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Should government officials be staying at President Trump's hotels?

Democrats focus on Trump's properties; reaction from former Clinton aide Basil Smikle and Fox News contributor Jason Chaffetz.

This is a rush transcript from "The Story with Martha MacCallum," September 6, 2019. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

BRET BAIER, ANCHOR: That is it for this "Special Report." It's been a long week, but it's been fair, balanced, and unafraid. "The Story" hosted by Martha MacCallum, starts right now.

MARTHA MACCALLUM, ANCHOR: Yes.

BAIER: And Martha, the NFL started last night. So, the Patriots, will they make it this year?

MACCALLUM: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely, I was watching last night, and we're looking forward to a big weekend. Yes, go Pats, you know.

BAIER: There you go.

MACCALLUM: As usual. Thank you, Bret.

BAIER: See you.

MACCALLUM: Good to see you.

Oh, my goodness what have we been watching over the last couple of days in this story, everybody. Dorian, they describe it as a whole new level of devastation. A sea of broken roads, and homes, and town.

Look at this people walking through the wreckage. The death toll officially at 30, but they say there are hundreds, maybe even thousands of people who are still trapped under all of this, waiting. Some of them who are still alive, are hoping that they're going to be rescued. Supplies though are dangerously low at this point.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: My house gone, my car gone. I don't have anything.  Everything just gone.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I mean water is a precious commodity now. I mean, more precious than diamonds. There is no food here.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Basically, all the homes around me were gone, washed through or flattened. It was -- it was horrific.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MACCALLUM: This beautiful part of the world with its kind people caught in a hellish, non-stop, whipping machine for 36 hours in the Bahamas. The likes of which, the most seasoned storm chaser had never seen. Known as hurricane man, Josh Morgerman is back now, sitting with me on the set here back in New York City. And he says he is lucky to be alive after he chased the heart of this storm in the Abaco Islands. He's going to share his entire story with us in just a few moments.

Our own Steve Harrigan, who has seen this kind of death and misery everywhere from Rwanda to the earthquake in Haiti. Today, he was just astounded by what he saw around him. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STEVE HARRIGAN, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT: You mentioned the body count that is going to change dramatically because when you stand here, you can smell bodies.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MACCALLUM: He said he had just never seen anything like what he is watching. Now, The Nassau Guardian newspaper is reporting that one man -- this gentleman, 38-year-old Adrian Farrington, mourns the loss of his 5- year-old little son, Adrian Jr.

As waves moved in on their home, he put him on the roof to protect him.  And then, he was swept away in the storm surge. I mean, I just cannot imagine. I cannot imagine the pain that this man is going through today and so many others.

Among the more than 6,000 people who are currently listed missing, are 23 relatives of the famous actor Sidney Poitier. Another 70,000 are in urgent need at this hour of food, and shelter, and water, as you heard.

Senators Marco Rubio, Rick Scott, and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis went there today. They are urging the federal government to do more to aid this extraordinary humanitarian crisis.

Let's go straight to correspondent Ellison Barber, who is in Nassau tonight. Ellison, what can you tell us tonight?

ELLISON BARBER, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Martha. So, this is one of the private airports in Nassau, where we have seen reunions happen.  People, finally, after days trapped on Abaco Island, trapped in Grand Bahama, they have made it here.

Behind me, you can hear the helicopter on the other side of this bay. This bay inside here is where they have been bringing people, they come off of the helicopter on the other side. They come through this area to get medical treatment. Many are then put in ambulances and taken to hospitals in town for further treatment.

One person I met today told me it was like a nightmare when she left her home in Abaco. Another woman told me that once the water finally receded after she had spent 15 hours huddled in a corner, hoping to avoid some of the debris coming into her home, her sister said there was a dead body on their yard, they didn't know what to do, so they grabbed a bed sheet and covered it up waiting for the authorities to come and perhaps, get it.

That's what we keep hearing from people. They keep saying that there are bodies that there are so many more deaths than we know. One woman alone, I met today, Martha, told me, 32 members of her family were still missing.  She came to this airport hoping for some indication of where any of them were. When we spoke to her, she still was waiting to try and getting answers. Martha?

MACCALLUM: Oh, we hope she's reunited with some of them. Thank you very much, Ellison Barber.

Storm chaser Josh Morgerman has survived the inner core of nearly 50 hurricanes. But he describes this one as "Nuclear grade." And notes that whole neighborhoods were swept by this surge higher than anything in memory. He's here with his harrowing story in moments.

But first, let's go to breaking news correspondent Trace Gallagher, who has the back story tonight. Hi, Trace.

TRACE GALLAGHER, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Martha. As the Cat 5 hurricane was bearing down on Great Abaco Island, hurricane chaser Josh Morgerman wrote to his 80,000 Twitter followers, "I feel like a rocket is about to take off," and "This is going to get ugly." He was right on both counts.

