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2020 Presidential Candidate Mayor Pete Buttigieg Believes That Age Is Not A Matter For Winning Elections; House Intelligence Committee Releases Transcripts Of Testimony From Key Impeachment Witnesses; Court Orders Donald Trump To Turn Over Eight Years Of Tax Returns. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired November 04, 2019 - 12:00   ET

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

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JOHN KING, CNN HOST: Welcome to INSIDE POLITICS. I'm John King. Thank you for sharing your day with us. A big legal setback for President Trump an appeals court rules he does not have blanket immunity and must hand over his tax returns to New York prosecutors. The President's lawyer says he will appeal to the Supreme Court.

Plus the Trump White House throws up an impeachment roadblock. Four administration officials summoned by House investigators today refused to show up and answer questions. Democrats call it a cover-up new transcripts coming out in just moments from that committee.

A new battleground polling shows just a very competitive 2020 Presidential Race. Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders run best against President Trump one year to Election Day, the newcomer Pete Buttigieg hopes voters consider someone younger.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MAYOR PETE BUTTIGIEG (D-IN) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I'm certainly young. I'm the youngest candidate in the field. Every candidate brings a mix of experience and vision to the table. While it's certainly true that wisdom can come with age, it's not true that they're the same. Just look at the current White House. We have the oldest President we've ever had, and by no means the wisest.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: A lot is breaking this Monday. We're going straight to Capitol Hill where the House Intelligence Committee has just released the first transcripts from its impeachment inquiry. These transcripts of the Former Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yavanovitch and a Former State Department official Michael McKinley both testified to the Democratic led impeachment.

CNN's Phil Mattingly live on Capitol Hill for us. Phil, we've been waiting for the first release of the transcripts and now we have it.

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, that's exactly right. The first two transcripts have been publicly released. In total more than 450 pages from their hours-long depositions behind closed doors, and what we're hearing right now based on these transcripts, and full disclosure, brutal honesty, John, I have not read all 450 pages plus pages of these transcripts in the last three minutes.

But the summary at least - to summarize what Democrats are saying these transcripts represent is mostly about the effort to oust Marie Yavanovitch in her role as Ambassador to Ukraine. Remember, there were discussions about an irregular channel, individuals that were working to target Yavanovitch because they thought she was anti-Trump, because the conspiracy theories or allegations that she tied to Democrats were tied to people like George Soros.

This is testimony going through the details of that. The three chairs who are running this investigation on the Democratic side said, "The transcripts of interviews with Ambassador Yavanovitch and McKinley demonstrates clearly how President Trump approve the removal of a highly respected and effective diplomat based on public falterers and smears against Ambassador Yavanovitch's character and her work and support of long held U.S. foreign policy anti-corruption goals.

You have to put this all in context obviously these are just two of the transcripts. We're expecting several to roll out over the course of the next couple of days, and this represents moving to the public sphere of this investigation that for the past month has been all closed door depositions.

Through each of the release of these testimonies, what's going to be interesting to look at is the different facets. This one very clearly, according to Democrats, focusing on the ouster of the Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch. There obviously going to be details as well related to William Taylor who is a top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine right now.

His explosive testimony, we've gotten pieces of that. We've seen his opening statements what that will entail when that testimony is released. Obviously Colonel Alexander Vindman who had explosive testimony as well we've seen the opening statement, don't have the details of the back and forth.

Now the flip side of this as well is Republicans have been pushing for these testimonies to become public. They want to make clear that there was some cross-examination over the course of these 10, 11-hour testimonies and whether or not they were able to poke holes in some of these witnesses, that at least up to this point, in their public statements have provided damaging testimony targeting President Trump and his role not just in holding the nearly $400 million in U.S. aid to Ukraine but also in the ouster of this diplomat.

So we're going to see how this all plays out as we read through the testimony, but most importantly, this marking the official shift from the closed door part of things to the now very public both release of these testimonies, these depositions, and also soon, public hearings as well, John.

KING: Phil Mattingly with the breaking news live on the hill. Phil if you read them and if anything jumps out just raise your hand and come back to us in the hour ahead. With me in studio here to share their reporting and their insights, Julie Pace with "The Associated Press" Toluse Olorunnipa with "The Washington Post" Heather Caygle with "POLILTICO" and Molly Ball with "Times".

It is a new phase; we start to see these transcripts come out. The Republicans have said why are doing this behind closed doors now the Democrats are saying here it is. We're expecting public hearings within a week or two maybe three Democrats say this before. How important this is in the case of first Democrats deciding to put the Former Ambassador Yavanovitch's out first because they believe she is central to the abuse of power.

