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Whistleblower: WH Officials Said They Were "Directed" By WH Lawyers To Move Call Transcript From Usual Storage System To Highly Classified One; Whistleblower: Trump Tried To Get Ukraine To Interfere In Election, And White House Tried To Cover It Up; Whistleblower Said "Deeply Disturbed" WH Officials Interviewed To "Lock Down" Records Of Ukraine Call; DOJ Ignored Additional Allegations In Considering Whether DNI Could Share Complaint With Congress. Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired September 26, 2019 - 12:30   ET

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

[12:30:00] GLORIA BORGER, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST: -- specifically, so I don't know what the answer is.

JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN CHIEF LEGAL ANALYST: Well, we had a very unusual event in the past two days, which is the voluntary release of the inspector general's reports and the voluntary release of the partial transcript of the conversation with the president of Ukraine.

However, if you look at everything else the White House has done since the Democrats took the House, they have fought disclosure. And I think as -- this document is a road map to further investigation of the White House. Who were the White House lawyers who directed that these transcripts be hidden? Who told them to do that?

BORGER: Right.

TOOBIN: How is the House of Representatives going to find that out if the White House refuses to cooperate?

BORGER: And does it show a consciousness of guilt if you would say on the part of the White House lawyers who felt the need to hide something.

TOOBIN: Well, I mean it depends who ultimately gave the instruction.

BORGER: Right.

TOOBIN: The key allegation here is that everybody at the White House knew that these calls with the president of Ukraine were wrong, they were damaging, they were incriminating so they tried to hide them. That's consciousness of guilt.

If it happened, and I question given how the interactions have worked between the House of Representatives and the White House whether the House will be able to get the information to prove or disprove that.

DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Can I just underscore one thing that you just said, because we've been watching this hearing which was not easy to watch, even this document which is very well written and pretty clear, has a lot of legalities and names that we haven't heard.

What you just said is really the key. The allegation is that not only did the President do something that was untoward maybe even illegal, that there are people in the White House who saw that try to cover it up, A, that's allegation A.

And B, the other important subtext here is that people knew that that was bad, therefore they were putting phone calls into people like the whistleblower saying, what is going on? It was a 911 phone call from inside the White House saying this is bad.

(CROSSTALK)

ASHA RANGAPPA, CNN LEGAL AND NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: And Dana this is why I think the committee was so focused on procedure today. Yes we have this complaint, but the sheer scope of the number of people that are involved and that, you know, who knows what's happening with other conversations or records or notes that in other context, there could be other whistleblowers.

And basically as it stands right now, the position of the executive branch would effectively block any of those whistleblowers from even getting past the IC IG, because basically the IG is saying, I understand the position to be that anything the President does is outside of the intelligence community and therefore not within my jurisdiction.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: You know, John, the thing is too beyond the process. Let's get to the substance for a second. The central question of 2016 was, did Russia interfere in the U.S. election? Yes, it did. Did the President welcome that, right, the whole Mueller report?

In this case, you have two things that stand out to me. One, the President, and by the way, Maguire said that the transcript as released by the White House is, in his words, in alignment with the complaint. That was the farthest he would go to say in effect this is credible this complaint there. The central thing here is the President participating in and encouraging such.

Not just accepting or turning a blind eye or denying, but actively engaging in and in two ways, one, denying military aid again, that's the allegation. Two, denying meetings and therefore high level contacts which, of course, important to a country. Ukraine, by the way, is being invaded by Russia today and people are dying today by the thousands.

I mean, that qualitative change here is enormous. And just one more point I would say this, because this is also in a complaint. The President clearly still does not believe that Russia interfered in 2016.

BORGER: No, no.

SCIUTTO: Because in these calls, he is pushing Ukraine, a conspiracy theory in effect that it was really Ukraine that did it, and that's where the DNC server is. That's remarkable two and a half years into the presidency.

JOHN KING, CNN HOST: Two and a half years. So as we try to investigate this, number one, again, the Democrats in Congress say they will go forward. Number two, there's a huge question about whether Republicans will give them any assistance at least to say there are serious allegations here, we should air them out.

I would note the President's party controls the Senate, it would be pretty easy, a couple of hours call people in, have them raise their hand, take an oath, is this true. If you're convinced this is a partisan document, it could be over in a couple of hours. That won't happen in this town, though.

