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Nicholas Burns is Interviewed on the Impeachment Hearings; Discussion on Impeachment Hearings; Erdogan Showed Propaganda Video at White House. Aired 9:30-10a ET

Aired November 14, 2019 - 09:30   ET

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

[09:30:38]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. DEVIN NUNES (R-CA): I'll conclude by noting the immense damage a politicized democracy has done to American' faith in government. Though executive branch employees are charged with implementing the policies set by our president, who is elected and responsible to the American people, elements of the civil service have decided that they, not the president, are really in charge.

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WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Republican Congressman Devin Nunes, the top Republican member of the House Intelligence Committee, warning that this impeachment process is doing damage to the country. Also yesterday, Democrats leaned away from the term quid pro quo, appearing now to prefer the word bribery when referring to President Trump's dealings with the government of Ukraine. That word is actually in the U.S. Constitution as an impeachable offense.

Let's bring in retired Ambassador Nicholas Burns. He's a former undersecretary of state for political affairs, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO. We must point out that he is also a current foreign policy adviser to Joe Biden's presidential campaign.

Nick, thanks very much for coming in.

AMBASSADOR NICHOLAS BURNS, FORMER UNDERSECRETARY OF STATE FOR POLITICAL AFFAIRS: Thanks, Wolf.

BLITZER: Are you comfortable with the way the career diplomats -- and you worked with career diplomats your whole life -- are playing such a pivotal role right now in this impeachment inquiry?

BURNS: I certainly am. I think, Wolf, you know, they show the American people a different side to our government. Serious, professional, informed, nonpartisan. That's who Bill Taylor, George Kent are. That's who Marie Yovanovitch is. And she's going to testify tomorrow.

So I think they've given -- if there's a silver lining in this very dark impeachment cloud, I think it's been the foreign service officers who have put country first. BLITZER: Listen to Republican Congressman John Ratcliffe, had an

important moment yesterday in the hearing when he put the two career diplomats, these two veteran American diplomats, on the spot, asked them if the president committed an impeachable offense.

Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. JOHN RATCLIFFE (R-TX): OK. Very good. So, in this impeachment hearing today, where we impeach presidents for treason or bribery or other high crimes, where is the impeachable offense in that call? Are either of you here today to assert there was an impeachable offense in that call? Shout it out. Anyone?

AMBASSADOR TAYLOR: Mr. Ratcliffe, I would just like to say that I'm not here to do anything having to do with -- to come -- to decide about impeachment. That is not what either of us are here to do. This is -- this is your job.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: All right, what did you think of that answer, this is your job?

BURNS: I thought it was interesting that a politician like Congressman Ratcliffe might be surprised that not everybody's political. That these two people, Bill Taylor and George Kent, you know, they're accustomed to being nonpartisan. As they both said yesterday, they weren't there to try to say yea or nay on impeachment, they were there to provide the analysis and facts. And they were subpoenaed. They were asked to be there.

BLITZER: And these are diplomats who worked under Democratic president and Republican presidents going back after decades.

BURNS: That's right.

BLITZER: And their job is to represent the United States government and do what's best for U.S. diplomacy.

What's the impact of the criticism that's being leveled on diplomats having, on other career diplomats who are serving very often in rather dangerous situations around the world?

BURNS: The impact has been severe. I mean it was objectionable to see Congressman Nunes say what he did, indict the federal workforce. One of the great glories of the United States is we have a nonpartisan civil service. We are accustomed, certainly I was, all my compatriots, working for Republican as well as Democratic presidents. And so when you see these political attacks on our career foreign service, and you see the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, not stand up and defend Bill Taylor and George Kent, and not stand up and protect Marie Yovanovitch when she was pushed out by Rudy Giuliani, it's been dispiriting, Wolf. There's a crisis, I think, of confidence in the State Department. People don't feel respected. And that's a shame because they do so much for our country.

BLITZER: OK. And she was a highly -- highly respected U.S. diplomat. Still is. She's on leave sort of at Georgetown University here in Washington right now, but she was really threatened with horrible calls and emails and stuff like that as a result of this.

BURNS: And you remember in the July 25th phone call, on the White House's own transcript, President Trump speaks with a sense of, you know, vengeance against her. This is not the behavior of a rational government and of a rational president.

BLITZER: What did you think of the Rudy Giuliani, the president's personal lawyer, conducting what is being described as this shadow diplomacy outside the normal diplomacy that these two diplomats were testifying about yesterday?