That she raised complaints about Rudy Giuliani. Rudy Giuliani went to the President and said we need to get rid of her. We need to see the transcript, we need to see the back and forth, we need to see if there is any - some of this could be opinion as supposed to fact. But she is central to the building block of that this was abuse of power. A rouge foreign policy led by Giuliani with the blessing of the President.

MOLLY BALL, NATIONAL POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT, TIME: Absolutely and I think that she is not someone who is widely viewed as a political actor.

[12:05:00]

BALL: She is a long-time respected subject matter expert on this part of the world, on American foreign policy, and so it will be very interesting. I also have not read the transcripts in the last ten minutes.

And, you know, with a lot of these witnesses, what was released by the committee was the opening statement, and then we heard dribs and drabs based on what our sources were willing to tell us inside the room, but we haven't seen the Q and A. That's what we will now be getting from Yavanovitch and the other testimonies that they start releasing.

Presumably there will be some redactions if necessary for national security purposes. That's why these depositions were taken in a secure hearing room, because of the potential for there to be some kind of state secrets involved in the testimony. But we'll get to see the full Q and A, we'll get to see, as Phil was saying, the degree to which the Republicans were able to get their concerns satisfied, whatever concerns they had about potential conflicts of interest on the parts of these witnesses, about potential political bias, so it will be really interesting to see what went on in there.

KING: And I think you make a key point there about the Republican side because the Republicans frankly have been misleading the American people about their involvement in these depositions. They have every right to complain about the process that they think it should have been public from the beginning.

But the idea that they're not having a chance, the depositions will prove that not to be the case. They have their own staff lawyers in the room, the Republican members of these three committees are allowed to be in the room and ask questions. The questions to Molly's point is number one, do the Republicans get any substantive, do they put a dent, if you will, in the idea this was there that there was something wrong about this as opposed to just what the President wanted?

JULIE PACE, WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF, ASSOCIATED PRESS: Right, exactly I mean, we will certainly I believe see in these transcripts Republicans asking questions so they have been participatory in this process. I do think one person who will be looking very closely or reading very closely to what Republicans are saying is President Trump who has a very clear point that he's making to Republicans about how he wants to see them defend him both publicly and privately.

It will be fascinating to see what he takes away from seeing these Republican questions. Were the Republicans in this room appearing as though they were defending the President, or they giving any grounds or conceding what a lot of us have heard privately from those Republicans, conceding that there may have been some underlying abuse of power, underlying bad behavior, it just may not be impeachable?

KING: Right and that's key - again the Democrats are deciding the Democrats are on the majority. They're deciding how to do this, so they decided. Mr. Taylor, many people thought, gave incredible damning testimony. Colonel Vindman, a lot of people thought the first White House insider to give testimony they decided to make that this is a choice.

We're going to hear from Chairman Schiff in a few minutes here. But this is the choice for them and again to the Former Ambassador she was actually pulled from her job. To Molly's point a career Foreign Service viewed as credible, viewed as apolitical, viewed as someone who just wants to do her job who raised her hand and said there's something wrong here and got yanked.

That's part of the Democrats building blocks to abuse of power. The challenge for the Democrats now though as they go public is to make this case, first with these documents, but then we assume if her transcript is out first, she is going to be one of the witnesses when we have public hearings.

HEATHER CAYGLE, CONGRESSIONAL REPORTER, POLITICO: Yes. And this is a very intentional strategy about which transcripts to release and when. I think Fiona Hill and other key witness was out there this morning presumably signing off on her transcript before it's released. But the question for them is which witnesses do they call? Who can bring these transcripts to life?

And like you said, I presume it will be one of the ones released today as one of the witnesses, but they're still trying to figure out how many hearings they want to have? And who will testify publicly to help make that case in the best way possible?

KING: You just made another very important point in that now we're going to go into the substance phase of this debate and you at home and the lawmakers obviously have to make their decisions but the President over the weekend talking about fake transcripts. So the Democrats will release their transcripts. Fiona hill, another respected Republican foreign operative up today to sign off on her transcript. Republicans are in the room. Even the President's key defenders like Jim Jordan acknowledges there's one transcript, there is an actual real transcript. And so you will see the President talking about redactions, we'll see the President talking about don't believe this, but this does turn a page as we start to go into these first documents and then live testimony.