The other question is, Mr. Maguire said, trying to defend his conduct. The Democrats say the law required him to immediately turn this over to Congress. He tried to defend his conduct. He said, I had to deal with the unprecedented issue, this was the President. Was there a privilege? And I did refer it to the Justice Department.

The question is, again, in the context of Attorney General Bill Barr and the Muller report, we saw him putting his thumb on the scale in favor of the President. CNN's Evan Perez has some new reporting that will raise questions about how these issues were handled at the Department of Justice. Evan?

EVAN PEREZ, CNN SENIOR JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Right, John. Look, the Justice Department says that this is a closed issue, right? They provided a lot of information yesterday, including a briefing on what exactly went into their legal analysis of this complaint.

But we've now seen, you know, some -- a new document that was posted online today by the Office of Legal Counsel. And what it shows us is that they limited what they were looking at to essentially what they were asked.

[12:35:08] And look, that's going to be their -- the explanation from the Justice Department is that we only answer the questions that we are asked. So what we see is that the Office of Legal Counsel essentially limit its review of the referral from the inspector general to essentially whether or not this urgent concern met the statute, the existing whistleblower statute.

But, there's a couple of footnotes in the document that was posted today that shows that they also are well aware of some of the other allegations from the whistleblower, including the fact that the whistleblower says that there was information showing that the White House or the President was essentially withholding military assistance to Ukraine for political purposes and for improper reasons.

And then secondly, that they had decided -- the White House had decided to wall off not only the transcript of this call, but perhaps other documents again for political reasons not for a national security concern.

So, those are two things that appear in footnotes in this OLC document that's been posted today, which shows that they were at least aware that these were part of the concerns that were raised by the person who filed this complaint, the whistleblower. But, we're essentially not part of the illegal analysis that was done here by the lawyers of the Office of Legal Counsel.

I should, John, that we know that they kicked it over to the criminal division of the Justice Department. We have lawyers from the national security division, public integrity lawyers, a lot of lawyers in the department looked at the complaint that was filed by this whistleblower and they essentially limited their analysis to whether or not this was an election law violation, whether this was a campaign finance violation.

They didn't look at this as a perhaps a counterintelligence issue. If you remember, one of the things that the whistleblower says is that this -- that this could raise perhaps an issue of compromise for the President or other people involved because, you know, if some foreign intelligence service knows about this, they could use this to compromise the President. That appears to not have been part of the legal analysis that the Justice Department did before they decided to shut this down.

KING: Evan Perez, important reporting. Let me come to the lawyers on the panel here. So, if I'm -- I'm a lay person here, but essentially, you know, here's 20 pages, I'm going to look at this one, is that what happened here and forget this?

RANGAPPA: It looks like that's what happened and that is not -- that's not normal operating procedure. You know, when the FBI gets information, it's not really up to the person making the referral to specify the violation that is happening. It's their job to look at it and assess.

But more importantly, I mean, how shocked can we really be that Bill Barr decided that allegations that he may have been involved in securing information from a foreign government would not constitute a campaign finance violation?

I mean, it's truly bizarre that he wouldn't -- I mean, we can go down this road just that he would be willing to make that decision on the record because it presents a clear conflict of interest.

KING: And one of the constant Republican refrains here is you people need to calm down. This is Trump being Trump. He doesn't talk like Bush. He doesn't talk like Obama. He doesn't talk like Clinton. He doesn't talk like other presidents. You just need to process that. And, you know, he's not doing anything bad here.

If you read the transcript of the call yesterday, that was really -- you can see Mr. Maguire now. He's leaving the House side heading over to the Senate Intelligence Committee. That hearing would be conducted in private. We'll keep track of any information.

But the argument is that the President speaks in his own way. You people need to be more careful, just understand he is different. That's one issue. If you read the memo, it's not a transcript of the call with the president of Ukraine, pretty clear he is linking age and linking cooperation and linking friendship to help with the Biden investigation. Do you think that's right or wrong? That's your judgment at home.

But what in this whistleblower complaint blows this up and, Shawn, I want to come to you, because you most recently worked in this community. This is not just about the President. It says here, in the days following the phone call I learned from multiple U.S. officials that senior White House officials had intervened to lock down all records of the phone call, especially the official word for word transcript of the call that was produced.

