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House of Representatives Holds First Public Impeachment Hearings; Aide to Diplomat Bill Taylor Reports Overhearing Phone Conversation between President Trump and Ambassador Gordon Sondland Regarding Investigation into Bidens; Ousted Ambassador Yovanovitch to Testify on Hill Tomorrow; Rep. Mike Quigley (D-IL) is Interviewed About the Impeachment Probe. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired November 14, 2019 - 08:00   ET

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

[08:00:00]

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: -- impeachment hearings continues right now with Wolf Blitzer.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning. I'm Wolf Blitzer in Washington. We want to welcome our viewers here in the United States and around the world.

In hours of testimony during this, the first impeachment hearing of the Trump presidency, the stunning new information came in just during the first few minutes. The top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine, Bill Taylor, revealing that just days ago he learned that a senior embassy staffer overheard a phone conversation between President Trump and the United States ambassador to the European union, Gordon Sondland. The political affairs counselor David Holmes said he heard the president ask Sondland about investigations into the Bidens. President Trump says he doesn't remember the phone call and he called it secondhand information. The firsthand information will come next week, raising the stakes dramatically for Sondland's testimony next Wednesday. And tomorrow, Holmes, the Taylor staffer who overheard the conversation, will be questioned behind closed doors.

Also tomorrow, we will hear publicly from the diplomat Bill Taylor was brought in to replace in Ukraine, Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch. Aides have told President Trump so far that the testimony has been a big win for him while admitting privately there's still a lot more to come. Our team is covering all the angles in this impeachment process. Let's first go up to Capitol Hill. Our Senior Congressional Correspondent Manu Raju is joining us right now. Manu, what's the latest? What are you hearing?

MANU RAJU, CNN SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Democrats believe that this new information really shows the extent of the president's push to get Ukraine to investigate his political rivals at the time in which Ukraine was awaiting this aid, military aid, roughly $400 million that had been approved by Congress amid questions about why that had not been turned over until September. And also, as Ukraine was pushing for a meeting between the Ukrainian president Zelensky and President Trump, but the president was still pushing privately for these investigations, including into former president -- vice president Joe Biden.

Now, yesterday also, Adam Schiff made clear that this shows that the president was directly involved in some of these decisions and that they could no longer blame people below him.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BILL TAYLOR, TOP U.S. DIPLOMAT IN UKRAINE: In the presence of my staff, at a restaurant, Ambassador Sondland called President Trump and told him of his meetings in Kiev. The member of my staff could hear President Trump on the phone asking Ambassador Sondland about the investigations. Ambassador Sondland told President Trump the Ukrainians were ready to move forward.

SCHIFF: This is very, obviously, very important because there is an effort to, apparently to, by the president's allies, throw Sondland under the bus, throw Mulvaney under the bus, throw anybody under the bus in an effort to protect the president.

But what this call indicates, as other testimony has likewise indicated, is that the instructions are coming from the president on down. One of the reasons why we want to do these hearings now in public, having done the deposition in closed session, is we want them to evaluate the credibility of the witnesses for themselves.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RAJU: And that last part, Wolf, was in reference to Gordon Sondland's testimony himself. I had asked Adam Schiff whether or not he believed Gordon Sondland was truthful about his interactions with the president in the aftermath of this new revelation that Gordon Sondland had this discussion with the president that was overheard by this Taylor aide in which the president was pushing for these investigations into Joe Biden.

Also, Bill Taylor yesterday did testify, of course, that Gordon Sondland had told him that everything was contingent on this public declaration of investigations. That includes aid to Ukraine, aid to Ukraine. That includes military assistance. That includes this meeting that the Ukrainians sought. And that's something that Gordon Sondland will be pushed at next week in his public hearing. Does he provide any more clarity or does he differ from Bill Taylor in any way? That's going to be a key moment in these impeachment proceedings, Wolf.

BLITZER: I'm sure it's going to be very, very dramatic next week. Manu, thank you very much. Let's go to the White House right now. Our senior White House correspondent Pamela Brown is on the scene for us. So Pamela, how does the administration see the testimony at least so far?

PAMELA BROWN, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Wolf, President Trump, he's got this break today from the public impeachment hearings, but he is tweeting about yesterday's hearing from two key witnesses, focusing on the GOP lawmakers' questioning, praising Congressman Ratcliffe who had asked about what the impeachable offense was in the president's call.

But even as the White House aides briefed President Trump that they believe the hearing was a win for them, it is clear, Wolf, the president is not out of the woods yet, particularly in the wake of that new revelation you were just discussing from Bill Taylor that one of his aides heard the president on the phone with Ambassador Gordon Sondland pressing about the investigations at the center of this impeachment probe that Sondland then characterized to that aide as the president caring more about the Biden investigation than Ukraine.