TOLUSE OLORUNNIPA, WHITE HOUSE REPORTER, THE WASHINGTON POST: Yes the Democrats have a very clear narrative that they're putting together. It's not yet clear that the Republicans have a counter-narrative that they've settled on they've been kind of all over the place.

But with the release of these transcripts, the first step of the Democrats' narrative is starting to come out. Basically the President got rid of the principal Ambassador from Ukraine because he wanted to put someone in there who was a loyalist, who was going to do his bidding, and the future transcripts we're going to see from the Democrats and their narrative is that the President was pursuing a proposal to basically have a quid pro quo, and he had to get the Ambassador out of the way because she was someone who was principled and wouldn't go along with these conspiracy theories that the president lawyer was chasing in Ukraine.

So the Democrats are going through this very methodically it will be up to the Republicans to come up with some sort of counter-narrative that not just based on process. So far they've been focused on processing. Everything is being done behind closed doors. We can't talk about this private testimony because of the rules that Adam Schiff put up.

Now that they're going to be able to talk about these transcripts and talk about these testimonies will they have a specific counter- narrative that actually makes sense or will they continue to focus on the process which is a safer bet for them but does not necessarily take them to the next stage of the process.

[12:10:00]

KING: And is this testimony compelling enough to give the Democrats the political way to say, we need Rudy Giuliani in the chair. We need John Bolton in the chair because in Giuliani's case the President's personal lawyer again will see what the full testimony was. What we know of the Former Ambassador's testimony was that she was complaining that what Rudy Giuliani was doing in her view was a directly counter to what the United States was trying to do, which was trying to get Ukraine on a path of more open democracy.

Trying to get Ukraine on a path to less corruption, less bribery, unless you pay me here, you want influence there. She said Giuliani was doing that, literally working with people who were corrupt in Ukraine while she was trying to convince the new Ukrainian President, get your act together, we will help you. And that Rudy Giuliani was working with bad actors over here. She complained about it, she lost her job. PACE: It's actually incredible. If you think like this, we know so much more than we knew a few weeks ago, and yet there is so much more to know out there. Every witness, I mean, Schiff has been running this process which is essentially a grand jury process where every witness builds on the last one and we are now building toward people like John Bolton who we know was raising red flags inside the west wing.

Potentially people like Rudy Giuliani who was really crucial to all of this. Whether we ever hear from these people, I think, is a really open legal question right now and we're seeing today and later this week some of these officials say, no, they're not going to come forward and participate. But it is incredible just the narrative that has built in the last few weeks about how much more we could know if we heard from really key players like that.

KING: And again, four White House officials at the National Security Council on - budget refusing to come up today, the Acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney. The people who in one case the National Security Council lawyer allegedly was the one who said the Ukraine call was nuclear, if you will, so let's lock it up, limit the access to it.

Mick Mulvaney, the Acting Chief of Staff, a couple his deputies who were involved in the decision to withhold the aid passed by Congress, a hundred million dollars in military assistance to Ukraine President wanted it held up allegedly until this was all done. These officials saying no today, but again if you go to the next phase, if there is compelling testimony first from the documents and then from witnesses, it gets harder for the administration does it not to say no, we won't give you the people who can fill in the unanswered?

OLORUNNIPA: Well, they're making a strategic point that they're trying to hold back the people that actually could help them in their case because the people who have come forward so far have put forward damaging information, negative information that has not been countered by anyone within the administration that's testifying.

So the strategy that the White House is pursuing is sort of questionable because they could put people out there like Mick Mulvaney who may be able to try to put some sort of spin on it even though he would be under oath and probably he would confirm us some of these facts.

He could try to put it in the right context according to the White House that would may be make the President look a little bit better, but they decided just to block all these loyalists from testifying and people who are maybe less loyal or less mired in the President's own political apparatus, those people are willing to testify and they are saying things that are damaging for the White House.

KING: Well, if you watch Mick Mulvaney's televised briefing at the White House, I could perfectly understand why the President of the United States would not want him to go up to talk to Congress there if that was the truth what he said in the briefing.

We're going to take a quick break. A lot of breaking news we're tracking. Number one, we're waiting for Adam Schiff, the Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, to come out and discuss the decision released first of these transcripts. Number two our reporters going through these transcripts and also a big legal setback from the President last hour an appeals court saying he must give prosecutors eight years of his taxes.

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KING: Welcome back. We're tracking multiple breaking news - stories this hour two deposition transcripts in the impeachment inquiry just released to the public that moments ago we're waiting to hear the House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff on that. We also have our reporters reading through those transcripts.