That would be a very helpful document to have right now, an official word for word transcript as opposed to a memo. That would clear up a lot of this. If it clears up and it shows that the President did nothing wrong, great, let's have it. But we don't. The call was produced as is customary by the White House situation room.

And so, what does that tell you if this is true, and I'm going to emphasize it, this is an allegation. They have a separate system. They're using other computer system that is essentially designed to protect the most covert information of the United States government to hide the President's phone calls with foreign leaders.

SHAWN TURNER, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Yes. And it's important to understand how this typically works. It's typically in the case that when the President has a phone call with a foreign leader, that that phone call, the transcript of that phone call is then packaged up and it's sent out to other cabinet officials who may have an interest in that discussion.

[12:40:10] When I was at ODNI, it was regularly the case. The director at the time, DNI Jim Clapper, would get transcripts of those phone calls. What we're being told in this case is that there are phone calls that are happening, and not only are those transcripts not being distributed, but in government you have classified systems that rise above the level of simple secret systems. And in those systems, that's where you put the most sensitive information.

What we have in this case is we have these phone calls not being put there because they are of a sensitive national security issue -- matter. They're being put there because they're politically embarrassing for the President.

BORGER: Right.

TURNER: And that is an abuse of the system.

BORGER: So they're trying to protect the President, you know, obviously. And I think the question that I'm also asking is, when the President decided not to send Pence to Ukraine for the inauguration, what did he tell the vice president?

Did the vice president know that this was being held up and that the aid was being held up because the President felt that Zelensky had not been cooperative enough in investigating Joe Biden or Hillary Clinton's server or whatever it is? I mean, what is vice president of it (ph)? Was he aware of the File 13 --

TOOBIN: One answer.

BORGER: -- that, you know, I don't know.

TOOBIN: One answer -- one very important thing that came up today in this hearing was if and when the whistleblower him or herself will be able to testify. Because -- and Maguire seem to say --

BORGER: Yes.

TOOBIN: -- that was likely in the works. But what -- why that's so important is that this document says, you know, White House officials -- six White House officials knew that this business of burying the transcripts was going on. First question, who were they?

TURNER: Yes.

TOOBIN: What are their names?

BORGER: Sure.

TOOBIN: So that, you know, that will allow the committee to investigate and see if these accusations are true or not.

KING: And another central part of this are the activities of the President's personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani. Again, we focused yesterday because we had the release of the memorandum of the July 25th call. We knew for weeks and months before that Giuliani was working this story, working his often conspiracy theories and reckless (ph).

Adam Schiff is speaking on Capitol Hill, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. Let's listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. ADAM SCHIFF (D-CA): -- the complaint that we received. At least we had an opportunity to review last night, but only received today. We made available to the public as soon as we received the redacted version. It sets out a series of the most damning allegations concerning the conduct of the President and others potentially within the administration.

In that, it lays out a scheme to use the leverage of the presidency, use the leverage of the vital military assistance to a foreign nation to provide or obtain dirt on a political opponent.

It's hard to imagine a more serious set of allegations than those contained in the complaint. The complaint goes further, obviously, than the record of the call. And that it also alleges that there were efforts made to conceal this scheme by moving communications onto servers that were designed for an entirely different purpose, that were designed, in fact, to contain communications of covert action and other highly sensitive in compartmented intelligence information. It is a deep irony that the Department of Justice would say this is outside of the jurisdiction of the Director of National Intelligence and yet someone felt that this should be put in the place that is used for the protection of the most sensitive of classified information.

But what we do know at this point is this, that when the inspector general found that this whistleblower was credible, he was right. Because what this whistleblower said about the nature of that call has been borne out in great detail by the call record that has now been released.

So in a very substantial part, this whistleblower has already been found to be credible. Whether the other allegations that go beyond this specific call will be borne out has yet to be determined and that it will be the subject of our investigation. This whistleblower has given us a road map for our investigation.

But it's important to underscore that what we are able to corroborate already about the whistleblower has been corroborated in detail by this record of the President's conversation with the President of Ukraine. That gives added weight and urgency to the need to get to the bottom of the other allegations that are made by the whistleblower.