He also reported the schoolhouse where he was staying was near the hurricanes eyewall. In other words, where the winds are the highest and most destructive. He relayed to his followers how the children were being moved to a safe space and being wrapped in blankets.

But then, Morgerman, social media play-by-play went dark for two days.  During which time, Dorian crushed the Bahamas with 185-mile per hour winds.  But while the winds were moving at speeds of a NASCAR vehicle, the hurricane itself was mercilessly stalled, and the islands were pummeled for days. Many feared that Josh Morgerman didn't make it.

Then, on Tuesday evening, his Twitter feed came back online with this quote, "Yep, I'm alive. By far, the most intense cyclone I've witnessed in 28 years of chasing. Thought I was playing it safe by riding it out in a solid-concrete school on a hill in Marsh Harbour. Thought wrong."

He then compared the storm to being in a washing machine during maximum winds, and that description, as you said, from a man who's seen the inner core of four dozen hurricanes, by choice, not smart you say, maybe, but he's also a Harvard educated historian who worked in the film industry and started his own branding and advertising company.

Apparently, generating glitz and glam, and got nothing on natural forces of nature. And if you ever find yourself evacuating a storm, Josh Morgerman is the guy coming the other way, followed by Steve Harrigan. Martha.

MACCALLUM: And that is for sure. Trace, thank you very much. He's joining me now, Josh Morgerman, -- storm chaser, you heard from the science channels Hurricane Man, which premieres September 15, at 9:00.

Josh, tell me about this. What was this like?

JOSH MORGERMAN, STORM CHASER: Unbelievable. I mean, it was, yes, I've been in so many hurricanes and I get accustomed to them on occasion. But this thing had sustained winds of 185 miles an hour. Just to put that into perspective, that's not just Cat 5 that's way into Cat 5.

So, Hurricane Michael, which devastated the Florida Panhandle in October was 160. So, this was a whole magnitude beyond that. What that means is when you're in solid-concrete building, you're not even safe.

We were in a school, which was a designated shelter. And the wind was so intense that actually some of the concrete was smashed, and at the height of the storm, you couldn't see anything. Everything was white, all you heard was crashing. The windows were blowing and we're holding furniture against the shutters to keep them from caving in. We barely made it to the eye, which is the calm center.

And then when we came outside, the cars in the parking lot just thrown every direction mangled like they'd been in a blender. This all from the force of the wind. And we had to relocate to another building before the backside came.

MACCALLUM: Well, these folks were lucky that you were with them. Because you knew, when you were in the eye, did you have a sense of how much time you might have in that eye?

MORGERMAN: That's a -- it's a great question. No, and I'll tell you, I was -- you know, I was really spooked. We were trying to decide, OK, do we make a run for another building or do we stay put?

MACCALLUM: Yes.

MORGERMAN: And one of the factors is how much time do we have, and I did not want to be caught out in this 185-mile an hour winds. Because some folks who were caught out in it were killed by flying debris.

So, we didn't know, and we had to take a gamble, and we drove, we all piled into three cars. One of which was mine because those are the only three that we're working. Thank God we had working cars, we managed to get a mile away to a government building we rode it out.

But that was a factor, in one side we wanted to just stay put because I did not want to be caught out in that --

(CROSSTALK)

MACCALLUM: Yes, that's a big gamble to say to, and there were small children with you.

MORGERMAN: Yes.

MACCALLUM: And so, you said, you know, you all were wrapping the children in blankets to keep them safe.

MORGERMAN: So, at the height of the storm when the windows started -- the boards blew off the windows, the shutter started to cave in, we're holding chairs against the windows. And I realized that those, those shutters blew in, we were going to have a 185-mile an hour, basically, the room is going to become a shooting gallery.

So, I thought, OK, the kids, like, we wrapped them in blankets. I've been in so many emergencies like this, not this bad but ones like this and I've just -- I know exactly what to do. So, I said, get the kids away from windows, wrap them in blankets, and we put them under a table. So, even if like all hell broke loose inside the room, kids would probably be safe.

MACCALLUM: So, what did you see when it -- when it was over?

MORGERMAN: Whole areas of the city are just flattened, just piles of rubble. There's near that government complex where many people took refuge during the eye. That whole area -- that's a big low-lying area called the Mud and The Pigeon Pea.

These are two neighborhoods. They're very poor neighborhoods, and they're very low-lying. They got swept by this giant storm surge so that nothing was left. Some folks managed to swim out and make it to the government center. A lot of people didn't.

MACCALLUM: They swim?

MORGERMAN: And -- yes, and in those winds too. And a lot of people came with traumatic injuries. The ones who didn't make it are the ones who are still missing.

MACCALLUM: I mean, it is just -- it's unbelievable, and we -- you know, we all watched it -- you know, everyone thinks that it's going to be coming over to our coast and watching this thing. And all the reports is just sitting there. Sitting there for 36 hours.