Another big story a legal setback for the President a court just ruled the President has to turn over eight years of tax returns to prosecutors in Manhattan. CNN's Kara Scannell has the details of this ruling the appeals court dealing a blow to the President. Kara?

KARA SCANNELL, CNN REPORTER: Yes, that is right John. So in this the appeals court was hearing an appeal of a decision by the lower district court where Donald Trump had sued to try to block his accounting firm Mazars USA from turning over eight years of tax returns to a Manhattan District Attorney's Office as part of their grand jury investigation into whether Donald Trump and his company had violated any state laws it relating to those hush money payments to Michael Cohen.

So the issue today before the appeals court is that they're saying that the President cannot block a subpoena to his accounting firm for records. I'll read a line from it. It says that presidential immunity does not bar a state grand jury from issuing a subpoena in any of its investigation of potential crimes by a person within its jurisdiction, even if that investigation may in some way implicate the President.

Now Donald Trump's legal team has already said they're going to appeal this decision to the Supreme Court. Whether these tax returns get turned over and on what timetable is not going to be something that happens immediately. There was already an agreement between Donald Trump's lawyers and the Manhattan District Attorney's Office that if they were to lose or win this decision, and it were to go to appeal in the Supreme Court, that Vance would not seek to support the subpoena until the Supreme Court denied had either denied hearing the case or issued an opinion on the case.

So the idea that Donald Trump's tax returns will be turned over is not something that will happen imminently, and it is likely to go before the Supreme Court, and whether they will decide and weigh in here on just exactly how far presidential immunity can reach, you know, whether it's from a state or federal investigation, they have not weighed in on a President's immunity to any kind of criminal investigation, John.

[12:20:00] KING: Kara Scannell I appreciate that breaking news. And we'll watch it's - as we bring the conversation to room. There is some civility between the two parties even as they fight out they really hot legal issue in the idea that he won't - the Manhattan district attorney will not try to enforce this. It goes up to the Supreme Court, though.

And we have watched this play out and you can put up on the screen out and you need to read them all some of the President's tweets from back in the spring or last winter when this case was playing out. Of the many challenges facing the President, this one tents to get under his skin more than others and provoke him to strong language essentially saying, I won the election. I refused to give my taxes then. Go away.

PACE: He does not want his taxes to be public and we've known that for several years. I do think that it's worth noting as we have this discussion, tax returns of Presidents and presidential candidates are often made public. It has been the standard in modern political history of every opponent that Trump is potentially going to face in the Democratic primary. They've all put forth multiple years of tax returns and it always gets back to this question of why?

What is the information that is in those tax returns that the President doesn't want the public to see? This audit excuse that he has come up with really doesn't hold water. There is something in there that he doesn't want the public to know. We don't know what that is, but something he doesn't want made public, probably particularly in his election year.

OLORUNNIPA: And they've gone to such far lengths in the President's legal team to say that the President is immune from having to hand over any information, and even if he is accused of a crime that he cannot be prosecuted, cannot be investigated by any local prosecutors while he's in office during this case that was recently ruled on.

The President's legal team basically said that if the President shot someone on Fifth Avenue, that local police and prosecutors couldn't investigate him for that. So they've tried to push this very strong version of presidential immunity and push it all the way to the Supreme Court. We'll see if this new Supreme Court with a couple of President Trump's appointees will buy that argument. It's a very expansive view that even the Justice Department hasn't taken up but the Supreme Court may have a chance to rule one way or the other.

KING: And that's another great point because the President takes things personally. We just talking about in the sense of what he expects, what he's demanding actually from Congressional Republicans in the impeachment inquiry? We'll get back to that. Two of his appointees on the Supreme Court, his attorney Jay Sekulow saying that decision of the second circuit will be taken to the Supreme Court.

The issue raised in this case goes to the heart of our republic - not sure about that part - but the constitutional issues are significant. Yes, they are. How powerful is the President? Can the President say not just to Congress, but in this case to a local prosecutor, no, at least not while I'm President. BALL: There really are big questions raised by all of this litigation, and there's a lot of litigation currently working its way through the system that bears on, you know, congressional powers outlined in the constitution, that bears on issues of executive privilege, and this is also in that area, and it does come down to sort of very basic rule of law stuff, right?