[12:45:05] And once again, I want to express my profound gratitude to the whistleblower for coming forward. And I'm grateful for the director for coming to the committee, for not requiring us to use coercion. Now, yes, we provided the subpoena, but nonetheless, he came before our committee and he came in front of the committee voluntarily.

And while I believe that he has made the wrong decision in withholding the complaint, like my colleagues, I respect his service to the country. But we are profoundly concerned with the breakdown of this whistleblower system that has been manifested over the last month, that a whistleblower who was deemed credible, that a complaint that was deemed urgent, that a complaint that was intended to come to Congress would be withheld to Congress and would do so on the basis -- would be withheld on the basis of advice given by the subject or subjects of that complaint.

The conflict of interest is all too apparent, all too palpable. It is indeed a minor miracle that we got the complaint at all and that we got the transcript at all. At the end of the day, what is alleged in this whistleblower complaint goes to the very heart of the President's oath of office. That he faithfully execute the laws of the country, that he defend the constitution.

And if as alleged, if as this record of call already indicates, the President was instead faithfully executing his office, was using that office as leverage to obtain dirt, to have another country manufacture dirt on his opponent, it is hard to imagine a more fundamental abuse of that office. And so we are determined to get to the bottom of this and I'm happy to respond a couple of questions.

(CROSSTALK) UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You're not speaking to the whistleblower, what are your next investigative steps? What targets emerge from reading this complaint from the hearing today? And what's the timeline in which you're hoping to work? Obviously a recess begins on Friday for the next couple of weeks.

SCHIFF: We'll be working through the recess. And as I mentioned, I think the complaint gives us a pretty good road map of allegations that we need to investigate. There is a whole host of people, apparently, who have knowledge of these events that the whistleblower makes reference to.

Now, we don't know how many or any of them that have already been interviewed by the inspector general. We will be having a subsequent hearing with the inspector general, which we have requested so that we can determine what he was able to find in his preliminary investigation.

Now, he only had 14 days to do it, but it looks like he did a far more substantial investigation than any in the Justice Department was apparently willing to do. And so, we will see what witnesses have been interviewed and which haven't. We'll do our best to identify those.

We'll obviously going to be bringing the whistleblower in. And I was pleased that the director committed to having the whistleblower come in as soon as the clearance issues are resolved for the whistleblower's counsel. And that the -- we have the commitment of the Director of National Intelligence that there will not be some minder from the White House or the Department of Justice or anywhere else that is instructing him what he can or cannot answer or what she can or cannot answer.

That further testimony will help identify. I hope some of these other individuals I can corroborate these deeply troubling allegations. We also want to determine what the documentary evidence is.

We need to look into the allegation that this may not be the only communication of a potentially corrupt character that was shielded by this classified information computer system abused for that purpose.

We want to know what role Rudy Giuliani had in all of this. We want to know what role Bill Barr had in any of this. We want to know what Ukraine understood was expected of them before they even had this July phone call with the President of the United States. So, we know what we have to do. And of course, we'll be guided by the evidence that we find along the way.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What potential crimes do you see in that (INAUDIBLE)?

SCHIFF: I'm sorry?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What potential crimes do you see?

SCHIFF: Well, look, I think there are any number of potential crimes when a President is soliciting for an assistance again in another Presidential election. There can be no claim of ignorance this time.

When a President is withholding authorized funding of Congress to use as leverage, if he the President were involved in somehow extorting a foreign nation to dig up or manufactured dirt on his opponent, if there is an effort to cover up, any of this conduct, there are innumerable potential offenses.

[12:50:03] But I have no confidence that this Justice Department led by this attorney general will investigate anything, except the President's adversaries or claims that give fodder to the conspiracy theories which the President wishes to pedal, which indeed the President was pedaling with President Zelensky.

And so, as the inspector general's appear not to have jurisdiction according to Department of Justice to look into this, as the department is unwilling to look into this, this will fall within our responsibility.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Vice president --

MANU RAJU, CNN SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Mr. Chairman, will you specifically seek interviews with Rudy Giuliani, with Bill Barr, and will you subpoena for those transcripts that were allegedly stored that were separate from those individual phone call?