[08:05:00]

Now, this new information caught the White House off guard, and the president as well. He claimed that he didn't recall that conversation. And it immediately put the White House on the defensive. They were quick to point out that if this aide was so alarmed, he would have raised it earlier than a week ago. They are saying this is just another example of hearsay. But no doubt, Wolf, it raises the stakes for Gordon Sondland's upcoming public testimony and has given Democrats new ammunition to tie everything back to President Trump, as Manu noted.

During this hearing, the White House pushed an aggressive messaging campaign, Wolf, in response, and inundated allies' inboxes with talking points. That rubbed some GOP lawmakers the wrong way. Some of them actually complained to the White House affairs office that they were being spammed and actually asked them to stop. And we should note, Wolf, that the president will be in Louisiana tonight before a friendly crowd before returning to the White House for another round of public hearings tomorrow. Wolf?

BLITZER: Pamela Brown at the White House, thanks very much.

And this note to our viewers, coming up in a few minutes, I'll speak live with Kellyanne Conway, the counselor to President Trump. That interview coming up later this hour.

I want to break down all the latest developments with my experts right now. Carrie Cordero, what do you think? These two diplomats yesterday, they made it clear that their understanding was that no U.S. aid, no military assistance to Ukraine would flow unless there was a public statement from the Ukrainian leadership saying they've launched an investigation into the Bidens as well as the 2016 presidential campaign.

CARRIE CORDERO, CNN LEGAL AND NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Exactly. And they didn't stray from the facts that they were there to present. They were consistent with their testimony that they had given in closed session, which the transcripts had been released. They are consistent with the information that we've learned from the released July 25th phone call between the president and President Zelensky. They are consistent with what we know of what some other witnesses have said, including the text messages that took place between Ambassador Taylor and Ambassador Sondland.

So, so far these are credible witnesses. They demonstrated and they provided to the American public yesterday their history of service to the country. There is no reason to doubt their credibility, their motivations. They took pains, I thought, to present themselves as fact witnesses and people that have been in the service of country, not as political opponents, not there with any ax to grind, not there to really be voluntary players in an impeachment inquiry.

BLITZER: Ross Garber, you teach impeachment law at Tulane Law School. Was this potentially an abuse of power by the president of the United States?

ROSS GARBER, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Yes, I think what we're going to wind up getting to is the question of, why was he doing what he was doing? And you've seen the Republicans throw out lots of different defenses. Yesterday it was that these guys didn't have personal firsthand knowledge from the president. You heard there was no quid pro quo. I think what we'll get to is why was the president doing what he was doing? Was he doing it because he honestly believed he was furthering U.S. foreign policy in the interest of the United States, or was he doing what he was doing for his personal political benefit? That's a question that these witnesses didn't answer yesterday, and I think we need to hear more about.

BLITZER: What do you think, John Dean. How do you see it?

JOHN DEAN, FORMER NIXON WHITE HOUSE COUNSEL: I agree with Gary totally. They were strong witnesses. They weren't partisan witnesses. Cross-examination did not lay a finger on them, didn't change their stories. In fact, just the opposite. Elicited new information about this call with Sondland that really thrusts him into the key witness, if not the star witness in these proceedings.

BLITZER: How significant, Carrie, was that phone conversation that the U.S. ambassador, Bill Taylor, said his political counselor at the embassy overheard between the U.S. ambassador to the E.U., Gordon Sondland, and the president of the United States? They were having dinner. He was on his cell phone, and he overheard the conversation, David Holmes.

CORDERO: It's significant from a factual matter because now we have another person who was working in government who heard independently a conversation between the president and Ambassador Sondland confirming that the president was interested in an investigation into the Bidens, which has no legitimate foreign policy purpose.

GARBER: Well, maybe.

CORDERO: An investigation into the Bidens?

GARBER: I think what we're going to hear from the president and his team is -- and it's no secret. I'm going to be sort of the Debbie downer on that conversation. Number one, I want to hear exactly what this person overheard. But second and more important, I don't think there's any mystery that the president expressed an interest in an investigation of Burisma. I think that's been well established. I don't think that's going to be an issue. And the question is why, as I said before. [08:10:01]

And I think what we're going to hear from the president and his team is that the president had a legitimate concern about corruption in Ukraine, and potentially emblematic of that kind of corruption would be these payments going to Hunter Biden, the son of the vice president when the vice president was in charge of Ukraine policy. And in fact, it was actually troubling to one of the witnesses yesterday, so troubling that one of the witnesses raised concerns at the State Department.

BLITZER: At the time, that was George Kent, the deputy assistant secretary of state.

