House Committee: Holder In Contempt; Sweltering Heat In Northeast; Zoo Animals Flee Flooding; Rains Wreck Roads In Duluth Floods; Closing Arguments Today In Sandusky Trial; Sanford Police Chief Fired; College Football Playoffs; Lebron Could Win First Title Tonight
ZORAIDA SAMBOLIN, CNN HOST: It is dangerous heat as the mercury rises. Records keep falling all over the weather map.</s>ASHLEIGH BANFIELD, CNN HOST: Washed out in Minnesota, flash flooding, wiping out roads, bridges, and making a very dangerous condition for a zoo.</s>SAMBOLIN: He's never been closer to a ring, Lebron James takes the court with a chance to win his first NBA championship win. Miami Heat could win, too.</s>BANFIELD: Yes, that could happen as well for all the Heat fans out there. I'm not talking heat outside. We're talking Heat inside on the hardwood.</s>SAMBOLIN: All right, good morning, everyone. Thanks for being with us. Welcome to EARLY START. I'm Zoraida Sambolin.</s>BANFIELD: Good morning. I'm Ashleigh Banfield. We have the news from A to Z for you this morning, 6:00 on the East Coast. Let's start with this, shall we? Attorney General Eric Holder is really caught in a political cross fire this morning. He is in Copenhagen this morning and after a pretty bad day yesterday for him. Members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee held a vote and it came out along party lines to recommend citing him for contempt. All of this for failing to turn over certain subpoenaed documents from the botched "Fast and Furious" gun operation. Those documents though are now completely off limits, subpoena or no subpoena because President Obama stepped in and decided to invoke executive privilege for the first time since taking office. Joe Johns is live in Washington this morning and your legal head must have been popping right off yesterday. Seriously, the developments were fast and furious themselves just for starters. But what we're looking at here, Joe, is for lack of a better way to describe this, a legal mess.</s>JOE JOHNS, CNN SENIOR CORRESPONDENT: Yes, I think you're right. It is a legal mess. Whenever you get into one of these executive privilege fights, it is going to be that way. What seems clear is that barring some negotiated solution, this thing ends up on the House floor as early as next week. That means Eric Holder could get cited by the full House of Representatives, which is controlled by Republicans for contempt of Congress. After that, the process that is set in place is for all of this to go to the United States Attorney's Office and he would convene a grand jury. The problem is, of course, the United States attorney for the District of Columbia is basically an employee of the Justice Department and head of the Justice Department is Eric Holder. So it is kind of a weird situation though, one way or the other it is clear if they don't figure something out, it will end up in the courts as the kind of thing that could go on for years. And many other times in the past, these fights have ended up being negotiated out and they figure out how to get some of the information to Congress to avoid a long protracted court battle -- Ashleigh.</s>BANFIELD: Joe, for a lot of people it starts to sound a lot like white noise bickering, but we're talking -- when you say the legal process in the courts, we're not just talking civil here. This could have a civil outcome. This could have a criminal outcome.</s>JOHNS: Yes, it could have a criminal outcome, and you know, people waking up this morning who haven't really focused on all of this the question sort of is what's it all about? We have heard of this operation "Fast and Furious." It was a gun walking operation to sort of try to figure out if you could get some big fish in the cartels south of the border by letting some guns go into criminal hands, probably not a very good idea. Certainly, a real question of mismanagement on the part of the people who were handling it and the problem is it is occurring, this controversy is, during an election year, which raises the question of politics as you know. And listening to some of the arguments that were made in the committee just yesterday really points it out. Let's listen.</s>SEN. CHUCK GRASSLEY (R), IOWA: This is a stall in the Justice Department I think to get by until the next election because I think there is something embarrassing politically to this administration that they want to keep out of the public's minds and that's why we have been stone walled.</s>REP. ELIJAH CUMMINGS (D), MARYLAND: This comes in an election year and I think there have been a lot of efforts on the part of our Republican colleagues to embarrass this president. And I think that this is a situation today that definitely could have been avoided.</s>JOHNS: Well, that wasn't inside actually the hearing room, of course, because Senator Grassley wasn't there. He is on the Senate side. Nonetheless, you get the idea. People are saying it is politically motivated. On the other side of the coin, Republicans are saying they need to get to the bottom of this because at root it was a mismanagement problem at the Justice Department.</s>BANFIELD: All right, Joe Johns, thanks. I've a million other questions for you, but we're going to save that for a little bit later on. Because also Soledad O'Brien is going to be very busy on this topic too. So thank you, Joe. At 7:00 Eastern on "STARTING POINT" with Soledad, she's going to have those two people you just saw, the Democratic Congressman, Elijah Cummings. He is a ranking member of the House Oversight Committee and he will be live with her and then at 8 a.m., she will go one-on-one with the other guy you just saw, Iowa's Republican Senator Chuck Grassley. He is the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee. They both have a lot to say about this issue and you can bet Soledad will as well.