SCHIFF: I'm not going to get into specific investigative steps at this point. But as I made clear in the questions I had for the director today, I think each and every one of these allegations, given their seriousness, given that no one is looking into this and no one has been apart from this committee for the last month that these urgent matters need to be thoroughly investigated.

Now, we're going to move as expeditiously as possible. Of course, it's been the history of this administration prior to this very graphic exception of the publishing of this call record and the provision of the complaint, the declassification of the complaint, that this administration has attempted to obstruct our inquiry in any way and in every way. But we will be working to conduct this as swiftly as possible.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Chairman Schiff --

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We're going to head back into this room.

SCHIFF: OK.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: President Trump just tweeted about you saying that you have zero credibility, another fantasy to hurt the Republican Party. How do you respond?

SCHIFF: Well, I'm always flattered when I'm attacked by someone of the President's character. Thank you.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do you believe that --

(END VIDEO CLIP) KING: The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff, speaking to reporters there, responding to a tweet from the President, that after the big hearing this morning with the acting Director of National Intelligence. Mr. Schiff promising the committee's work will continue even during an upcoming scheduled congressional recess.

He says the priority now is to get the whistleblower in the room. He says he's confident the Director of National Intelligence will allow that to happen without a White House minder was he put it there. And other's named in this stunning whistleblower complaint Chairman Schiff says he wants to bring before the committee. That is the intelligence committee investigation. It's an oversight investigation.

It is not directly connected to impeachment yet, but the President clearly sees where this is going, not only tweeting just moments ago that in his view Adam Schiff has zero credibility. He tweeted this, "A whistleblower with second hand information? Another fake news story. See what was said on the very nice, no pressure, call. Another witch hunt."

Well, we did see yesterday, to bring it back at the room a memo about that call and it was not very nice and it was not perfect. It was a President dangling the prospect of USA connecting it to an investigation of an American political figure, the former Vice President Joe Biden.

I just mentioned this, intelligence committee investigation will continue. But Democrats seem to be on a path to impeachment, and you have some reporting that the White House -- I'm not sure they're happy with their own decision to release all these documents in recent days, but they assume this is where this is going as well, and they're considering some steps that show you the bruising politics what we would be in if we get there.

BASH: Right. A couple things that we're learning as we've been watching this, number one, as you mentioned, the obvious question has been if we now know what this says, the President and the White House knew what this complaint said, why did they release it?

And the answer that I've gotten from several sources is that the President, the White House more probably, they were getting pounded by allies, by Republicans, and particularly in Congress saying, we are going to get question about nothing else until you release this. This is number one.

And number two, once it went to the committee, it's started leaking, they were going to continuing to see details go out there, so you might as well just release it. Whether or not they're second- guessing, that's an answer I don't -- question I don't know the answer to.

Secondly on the political response, you know from being in the White House in the Clinton years, they assembled a special team to deal with the communications strategy and other political strategies to confront the Republicans then in the House who were dealing with impeachment. There is talk of doing the same in the Trump White House, talk of bringing back Corey -- bringing in for the first time into the White House, Corey Lewandowski, who understands --

KING: He's probably going to get that privilege.

BASH: -- who understands the DNA of the President probably better than anybody else, as we witnessed when he was on Capitol Hill last week. It is not a done deal. He has not talked to the President, but there is -- there are signs that there are people in the White House who would welcome that, which would be a big shift because he was never in the White House because that was not thought to be good.

KING: You know, would that mean --

BASH: It also just quickly bring -- it would also quickly want to bring in David Bossie who you also remember from the '90s who was also been --

KING: I sure do.

BASH: -- a Trump -- a big -- an early Trump supporter because he helped to lead impeachment from the Republican side of the House.

[12:55:06] KING: Would that goes a bruising bare-knuckle?

(CROSSTALK)

TOOBIN: -- was wouldn't run for the Senate?

BASH: This would be the thing that I thought was enough.

BORGER: How do you do that? How do you do that if you have lawyers in the White House who were complaining about the President and set up this separate file? So if the White House is doing its damage control, isn't the President, knowing Donald Trump, going to say, who are these people?

KING: To that point, and again the whistleblower complaint, read it, it's damning allegation, unproven allegation, but backed up credibly by the release of the memo of the Ukraine call. So if -- to the lawyers, if you're introducing, as the judge would say, the witness at least has threshold credibility, let's hear more. And that's why the Democrats would go ahead with the investigation.