CORDERO: Well, the reason, though, that that information is going to come out as being politically motivated, that's why this phone call becomes so important and why Gordon Sondland's testimony next week in open session becomes so important, because according to the way Bill Taylor described it yesterday, this individual was listening to a phone call that demonstrated that the president was not interested in the United States' interest, was not interested in the foreign policy objectives in bolstering Ukraine and continuing U.S. foreign policy support for Ukraine, but he was interested in a political investigation.

DEAN: It's so unusual for a president to speak directly to an ambassador. I'm telling you, in the history of the United States, probably hasn't happened five times.

BLITZER: Gordon Sondland was not just an ambassador. He gave $1 million to the Trump Inaugural Committee. He was a political appointee.

DEAN: Lots of them have given $1 million.

BLITZER: No, but when a lot of these who aren't career diplomats, who are political appointees, friends of a president, they speak with presidents all the time.

DEAN: Not so much. Not so much.

BLITZER: In a lot of administrations I've spoken to a lot of these ambassadors and they tell me --

DEAN: I was in an administration where the president --

BLITZER: I don't know about the Nixon administration.

(LAUGHTER)

BLITZER: I'm talking about the Bill Clinton administration, I spent almost eight years covering that administration. There were political appointees and there career diplomats, political appointees who were friends, they would call the president, they would talk to the president. But we can discuss this. Everybody standby. There's a lot more still to come. We're going to

be following all these developments. The diplomat George Kent says that Marie Yovanovitch was the target of Rudy Giuliani's smear campaign, and now ousted Ambassador Yovanovitch gets to tell her story tomorrow in the second public impeachment hearing.

And the White House is getting its response in high gear. Kellyanne Conway, counselor to the president, she'll join us live. That's coming up in a few minutes.

Also, the Democratic field is getting larger today with former Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick saying he is the person to defeat Donald Trump.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:16:44]

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Tomorrow is setting up to be another explosive day of public testimony here in Washington, up on Capitol Hill.

Marie Yovanovitch, who was pulled from her post by President Trump as the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, is expected to describe how she felt threatened by comments that the president made. Yovanovitch could shine more light on the alleged smear campaign against her, she says led by Rudy Giuliani, the president's personal lawyer. The developments could be very significant.

CNN's Jessica Schneider is joining me with more on what we can expect from the former ambassador.

This could be a powerful bit of testimony on her part.

JESSICA SCHNEIDER, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: It likely will be powerful, Wolf. And we're likely to hear her echo what she said in that closed door testimony about the extensive efforts of Rudy Giuliani and his associates to remove her from her post which, of course, eventually happened in May.

So, Yovanovitch will take center stage tomorrow where she'll discuss her duties as U.S. ambassador to Ukraine since 2016 where she really led the call on the Ukrainian government to do more to fight corruption. But, of course, it was in May where she was unexpectedly recalled from her post, despite being a diplomat since 1986.

Now, her tough treatment is something that both George Kent and Bill Taylor touched upon in their testimony yesterday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE KENT, DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF STATE: I became increasingly aware of an effort by Rudy Giuliani and others, including his associates Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman to run a campaign to smear Yovanovitch. BILL TAYLOR, TOP U.S. DIPLOMAT IN UKRAINE: When Secretary Pompeo

asked me to go back to Kiev, I wanted to say yes, but it was not an easy decision. The former Ambassador Masha Yovanovitch has been treated poorly caught in political machinations both in Kiev and in Washington. I feared those problems were still present.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCHNEIDER: And, in fact, Marie Yovanovitch was quite blunt in the closed door testimony. Her transcript revealing she felt threatened by the president's associates as they worked to undermine her and have her removed. She recounted how a Ukrainian official told her to, quote, watch my back.

Yet she said that she was encouraged by E.U. Ambassador Gordon Sondland to actually praise Trump. Sondland even suggesting that she tweet praise at the president over Twitter to save her job. And then when the attacks against her ramped up within the right wing media, particularly from Fox News host Sean Hannity, that's when Yovanovitch said she was told that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo or someone around him at the state department planned to actually call Sean Hannity and ask about the basis of those attacks but Hannity has pushed back, Wolf, saying that he never talked to Secretary Pompeo.

So, really, Marie Yovanovitch tomorrow likely to set the stage about this rogue and shadow foreign policy that Rudy Giuliani was pushing. One thing she probably won't be able to talk about, she talked about it in the closed door testimony is how since she was removed from her post in May, it was really before the withholding of that military aid so she probably won't get into that as much but we'll talk about Giuliani's efforts and this rogue foreign policy.

BLITZER: In that closed door deposition, we all read the transcripts. She also says how she felt threatened. She was getting warnings. She was getting threats.

SCHNEIDER: Watch her back.