</s>SAMBOLIN: Well, the northeast sweating through high humidity and sweltering heat. Temperatures expected to break records again today. This morning as I was coming in, I was on Facebook, Rob, and I said it feels like 80 degrees and guess what? I was right on the money.</s>ROB MARCIANO, AMS METEOROLOGIST: You were. Not only that, it was actually 80 degrees and the temperature didn't dip below that and the humidity bumps it up even more. So, yes, it is miserable out there and New York is not the only spot. D.C., Boston, Philly, Baltimore, you're all in. These are the record highs from yesterday as measured in the shade. They don't include humidity. Newarks in 98, La Guardia 98 degrees to Central Park at 94, Richmond, Hartford and even Burlington, Vermont, so places in Northern New England and a lot of those folks don't have air conditioning. They are dealing with temperatures right now in the upper 70s with loads of humidity as well. All right, Boston, you will probably hit -- you get close to 99 degrees today. I think everybody in New York, Philly, D.C., these are the actual high temperatures from yesterday. These are the forecast highs for today. So we can probably bump everything up 2 degrees or maybe 3 degrees today. There were some records yesterday and probably some records today, but the bottom line is this is the warmest air that we have seen since the third week in July of last year. And this is the first real pulse of heat for the summer and it is always a shock to the system. Heat advisories and heat warnings out for 10 states across the northeast and heat indices and what it does to your body, doesn't allow you to sweat. That sweat to evaporate, it makes you feel even warmer than that. But there is a little relief on the way, this little front is going to push off to the east. Already cooling down Chicago and won't get to the New York, Boston, and D.C. area really until tomorrow or even Saturday. Until then, do what you have to do to stay cool.</s>BANFIELD: I blew up the slip and slide in the backyard yesterday.</s>MARCIANO: That's one way to do it.</s>BANFIELD: And I read the directions and if you're over 100 pounds you can't use it.</s>MARCIANO: That's why I don't read directions.</s>BANFIELD: You don't. OK. Rob, you were supposed to say you're under 100 pounds, Ashleigh? Dead silence.</s>MARCIANO: I've got a lot to learn.</s>BANFIELD: Marciano, your live shot is going to be shorter next hour. Thank you, my friend. One of these weather related stories we wanted to follow up on Rob's report because there was water absolutely roaring through the streets and almost a dozen zoo animals were killed leaving a seal in the street. Torrential over night flooding forcing an evacuation of a lot of low lying homes and even zoo animals all of these happening in Duluth, Minnesota. Zoo workers were able to safely recover two seals and a polar bear and over a dozen animals being killed in that flooding. And water wiping out a bridge, all of the rain softening up roads and opening up a full sink hole that swallowed up a car. Good to report too that there are no reports of any serious injuries though in that story.</s>SAMBOLIN: Quite a bit of damage though. All right, closing arguments in less than three hours away at the child sex abuse trial of Jerry Sandusky. The defense rested without calling the former Penn State assistant football coach to testify. Sandusky is accused of sexually abusing 10 boys this over a 15-year period. The jury is expected to begin deliberating after today's closing arguments. The Pedo bear made an appearance right outside the Sandusky trail court. Take a look at this. It is the internet born- bear and it was created to mock pedophiles. Many critics on the web who don't get the satire say he is a mascot for men who abuse little boys.</s>BANFIELD: After refusing to accept his resignation back in the spring, there has been a change of heart. Officials in Sanford, Florida, have now fired Police Chief Bill Lee. You may remember that Chief Lee came under fire for his handling of the Trayvon Martin shooting because he decided not to make an arrest of George Zimmerman, the gunman in that shooting. The city managers in Sanford said that they dismissed him because the people of Sanford, they say, need a chief they can trust and respect. The guy who's been doing the job since all of this went down, the interim chief, Richard Myers is going to stay on the job until that department can find a full permanent replacement for Bill Lee.</s>SAMBOLIN: A consensus has been reached on a college football playoff system. BCF commissioners have agreed to a four-team playoff system, the semi-final games rotating around the tradition bowl sites like the Rose Bowl and the Orange Bowl. The plan will be presented to university presidents next week for approval and could be in place by 2014.</s>BANFIELD: Lebron James has a chance to win his first championship tonight because the Miami Heat are taking on the Oklahoma City Thunder in game five of the NBA finals. The Heat leading the Thunders three games to one. So they're in a pretty good position in the best of seven. It is the first time that the Thunder have faced an elimination game during a 2012 pro-season. Miami's all-star trio of Lebron James, Dwayne Wade and Chris Bosh will all try to clinch that championship tonight and get this, it's in front of their home crowd at American Airlines arena. If it is going to happen, that would be a nice spot for them for it to happen.</s>SAMBOLIN: But it would be great if Oklahoma took it on their turf.</s>BANFIELD: You're always doing that, always coming in and cooling off the heat.</s>SAMBOLIN: Yes, I have to. Anyway, 10 minutes past the hour. Soaked but safe. Take a look, dramatic video of one couple's brush with danger. What were they doing? That is a waterfall. We're going to give you all the details coming up.