How do you psychologically deal with the fact that it is not leaving for 36 hours? That's unheard of.

MORGERMAN: Yes, that was the interesting thing about this, it just wouldn't go. You know, Hurricane Michael, again, the one that hit the Florida Panhandle, we had two hours of violent winds and anything lifted out, and then, the next morning it was sunny and hot.

This one, after the core of the hurricane passed, the really scary stuff, two solid days of tropical storm conditions. Meaning, heavy rain, really gusty winds. And imagine the insult on injury to victims who are just like just cooked up in these hot, like dark, you know, rooms inside a building, waiting for this --

(CROSSTALK)

MACCALLUM: It was just going crazy. I mean, I can't imagine.

MORGERMAN: I think it was emotionally -- I think it just made it so much worse for the victims, absolutely. Yes, know, that was finally, the third day afterward that finally, the Sun came out.

MACCALLUM: Josh, you know, I know you disappeared from your very active Twitter feed for a while. And your friends and your followers were really concerned that you might have been one of the casualties of this. So, we're glad that you're OK, and thanks for coming in to talk to us, and we're just going to keep getting the word out to these people.

They need so many supplies and thank goodness, the U.S. government and the Coast Guard are doing everything they can to help them. Josh, thank you very much.

MORGERMAN: My pleasure. Thank you.

MACCALLUM: Good to meet you.

So, when we come back, combat veteran Joey Jones says the New York Times does not have the story straight on their assessment of the period during the assault weapons ban, and what happened right after.

ANNOUNCER: This program is brought to you by all-day, all-night protection from frequent heartburn with Nexium 24HR.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BETO O'ROURKE (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I want to be really clear that that's exactly what we're going to do. Americans will who -- own AR-15s, AK-47s will have to sell them to the government.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MACCALLUM: So that didn't go over too well with a lot of Americans. The battle over gun confiscation in America is heating up. And as we showed you last night in New York Times op-ed that was written by a Stanford Law Professor and his student argued in their opinion that the 1994 assault weapons ban "really did work."

"In the 15 years since the band ended, the trajectory of gun massacres has been sharply upward, largely tracking the growth of ownership in military- style weapons and high capacity magazines." My next guest says that that is not true and he is here to tell us why.

Joey Jones is a retired U.S. Marine Corps bomb technician who served to combat missions and suffered a life-changing injury in 2010 when an IED incident resulted in the loss of both of his legs. He is now a Fox News Contributor. Joey, good to see you tonight.

JOEY JONES, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: Thanks for having me on.

MACCALLUM: So you watched that segment that we did last night.

JONES: I do.

MACCALLUM: We talked to Sean Parnell about it. And you say that is not accurate. Why?

JONES: It's not just that it's not accurate, it's that you're not comparing the same thing. And so the point now is there 15 to 20 million, what would be considered assault weapons in this country. Those are complete rifles that are known to have been produced.

MACCALLUM: And those -- that number has gone up dramatically.

JONES: We're going to probably produce half a million this year and subsequently that number will continue to rise before a ban would even get put into place. The problem is there were 20 million assault weapons when the first ban was put into place. They were substantially less. But also what's happened in that time is social media, right, Facebook.

We have an epidemic of young people killing themselves and killing others and we don't know exactly why they're doing that. That's as much of an epidemic as anything else.

MACCALLUM: Absolutely.

JONES: And so when we cover these stories, and for weeks, we have this in rage discussion about whether we should ban a certain type of gun, we're feeding that same fire that is causing this to happen to begin with. We're feeding into that. We're giving the note, right? We might not put a name out there but we're giving it attention.

MACCALLUM: Understood. And you say there's so many of them that it would be nearly impossible --

JONES: It would be.

MACCALLUM: -- to get any handle on them. But here's the problem that I think, you know, both sides of this debate need to sort of, you know, talk to each other about. And let's put this up on the screen. It's the amount of people that these -- and we're not talking about law-abiding gun owners, we are talking about crazy people who get their hands on these weapons and use them, and they -- they're the killer. Obviously, they pull the trigger. And take a look at this. In Dayton, you had nine people killed in 30 seconds.

JONES: Yes.

MACCALLUM: In Parkland, you had 17 children killed in six minutes. In Las Vegas, 58 people killed in ten minutes. That is an astonishing --

JONES: In Oklahoma City, you had hundreds of people die in seconds --

MACCALLUM: With a bomb.

JONES: -- which happened during the assault weapons ban.

MACCALLUM: We don't want either of these things to happen.

JONES: You're right. You're right. Everything to do with the bomb is illegal today. My point is if we implemented an assault weapons ban, much like the universal background checks or Obama's famous pay your fair share, it's a talking point that sounds really good. But if you don't understand what that means and what you would need for it to be effective, then you're a politician out there looking for votes and trying to create division.

MACCALLUM: I hear you.

JONES: And the point with banning --

MACCALLUM: You're saying it's not practical. It couldn't be done.