Here's my question today. The President just trashes everybody, doesn't address the substance. The White House press secretary issues a statement saying there's nothing new here, it's just rehashing all partisan.

If this is false, why don't we have detailed statements from the current chief of staff, or how about some people who we know might have even a bit of an extra grind (ph), former Chief of Staff John Kelly just left, National Security Adviser John Bolton, why can't you get these people to put out statements saying, it didn't happen, doesn't exist, we don't hide these things, let's see them. Put statements with your name on it say and I'm willing to testify to Congress. It's all right here. Answer it.

CARRIE CORDERO, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: But John, the central allegation of the complaint is undisputed. I mean, the central allegation of the complaint is that the President used his authority in a conversation with a foreign head of state to get political dirt on his political opponents and conduct other investigation relating to conspiracy theories about the 2016 election. That is undisputed.

The President has admitted it. It is in the text of the summary of the phone call that has been released. We can all read it. We see it. They're not claiming it's not true. The White House released it. What the President is saying is that it's OK to do.

RANGAPPA: Correct.

CORDERO: And that's the fundamental issue.

SCIUTTO: That evolution from this President took place over the course of about a week, because remember, he called this fake news. And then over the weekend, you know, kind of admitted it and then started defending it, frankly. And that's where we are today and that's the thing.

You know, you talk about transparency and maybe debates inside the White House about whether it'd be transparent or not. I mean, releasing details are good unless those details by themselves are damning, and the contents of the call to even Republicans and that was a moment. You did have one Republican senate -- congressman say, this is not OK.

KING: Well, let's hear that. That's Mike Turner who is normally a defender of the President who was beating up on the Democrats for, you know, putting impeachment on the table so early, by questioning the integrity of the acting Director of National Intelligence, but to Jim's point, he said this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. MIKE TURNER (R-OH): Now, I've read the complaint and I've read the transcript of the conversation with the President and the president of the Ukraine. Concerning that conversation, I want to say to the President, this is not OK. It is -- that conversation is not OK and I think it's disappointing to the American public when they read the transcript.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: So here's the question. There are a lot of factual questions. The investigations will continue. The intelligence committee, other committees are doing other work. Then there's the political question. Right now you would say there are crumbs if you're asking how many Republicans have raised concerns about this.

Mitt Romney in the Senate, Ben Sasse in the Senate, Mike Turner there saying it's not OK. That is the biggest dynamic to watch as Republicans learn more about this and as they see how the White House responds to this. Will we see, are we seeing as yet any evidence that the Republicans concerns about the specifics of the alleged conduct will change their behavior?

BORGER: I'm watching Mitch McConnell, because he had a unanimous vote in the Senate to, you know, get the whistleblower report, which we have, and he hasn't said anything. And McConnell is a big supporter of the President, as you know.

BASH: Reluctantly so.

BORGER: Reluctantly so, I believe. So, let's see what Mitch McConnell does in the Senate, if anything. And, you know, I don't expect any kind of groundswell from Republicans, do you? I mean, I don't.

BASH: No. And when you look at just the raw numbers in the House, they don't -- the Democrats don't need it. If they -- at this point, it looks like they have enough votes. I mean, obviously the inquiry hasn't happened to go forward. It would be beneficial to the country if they do it, that it would be bipartisan. The big question is, we'll they would ever get further than that? And that's what you --

KING: Will it get further than that either based on the substance as the investigations continues? And guess what, again, I'll refer to the calendar, you have a Susan Collins, you have a Cory Gardner, you have a Martha McSally, you have Republican senators who have to win statewide.

The House is the home of tribalism. You're not going to see it in the House. The Democrat is going stay in their camp. The Republicans will stay in their camp. The question is, do any of these other senators say, I'm not saying it's an impeachable offense, I'm not even saying it's true, we need to get the answers.

BASH: Right.

KING: Will that happen?

CORDERO: Well, and the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee so far has been publicly quiet, but he and the vice chair have been linked together in terms of working behind the scenes to be able to get this complaint.

KING: One would hope. One would hope if they read this, they at least call the White House and say, I'll give you a day or two to answer it.

[13:00:00]