades of growing at a phenomenal pace, China hits a speed bump. We'll bring you the less than stellar outlook from the leaders of the world's second largest economy. That's coming up. Plus more legal trouble could be the horizon for disgraced Cardinal George Pell. The action, the father of one of his sexual abuse victims is considering just ahead right here on CNN Newsroom.