JONES: It's not that it's not practical, it's that you have to be honest about it. If you did the assault weapons ban that is being proposed, the first thing you'd have to do is grandfather in 20 million guns. So the first thing that would happen is you would either have to institute a version of background checks which is complicit with a registry, which is another constitutional argument.

Should the government know everything I own and when I owned it and how I owned it and what it is?

MACCALLUM: Why -- let me just ask you this then. Why would you not -- why would you not want the government to know what you own?

JONES: When it comes to weapons?

MACCALLUM: Yes. I mean, why? Tell me why you feel that's an invasion of your privacy.

JONES: I was at JFK a few weeks ago, and I got stuck because someone had my official passport in Iraq, turning it into an Iraqi embassy. And for a solid ten minutes, I was a terrorist at JFK. And I'm pretty well known in politics at least. I mean, even the law enforcement officer that stopped me knew who I was in real life.

MACCALLUM: Yes, absolutely.

JONES: And so you have Cliven Bundy, that's in a stand down. You have things like that happened where the government may not be on the right side of the argument, and I don't want to find out when they show up at my house. And that's a big problem for me.

MACCALLUM: So tell me what your solution is. You know, we -- I mean, we all agree, it is -- you know, these crazed individuals are the heart of the problem.

JONES: My problem is --

MACCALLUM: So what would you recommend to try to stop this?

JONES: Why don't we have bombings anymore if all the materials there and the information is more prevalent? Because when we finally had enough bombings, right, we stood up an entire department of Homeland Security. We made sure that different --

MACCALLUM: Understood, but I'm asking -- I'm asking what do you do about these incidents?

JONES: Let me finish on this explanation and you'll hear it.

MACCALLUM: OK.

JONES: Well, we have to point our compass in the right direction.

MACCALLUM: OK.

JONES: We have to take everything into account. There are studies that show that the pass of Roe versus Wade made the country safer, right. But what they don't take into account is that New York City crackdown on crime, that's a million of the country right there.

MACCALLUM: But I'm asking you very specifically in terms of the kinds of killings that we're seeing now, because we all remember the Oklahoma bombing. So now the issue is this kind of --

JONES: Absolutely.

MACCALLUM: -- is this. Give me one thing that you would do to try to get your arms around this problem and end it because no one wants to see any more of these children killed. What would you do?

JONES: There's 100 things I would do. The first thing is that the current system we have, we haven't shown that we can do it. If you go in for to buy gun in the state of Georgia or any state, and you put in a background check, you wait three days.

At the end of those three days, if the ATF or the background check system hasn't responded to you, that gun store owner can go ahead and release that weapon to you. So even though we have a background check system in place, we don't use it properly.

MACCALLUM: So tighten that up.

JONES: That's just an easy thing. But my point is that it's a false equivalency to say, well, you don't support the assault weapons ban, so tell me what you would do. Well, that's a false equivalency, because what I can tell you is that simply banning assault weapons the way they were proposed today, wouldn't work.

MACCALLUM: All right, but I still haven't heard what you would do. How you would -- how you would -- how -- and I'm not -- I'm not in favor or not in favor of the assault weapons ban, by the way. I'm having a discussion about what's going on and how tragic it is and we need to figure out. So maybe it's mental health.

JONES: In this country --

MACCALLUM: I think there should be police officers in every school in America. If you ask me that question, I would say, I want a security guard who is armed at every school in America. Let's start there. Do you agree with that?

JONES: Absolutely. But that's up to a local municipality to make that choice and spend their money on, right?

MACCALLUM: They have to do it, absolutely.

JONES: We can't ask D.C. to put a police officer in every school across the country. And the problem is we have 330 million people in this country, a lot more when you count people that are here illegally, right, and we have a dozen people that are wreaking havoc on us, killing about as many people as Timothy McVeigh did in a day.

And you mean to tell me that the law enforcement agencies we have can't crack down on that, that the systems we have in place can't do it. Prove me that you're using those correctly. And it's up to you about restricting --

MACCALLUM: Well, we that law enforcement failed in Florida, in Parkland.  We know that for sure.

JONES: And that's the problem. And that's the problem.

MACCALLUM: Absolutely. I agree with you 100 percent.

JONES: It's these talking point proposals that will affect law-abiding citizens can be proven to be effective.

MACCALLUM: Joey, thank you very much.

JONES: Absolutely.

MACCALLUM: Good to have you here tonight. Coming up, House Democrats hit a brick wall with the Mueller investigation, then they wanted to impeach the president for racism, and is now it's profiting off taxpayers at his hotels. So exactly what are the rules there? THE STORY investigates coming up next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MACCALLUM: So Democrats kicking off a new session in Congress with a probe that they believe could possibly lead to impeachment proceedings. After the Mueller probe dead-ended, the focus then, as you remember, turn to racism. And now an oldie is back on the front burner whether President Trump is profiting off of the presidency.