[09:35:04]

BURNS: It was destructive. And I think, you know, there's been a lot of attention -- almost all of the attention on the politics. How about the foreign policy impact of Rudy Giuliani and Donald Trump? George Kent said a couple of times yesterday, he said, look, for the 28 years that Ukraine's been an independent state, all of the four previous presidents counseled the Ukrainians, follow the rule of law, you know, root out corruption, don't act like authoritarian thugs. And that's exactly what President Trump and Giuliani asked the Ukrainians to do, investigate one of our president's political rivals. There's a -- there's a loss for the United States of credibility around the world when we're seen to be acting in an authoritarian way and, of course, we're the world's greatest democracy.

BLITZER: Nick Burns, thanks very much for coming in.

BURNS: Thank you, Wolf.

BLITZER: Appreciate it very much.

Still to come, the White House responds to the impeachment hearings. What's their message this morning?

We'll be right back.

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[09:40:40]

BLITZER: The White House is calling yesterday's impeachment hearings a big win for the president, but there was new information that could prove problematic for the president. Bill Taylor, the top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine, testified that he recently learned one of the senior staffers overheard a phone conversation between President Trump and the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, Gordon Sondland, in which the president asked Sondland about investigations into the Bidens.

Joining us now to discuss, our CNN senior White House correspondent Pamela Brown, and our chief national correspondent, the host of "INSIDE POLITICS," John King.

You know, guys, I just finished speaking with the counselor to the president, Kellyanne Conway. This was her reaction to Bill Taylor's new revelations.

Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KELLYANNE CONWAY, COUNSELOR TO PRESIDENT TRUMP: There was nothing new yesterday. You're calling that evidence, respectfully, in a real court of law we would not be referring to something as evidence that is, oh, someone on my staff recalled overhearing a conversation between someone else and the president where they think they heard the president use the word investigations. This is not what due process and the rule of law and our great democracy allows.

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BLITZER: All right, so, John, what's your reaction to what she says, this was nothing new, this is not evidence.

JOHN KING, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, number one, it's kind of rich for the -- someone who works for the people, who (ph) are saying president, who constantly throw out innuendo and rumor and conspiracy theory, to say this is not evidence. She's right, in a court of law it would be hard to establish as evidence.

This is not a court of law. This is a court of politics, if you will. The House has to make a decision.

I get it. The White House strategy, whether it's on this issue or anything else, is to hold the Republicans by making this as partisan as possible and questioning the character of the witnesses. She's right that somebody overheard the president on a phone call, will not get you to the finish line, but it does get you a new witness, the aide to Bill Taylor who heard it, and it increases the pressure dramatically on Gordon Sondland next week because he is the link to the president.

All of the witnesses, including the White House witnesses, have established he had frequent conversations with the president. He was the person on the other end of that phone call. He has already revised his testimony once. If he has a good lawyer, that good lawyer is going to tell him, you can't revise your testimony a second or a third time. So when you go in next week, you better tell the truth, because if you have to fix it again, if some witness contradicts you, they call that perjury.

BLITZER: Yes.

KING: And so the pressure on Gordon Sondland is enormous. Anything the White House says, anything the Republicans say between now and then is strategy. They're just trying to buy time, distract people and let's see what Sondland says. He's key. He was on the other end of that phone call. Did the president say that? BLITZER: It's going to be really a dramatic moment when he's there on Wednesday.

Pamela, we're also learning that Republicans are threatening to block White House emails after being inundated during the impeachment hearings yesterday. Tell us about that.

PAMELA BROWN, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, that's right, Wolf. As you know, the White House had not set up a war room, much to the chagrin of GOP lawmakers. And the White House may have overcompensated for not doing that beforehand because we're told, our reporting, is that White House legislative affairs staffers inundated GOP lawmakers with talking points, with pushback from the hearing yesterday to the point that some of those lawmakers and staffers had to push back to the White House, ask them to stop sending emails to them.

Basically they felt like they were being spammed by the White House. But this was all part of an aggressive strategy over at the White House to really focus on messaging, on pushback, like I said, to maybe perhaps overcompensate for not having that system in place beforehand. And, as you know, the White House was criticized for that.

Now, what is key here is looking forward and what their messaging is right now, as you guys talked about, they're really focusing on this new revelation that the White House was caught off guard by yesterday about this phone call between President Trump and Gordon Sondland.

Now, the White House is quick to say, look, this was hearsay. This is, you know, once again, hearsay upon hearsay. The problem with that, though, Wolf, is the fact that this aide, who had apparently overheard this conversation, according to Bill Taylor, will be testifying behind closed doors tomorrow and then, of course, there's Gordon Sondland's testimony next week. And so we'll have to wait and see how all of this plays out.

But certainly, depending on what happens behind closed doors and next week with Gordon Sondland's testimony, the White House may need to come up with new talking points, a new strategy on that front.

[09:45:04]

Wolf.

BLITZER: You know, Pamela -- Pamela, John, was -- is a White House correspondent right now. Twenty-one years ago, you and I were CNN White House correspondents during the Bill Clinton impeachment process. A little less gray on your part, probably me, too.