Is the President above the law? Do certain laws apply to the President? Can, you know, different levels of government pursue information that has a nexus with the White House, and the blanket answer of the President and the people he has assembled around him has been just no. Not any kind of real nuance or level of detail, just no. It's also a key test, then, of the Supreme Court.

KING: Take you straight up to Capitol Hill the Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff.

REP. ADAM SCHIFF, (D-CA): --as well as Mr. Blair from the office of management budget and someone worked closely with Mick Mulvaney. Both of them defied congressional subpoenas and refused to appear for their scheduled depositions, as has been the case with other witnesses who have done the same thing. This will be further evidence of an effort by the administration to obstruct the lawful and constitutional duties of Congress.

I would also say and we expect the witnesses who have been subpoenaed to come in this afternoon at White House's instructions also to be no- shows. This will only further add to the body of evidence on a potential obstruction of Congress charge against the President. Indeed in the Nixon impeachment there was an article of impeachment based on the obstruction of Congress that itemized each of the subpoenas that the White House had defied.

Well, today we have four additional subpoenas to add to the list of a potential charge involving the President of the United States and his obstruction of our constitutional duties. These witnesses are significant and the White House understands they're significant. Based on the testimony the committees have already received, we know that these witnesses, those that were in the law office of the National Security Council, those who worked for Mulvaney either in the chief of staff's office or the office of management budget are firsthand witnesses to allegations of serious misconduct.

[12:25:00]

SCHIFF: Both vis-a-vis the suspension of military aid and the effort to use that aid as a lever to get Ukraine to do these political investigations to help the President's reelection campaign, but also in efforts to potentially hide the evidence of the President's misconduct by placing that call record in a classified system that would be beyond most individuals' access and a system in which that call record did not belong.

So very pertinent testimony, very relevant to the other witnesses who have come forward and we may infer by the White House obstruction here that their testimony would be further incriminating of the President. I will say this, it's quite obvious and we fully expected this. We have seen a series of shifting, effort-changing rationales for this campaign of obstruction.

First there was the argument we don't have to comply until there is a formal vote on the House floor. Well, we had a formal vote on the House floor. Then it was we don't have to make these witnesses available because they're senior officials and they're given absolute immunity even though no court has upheld the claims of absolute immunity.

Indeed, the only one to reach a decision on it involving Harriet Meyers and there is no such thing as absolute immunity. And it's been the uniform position of Democrats and Republicans that we do no respect any fallacious claims of absolute immunity. But then when who were subpoenaed had little or no interaction with the President and there couldn't even be a coloring book claim of some kind of immunity.

The explanation shifted once again to, we're not going to let them come forward because you won't let agency lawyers present. Again, that would violate the House deposition rules. It would also violate the practice used by both Democrats and Republicans for depositions in the past when there are concerns that agency lawyers are representing agencies that may have engaged in wrongdoing or may use facts gained in the investigation to prejudice other witnesses in the investigation.

This was the practice for the current members of our investigative committees, people like Jim Jordan during Benghazi and people like Mike Pompeo and people like Mick Mulvaney all participated in depositions of senior agency officials without the presence of agency counsel. So if they join the President's objection here, they do so in a fashion that is directly contradictory to their practices when they're in the majority.

Today we also are beginning the process of releasing transcripts of our depositions. This morning we released the depositions of Ambassador McKinley and Ambassador Yavanovitch. I will leave you all to review those transcripts. There are a few things that will become immediately clear when you do.

And the first is that contrary to the claims of the President and his accolades on the Hill, that these have been proceedings in which the Republicans have not been able to be present and ask questions. In fact, Republicans were present for all these depositions and in fact they had equal opportunity as Democrats to ask questions, and you will see they took full advantage of those opportunities to ask questions.

You will see in Ambassador Yavanovitch's testimony what a dedicated public servant she is. This is someone who served the country with distinction for decades. It is someone who also is one of the first witnesses to this irregular back channel that the President established with Rudy Giuliani and the damage that it was doing to America's National Security and foreign policy interests.

How it was working in opposition, not in support, of U.S. policy objectives. Ambassador Yavanovitch had a well-earned reputation as a fighter of corruption, and she was working with Ukraine to get Ukraine to fight corruption. And so what does this irregular back channel sanctioned by the President do?

It seeks to remove someone fighting for corruption in Ukraine. By employing a vicious smear campaign in which the State Department at the highest levels acknowledged had no merit whatsoever. That smear campaign orchestrated by this irregular channel was successful in removing a U.S. Ambassador and tarring her reputation.

Of course, you see the President's comments about the Ambassador in the call record.