Jason Chaffetz, former Oversight Committee Chairman, Fox News Contributor and author of Power Grab, and Basil Smikle is Executive Director of the New York Democratic Party and former aide to Hillary Clinton.

So quick question, you know, what are the rules here? So Mike Pence goes and stays at Doonbeg, cost $13,000 an hour for the plane, and they're saying the president is profiting off that. Is that legal? Is it not legal?

JASON CHAFFETZ, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: Largely untested in the law, the Trump Organization is 2-0 in the courts. It's a bad look. I would hope that the chief of staff would actually put out a directive say, nobody can stay at a Trump Organization facility if you're in the U.S. government. If you're in a political organization or something else, hey, have at it.

MACCALLUM: So you say -- but you know, it's like not in the President's DNA. Once he hears someone is going somewhere, he's like, you have to stay at my place and he did the same thing with the G7. Do you -- but the question is, you know, is he going to profit off it? Is there a way to compartmentalize that and say, you know, this money goes into this fund?  You can't touch it till you're not president anymore?

BASIL SMIKLE, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, NEW YORK DEMOCRATIC PARTY: Yes, I don't know that you can do any of those things, quite frankly. And the way in which some of the money is allocated, I don't know if you want the president going in and saying put it here, put it here.

So -- and I know what your teas -- in your teas you talked about a lot of things that the Democrats might be doing this for. It's accountability by and large. The President is not doing anything that we're used to in terms of political norms. Some people like that, some folks are very uncomfortable with it. So it's accountability. It's trying to get to the bottom of what he should be doing and should be staying away from.

CHAFFETZ: But remember -- but remember that GSA and the Trump Organization came to an agreement where any profit from any foreign entity that stays at a Trump facility is then that profit is then paid back to the government.  Donald Trump has bent over backwards here.

And what is the opportunity costs? Are you kidding me? They want to know how much money you spent at the minibar at a hotel. That's what Jerry Adler and Elijah Cummings are worried about? Come on.

SMIKLE: Well, what they're -- what they're trying to figure out is not just the money, it's the influence. That piece right there is probably the most important. So it's not just them staying at the hotel and paying for the -- paying for peanuts at the minibar, it's now are these folks going to -- going to treat us favorably or not, and is the president --

MACCALLUM: Did you have the same questions about the Clinton Foundation because there are similar issues.

SMIKLE: Now, I actually did work for the Clinton Foundation, and I actually don't believe that the same thing is true here. Number one, because they weren't in the White House at the time, number one. Number two --

MACCALLUM: But she was Secretary of State.

SMIKLE: She was Secretary of State, but if you think about what the Clinton Foundation did, they were actually doing works in other countries like fighting AIDS and HIV. Those are trips that I actually went on to do that.

(CROSSTALK)

CHAFFETZ: Just because there are good things --

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's a record of it. But this is accountability, right? There's record of what that money was used for, there's a record of the medicine and the good works that the staff did on the ground in those countries. And so --

(CROSSTALK)

CHAFFETZ: But that's why you have the Uranium One problem that has not been fully --

(CROSSTALK)

MACCALLUMR: All right. Let me go back to this. So, what do you think of much of the president -- so should he not -- should he say never mind, G7 should not be at the Doral, put it anywhere you want?

CHAFFETZ: I just think it's a bad look.

MACCALLUM: Yes.

CHAFFETZ: Look, he's given up all his salary, he's losing lots of money by doing his government service. Don't say at a Trump organization facility. Just don't do it. Stay at the Radisson or the Marriott or Corporate at least, you know. I mean, dudes, you can stay at a Marriott, it's a good U.S. company.

(CROSSTALK)

MACCALLUM: I can just say Emmanuel Macron at the Radisson. That's going to go over great.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, the Hampton Inn. The Hampton Inn is just a fine thing.

MACCALLUM: I like the Hampton Inn. I'm a big fan.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Exactly.

CHAFFETZ: Holiday Inn they'll get a good night rest.

MACCALLUM: Thank you, guys. There you go. Thank you, guys.

A dire warning from the transportation union to American Airlines to be prepared for the bloodiest, ugliest battle that the United States labor movement ever saw. Then one of its members charged with sabotaging a 737 before takeoff with 150 people on board, that's next.

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JOHN SAMUELSEN, PRESIDENT, TRANSPORT WORKERS UNION: We are going to engage in absolutely vicious strike action against American Airlines, for the likes of which you've never seen.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SAMUELSEN: I stand here to tell you in front of this whole room in front of everybody, anybody who is listening that you are not going to get what you want. And if this erupts into the bloodiest, ugliest battle that the United States labor movement ever saw, that's what's going to happen. You are already profitable enough.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MACCALLUM: That's something else. So that dire threat that came earlier this year from the president of the Transport Workers Union at a listening event that was hosted by one of the top executives at American Airlines.