But give us a little comparison. Reflect on what was going on then at this time and what is going on.

KING: Well, the craziness, if you will, is equal. We didn't have Twitter in those days. There was not social media. I can't imagine what it would have been like. But there's a fundamental difference. By the time the Bill Clinton impeachment got to Congress, the president of the United States had given taped testimony to a grand jury admitting he had lied about personal conduct. So it was a different -- the question then was, is it an impeachable offense? There was no question that Bill Clinton had lied. Then there was a debate about, had he obstructed -- had he obstructed. But the basic facts were not in dispute. The big debate was, is it an impeachable offense?

That may be where we get. If the witnesses are as powerful as the two witnesses yesterday, if this witness can corroborate that was the president's voice, if Gordon Sondland says that was the president, we may get to a point where the facts are not in dispute. I don't know that the Republicans would ever accept that in this environment.

But 20 -- in the Clinton years, the question was, this was personal conduct. Is it an impeachable offense? Here, this is, did the president corrupt U.S. foreign policy for personal gain? It's a very -- it's professional conduct, if you will. As president of the United States, did he use the levers, the resources of the United States government to help himself in domestic politics?

So -- so the issues at play, I would argue, the issues, in terms of the use of government resources, the use of bending foreign policy, this is a much more significant allegation, that's not excusing what Bill Clinton did, but this is about using the United States government, essentially warping it, taking the train off the tracks to help him politically, to help him pursue political vendettas. If that can be proven, it's a much higher offense.

BLITZER: Yes, it's an important point indeed, very important.

All right, John King, thank you.

Pamela Brown, thanks to you as well.

There's other important news unfolding.

The Turkish president, Erdogan, shocking Republican senators during a White House meeting with the president. We have details about the -- what's being described as the propaganda video he shared with senators and the president in the Oval Office. That's next.

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[09:51:56]

BLITZER: We're learning new details this morning on yesterday's White House meeting with Turkish President Erdogan. A Republican source says the Turkish leader showed a group of Republican senators and President Trump what's being described as a propaganda video, purported to show Kurds in a very, very negative light. The source calling it surreal.

CNN's Joe Johns is joining us from the White House right now.

Good morning, Joe. Tell us -- tell us about this.

JOE JOHNS, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Wolf. Well, you know, visitors by Erdogan to the White House don't seem to

disappoint. And this was another one of those cases.

As you reported, first report by "Axios" and confirmed by CNN, apparently during a meeting with five Republican senators, who are critics of Turkey policies. Erdogan did, in fact, pull out an iPad and showed these senators what has been described as a propaganda video, essentially trying to make his case about the Kurds. He, of course, believes that certain Kurdish groups are essentially terrorist groups and trying to convince the senators of that described, as you said, as surreal and pure propaganda by people who were in the room.

This, apparently, was a very tense meeting by all accounts. Senator Lindsey Graham, Senator Ted Cruz, both critics of Erdogan, particularly of what he has done in Syria when he essentially launched an invasion on northern Syria and went after the Kurds. So, there was talk about that. But probably the first thing on the agenda was the issue of a missile defense system that Turkey apparently is considering buying. That missile defense system comes from Russia and is not compatible with the U.S. F-35 fighter jet. The fighter jet, of course, is critical to U.S. defense and some people in the United States are concerned that if the technology of these two systems get melded the F-35's technology will be compromised.

Other things important to note. Erdogan also said that he returned to the president of the United States a controversial letter that the president wrote him. This was a don't be a fool letter that so many of us have reported about. Well, when you return a letter in diplomatic terms, that, of course, is considered saying that this was an insult. And so the reporting continues on the Erdogan meeting.

Back to you, Wolf.

BLITZER: Certainly does. All right, very sensitive stuff, indeed.

Joe Johns, thank you.

Right now deliberations are about to begin in the Roger Stone trial here in Washington. Yesterday, prosecutors wrapped up their case, enforcing their view that the Trump adviser lied about his involvement with WikiLeaks in order to protect Donald Trump. Stone's defense attorneys denying he knew anything about the Russian hack of the DNC servers and they say Stone had no reason to lie.

The first day of public impeachment hearings raising the stakes. Clearly new testimony now puts U.S. Ambassador to the European Union, Gordon Sondland, on the hot seat.

[09:55:00]

Stay with us. Lots more on our special coverage right after this.

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BLITZER: Good morning. I'm Wolf Blitzer in Washington.

We want to welcome our viewers here in the United States and around the world.

Conspiracy theories overlapping with U.S. foreign policy goals.

[10:00:00]

Tomorrow, that is what we expect to hear from Marie Yovanovitch, the ousted former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, as she testifies in the second impeachment hearing.