BLITZER: It was an ugly situation for this career diplomat who spent 30 years in the State Department serving Democratic and Republican presidents.

[08:20:07]

All right. Thanks very much for that, Jessica, for that report.

Joining us now to discuss all of this, Democratic Congressman Mike Quigley of Illinois. He sits on the House Intelligence Committee. He was asking questions yesterday.

Thanks so much for joining us.

REP. MIKE QUIGLEY (D-IL): Good morning. Thank you.

BLITZER: So what did you think of your committee accomplished yesterday? What was the main point that you learned? QUIGLEY: Look, I think two of the cream of our diplomatic corps in a

clear and convincing and credible way began to tell the story to the American people how the president of the United States helped create a shadow foreign policy for his own political benefit, contrary to the longstanding U.S. foreign policy in Ukraine.

BLITZER: Let me play this clip from Ambassador Bill Taylor, the top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine from his testimony yesterday. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TAYLOR: Following the call with President Trump, the member of my staff asked Ambassador Sondland what President Trump thought about Ukraine. Mr. Sondland responded that President Trump cares more about the investigations of Biden which Giuliani was pressing for.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: What was your reaction to that, Congressman?

QUIGLEY: Look, it's shocking, but in another sense, not surprising. I think you can read the president's transcript of his call that the White House released. The fact that he ordered OMB to withhold military aid tells us enough.

No matter exact the circumstances are in Ukraine, you don't imperil an ally. You don't threaten their national security and, therefore, our national security, by threatening to withhold aid, aid frankly I don't think would have gotten there if it wasn't for the whistle-blower and the fact that Congress called the president on it.

BLITZER: The aide who the political counselor, the political affairs counselor at the U.S. embassy in Ukraine who overheard this conversation between the president and the U.S. ambassador to the E.U., he's going to be appearing behind closed doors tomorrow before your committee.

What do you hope to learn from this individual, David Holmes, a senior State Department official?

QUIGLEY: Look, there's a lot of details there and the nuance is going to matter, the circumstances. Obviously, exactly what he heard. It also makes Ambassador Sondland's testimony next week all the more interesting and intriguing. My message to the ambassador is, it's never too late to do the right thing. He's already amended his testimony once. It will be interesting how he does that again next week given yesterday's revelation.

BLITZER: Congressman, you have a lot of pushback, a lot of feedback from what you said yesterday about the value of so-called hearsay evidence. This is what you said. I'll play the clip.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

QUIGLEY: I think the American public needs to be reminded that countless people have been convicted on hearsay because the courts have routinely allowed and created, needed exceptions to hearsay. Hearsay can be much better evidence than direct as we have learned in painful instances. And it's certainly valid in this instance.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: All right. So among others, Donald Trump Jr. was tweeting this morning saying basically you're wrong. You don't know what you're talking about.

I want you to explain your point. Why is hearsay evidence better than direct evidence?

QUIGLEY: Well, first, I am sure Don's done a lot of trials in his life. I've done probably over 200. So I might know what I'm talking about.

The first message is this. If you don't like the testimony, if you don't like the evidence, quit blocking what everyone imagined would be much more direct evidence. Mick Mulvaney, blocked. John Bolton, blocked. Rick Perry, their testimony is blocked.

So don't complain that the evidence isn't direct enough when you are blocking what would, obviously, be more direct evidence.

As far as the rules of evidence, they are not going to apply in proceedings like this. But the federal rules of evidence which I'm sure Don knows so much about, create 23 exceptions to the hearsay rule. So, obviously, the courts understand just how credible it is.

In the final analysis, it's how credible it is. Yesterday's testimony, often secondhand, was as credible as it comes. We know from experience in criminal courts that sometimes direct evidence, something like an eyewitness testimony, can be extraordinarily faulty. But we also know that what we might think of as hearsay, indirect evidence, the exceptions might be an excited utterance or statement against an interest.

We've learned from time -- time and time again just how credible it can be. It's not that one is necessarily better than the other. But one can be better than the other. It depends on the circumstances and I'm sure Don with all his lengthy trial experience can tell us all about it later on.

[08:25:06]

BLITZER: All right. Congressman Mike Quigley, thanks so much for joining us.

QUIGLEY: Thank you.

BLITZER: The White House strategy unfolding as the public hearings kick into high gear. I'll speak next with a counselor to the president, Kellyanne Conway. She's here live. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) BLITZER: Right now, lawmakers here in Washington -- they are preparing for Friday, for tomorrow's open hearing. The U.S. ambassador to Ukraine removed, Marie Yovanovitch, will speak publicly for the first time. She was abruptly recalled from her post back in May by the president.

But perhaps the most anticipated testimony will come next week.

END