Now a member of that union has been arrested and charged with sabotaging a Boeing 737 going into the wires disconnecting key flight controls right before it was scheduled for takeoff. A 150 passengers were on board.

Chief breaking news correspondent Trace Gallagher has listened to all the details here and he joins us now this evening. Hi, Trace.

GALLAGHER: Hi, Martha. American flight 2034 scheduled to fly from Miami to Nassau, Bahamas back in mid-July. But when the pilots were powering up the engines getting ready for taxi an error light came on and they took the jet back to the gate.

Then during inspection, a mechanic found that a tube in the plane's navigation system had been deliberately obstructed with foam, which means the pilots would not have known the aircraft speed, pitch, and other critical data.

After reviewing surveillance footage federal air marshal, a man with a limp getting out of a truck and accessing the 737's navigation compartment for roughly seven minutes. They quickly seized on Abdul-Majeed Marouf Ahmed Alani whose been a mechanic at American Airlines for 31 years.

Court records say Alani told investigators that, quote, "his intention was not to cause harm to the aircraft or its passengers. Instead, he claims he wanted the jet taken out of service so he could get over time." He Also admits that he's upset over stalled contract negotiations between the 12,000-employee mechanics union and the airline. And the dispute has been costing him money.

It's no secret the negotiations have resulted in ugly threats and bitter legal battles, but the union said it is shocked by the allegations, quoting ere. "If these allegations of sabotage are true, they are outrageous and indefensible and we fully condemn such action. Our mechanics are highly trained professionals who are dedicated to performing at the highest standards in the industry and we will not tolerate anything less."

And aviation experts will tell you that even if the suspect didn't intent to harm anyone, in recent years at least two airplane crashes have resulted in part from pilots not knowing the speed or the pitch of the aircraft.

Alani is expected to be indicted on a sabotage related charged by a federal grand jury. American Airlines for its part says, it has an unwavering commitment to safety and is taking the matter very seriously. Martha?

MACCALLUM: Quite the story. Thank you, Trace. Joining me now, Anthony Roman, an FAA licensed commercial pilot and adjunct flight instructor at the State University of New York. Anthony, good to have you here tonight. What do you make of this?

ANTHONY ROMAN, COMMERCIAL PILOT: This is a terribly frightening situation. I mean, any passenger who was on board that plane and the pilots themselves would be terribly disturbed by what happened.

They actually reached the active runway, started powering up the aircraft and that's when they first luckily and thankfully receive the warning that the flight, the air data module which provides information concerning airspeed, the aircraft's pitch in relation to the horizon, and other critical flight data that's absolutely necessary to keep the plane under control.

They realize there was a problem, return to the terminal, and the sabotage was discovered.

MACCALLUM: I mean, obviously, you know, as you say, those are critical factors to flying the plane. So, the suggestion from this suspect that he thought that he wasn't going to harm anyone if this plane got off the ground, what do you say to that?

ROMAN: Ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous. When anyone tampers or sabotages an aircraft, there is always the risk of loss of life or total loss of the aircraft, particularly an air data module which is critical to the safety of flight.

MACCALLUM: So, you saw, you heard that really bold statement from the union representative in the beginning there, and that of course raises eyebrows when then you have a sabotage incident happening afterwards. They say that there is absolutely no connection? What do you think about all that?

ROMAN: Well, there is always some activity, sabotage, destruction of property, usually to noncritical infrastructure by a few disgruntled union members. Most union members are honest, hardworking people making a living taking care of their families.

But a union leader doing that? It can create individuals and encourage some individuals who either are mentally disturbed or terribly disgruntled to take a ridiculous action like this.

MACCALLUM: There's other things that are coming out about his background, another job that he had. I also read at some point he was concerned about bankruptcy, personal bankruptcy which, of course is not a crime in and of itself, but it might go to some of the motivation here. What else do you know about him?

ROMAN: Well, there seems to be problems along his entire career. There are some allegations and some information that he was employed by Alaska Airlines from '98 to 2008 and during his tenure there he made at least three -- at least it's alleged, that he made three critical errors during maintenance procedures on the aircraft flight systems, which would cause terrible problems for the pilot.

MACCALLUM: Is that a fireable offense?

ROMAN: Yes.

MACCALLUM: I mean, three --

ROMAN: Well, he received warnings and then he was terminated and had the audacity to file a discrimination suit after that which according to the records was unsuccessful.

MACCALLUM: Should people feel unsafe by the story about what's happening around these aircrafts before takeoff and who's allowed in there?

ROMAN: Well it is a frightening story but I don't think that the flying public has to feel unsafe. The record of the airline safety speaks for itself. The cross-checks, the professionalism of pilot training.

MACCALLUM: Yes. It's an exceptional record.

ROMAN: It all provides very high levels of safety.

MACCALLUM: Pilot and expert, Anthony Roman, thank you very much.

ROMAN: My pleasure.

MACCALLUM: Good to have you here tonight. So, coming up next, what did the lawyer for Brett Kavanaugh's accuser mean when she said this?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DEBRA KATZ, CHRISTINE BLASEY FORD'S ATTORNEY: He will always have an asterisk next to his name. When he takes a scalpel to Roe v. Wade, we will know who he is, we know his character, we know what motivates him, and that was part of what motivated Christine.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MACCALLUM: And that was part of what motivated Christine, she says. Does that put this story and her credibility back in question? Our ladies' night panel up next.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MACCALLUM: Is this about Roe v. Wade, is this about people who initially right off the bat said they wanted to see you never take a spot on the Supreme Court? Where is this all coming from?

BRETT KAVANAUGH, ASSOCIATE JUSTICE, UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT: I just want a fair process where I can be heard.

MACCALLUM: You don't have any thoughts on what -- where this is coming from?

KAVANAUGH: I just want a fair process where I can be heard.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MACCALLUM: So, it has now been one year, can you believe it, since Christine Blasey Ford came forward with bombshell allegations of sexual misconduct that nearly derailed Justice Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation to the Supreme Court.

Now in a newly surfaced video, her attorney who became quite well known at that time, Debra Katz admitted that the fight was motivated at least in part by Roe v. Wade. Watch this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KATZ: I believe that Christine's testimony brought about more good than the harm misogynist Republicans caused by allowing Kavanaugh on the court.

He will always have an asterisk next to his name. When he takes a scalpel to Roe v. Wade, we will know who he is, we know his character, that we know what motivates him. And that was part of what motivated Christine.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MACCALLUM: And that was part of what motivated Christine. Very interesting, right? Here now for ladies' night, Gerri Willis, Lisa Boothe, and Jessica Tarlov. Because we were all told that the thing that motivate Christine was the horrible thing that happened to her when she was in high school at a party at a place that she couldn't remember and said that people were there who witnessed it, who nobody -- nobody could corroborate her story.

And that was part of the reason it fell, Lisa. But obviously, there was another motive here.

LISA BOOTHE, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: Well, Deborah Katz is a resistor. She had told ABC at an anti-Trump rally we will resist. In fact, all of the attorneys that these accusers had acquired all are Democratic donors and Democrat attorneys.

But I think it further undermines and erodes any credibility Christine Ford ever had. I mean, by the time the Washington Post even went to print with her original story she had already given multiple versions of the event. She lied about her fear of flying, she lied about the reason why her and her husband had a second door in their house.

She also her own best friend Leland Kaiser also denied being an eyewitness and then later reportedly told the FBI that she felt pressured by Christine Ford's friends to change her story. So, I do not think Christine -- Christine Ford has never had credibility in my eyes, but this further erodes whatever she had.

MACCALLUM: Well, it does, you know, it also reminded me and she -- this attorney Debra Katz also said, "we must ponder the very real possibility that Dr. Ford had she not come from the same background, the same race, the same class, the same country club as Brett Kavanaugh, basically she would not have been -- she would have been given this opportunity, which is interesting given the fact, Jessica, that Dianne Feinstein sat on this allegation for such a long time.

And then decided, you know, when there was all of this sort of surfacing that it was time to bring this forward at the very last minute.

JESSICA TARLOV, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: Well, that was Christine Ford's wish, right? Dr. Ford had said from the get-go that she went to her congresswoman and then it got kicked up to Dianne Feinstein and she said I am not interested in what ended up happening to her.

MACCALLUM: Absolutely.

TARLOV: Because I want to just make you aware of the fact that this man who may very well turn out -- this is when the list just existed, he hadn't even been selected and a lot people thought it was going to be Amy Coney Barrett, first of all. He might be picked and I want you to know what his background information.

When I saw Debra Katz do that, I was just thinking I wonder what Dr. Ford thinks about this, because I believe having watch her testimony which people on both sides of the aisle found credible. Our own Judge Napolitano said he found Dr. Ford credible and Brett Kavanaugh edible.

There President of the United States of America, remember, Donald Trump even said that he thought that she gave very compelling testimony.

I'm curious as to what she thinks about that because I think that she would return to her original story which is, I just wanted to put up a warning signal, that this is not a person who I believe should have one of the most important job in the world.

(CROSSTALK)

MACCALLUM: So, I mean, the challenge, she was co-opted by people who wanted to turn it into a political event and Dianne Feinstein push that, you know, forward as you say against her original will. So, do you think, Gerri, that she was used by people who wanted to make a statement about Roe v. Wade?

GERRI WILLIS, FOX BUSINESS NETWORK ANCHOR: I always thought that was a possibility. And of course, any time you say Roe v. Wade it's like yelling fire in a theater, I mean, the whole world blows up, and this whole idea that this could even been a possibility that she would have used this Roe v. Wade to bring this up? This is like the level of civility in this country has virtually disappeared, gone through the floor and that's what I find so concerning right now. We're always arguing we're never coming to consensus.

MACCALLUM: All right. Let's talk about Marianne Williamson who had the audacity to say that she was praying for the people who were in the path of the hurricane. She got mocked on Twitter for this. She originally said, you know, "The Bahamas, Florida, Georgia, and Carolinas may they all be in our prayers now. Millions of us seen Dorian turn away from land, it's not a wacky idea, it's a creative use of the power of the mind."

You know, she went on to say that she is concerned, basically, that other candidates in the Democrat Party have alienated people who believe in prayer. She said I grew up in Texas, you know, and to me this is a very -- this is a normal thing to suggest that perhaps we should all pray for these people to be safe in the path of this. Why is that so derided, Jessica?

TARLOV: So, I think there are two kinds of prayer at work here. So, there is the pray for the people who have been affected, which I think that we can all get on board however that you pray or you think of people spiritually traditionally.

But then I think people were taking issue with the idea that you could have by the power -- harnessing the power of our minds we could've change the course of it. The Democrat Party right now, especially with what's going on with gun violence in this country, has a very difficult time with the thoughts and prayers argument, right? That's what we feel that we get from Republicans all the time instead of meaningful change on gun control issues.

MACCALLUM: It's like, but praying in general is considered something that is weird, --

(CROSSTALK)

TARLOV: But I don't --

MACCALLUM: -- I think. I mean, I don't understand it, personally. I mean, I think that the idea that -- you know, Marianne Williamson actually re- tweeted FDR's prayer the night before D-Day, and I thought would that ever happen? You know, would there ever be a president who would say to the whole nation, OK, I need to bring you altogether, we are all going to pray together.

And she is saying if Democrats don't start recognizing the fact that a lot of people in this country would like that, that they are going to lose. That's what she said.

WILLIS: Look, I'm from the south. I don't understand the negative reaction against prayer. I know churches and communities all over this country have done such positive things for the people who are members, the people who are not members.

My own mother who worked in hospice care for years as a volunteer told me over and over again about the power of prayer for those patients that she worked with. That the kinds of things that could happen to her were astonishing. So, to dismiss this belief is fundamentally wrong in space.

MACCALLUM: Lisa?

BOOTHE: Well, I think there's going to be a large portion of Evangelical Christians that will never vote for Democrats, primary for the reason of abortions which we talked about earlier that they view as murder.

But I will say regarding the power of prayer, it is real. I mean, why do you think we often hear with in times of a hurricane, or in a mass shooting, what do people say when they are being interviewed. They said, I prayed to God to save me. I prayed for my life. I prayed to God.

So, if prayer isn't powerful, then why is it such a crisis and dire situation do they turn to God? So, I do think that prayer is incredibly powerful. I also wish I could say prayer as opposed to keeping saying payer.

MACCALLUM: So, speaking of the power of prayer and positivity, Gerri Willis is the embodiment of that around here. And we all prayed for you during your bout with breast cancer and you revealed in an editorial this morning that you just had a recent scare as well.

WILLIS: So, it wasn't breast cancer, so that's not what I was facing. It was precancer cells on my cervix, and of course this was revealed in a routine test that I took. We took care of it, I had a biopsy, I had a surgery. In surgery we remove those cancer cells and we took a look around and there were no more cancer cells. So that is very good news indeed.

But I have to tell you, all of that brought me right back to the diagnosis of breast cancer, stage three lobular, and the fear and the anxiety, and knowing this one this weekend and I would be seeing so many women who have been impacted and hear so many stories from people I work with, from guards at the at the New York Stock Exchange tell me about their mother, their sister who have died of breast cancer, it just took me right back there and I feel even more committed.

MACCALLUM: Well, I lost my mom to breast cancer five years ago and I have long been a participant in the common race. And I attach myself to you and your -- our whole group here when we started running. So, I'm going to run, my daughter is going to run, you know, my sisters will probably be there as well. It's a wonderful event that we are so proud to support, Gerri.

WILLIS: Thank you, thank you. I'm so glad you will be there.

MACCALLUM: How about you guys? Were you going to get --

(CROSSTALK)

BOOTHE: I will go.

WILLIS: We've got you next year.

MACCALLUM: yes. Next year.

TARLOV: Exactly next year. And I don't need to see my uncle anyway.

MACCALLUM: You all look pretty in your pink today. Thank you so much for coming. More of The Story coming up next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MACCALLUM: Brand new episode of the Untold Story podcast. It's going to be posted on Monday. And it's one you don't want to miss. It features General James Mattis. Our candid conversation. He talks about his 40 years of service to America, what he has learned about leadership and where he sees this country heading.

You can subscribe to the Untold Story podcast at foxnewspodcast.com or wherever you listen. That is "The Story" of Friday, September 6, 2019. But as always, you know "The Story" just keeps going on and on and on. So, we will see you back here Monday night at 7 o'clock. Have a great weekend, everybody.

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