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CNN Live Event/Special

The Impeachment Trial; Senators Ask Both Sides Questions. Aired 4:30-5p ET

Aired January 30, 2020 - 16:30   ET

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

[16:30:00] SCHIFF: -- in office has a political motivation -- but certainly that doesn't mean that we can't draw a line between corrupt activity that is undertaken, yes for a political reason -- and non- corrupt activity. Indeed we have to draw that line.

Let's show what Professor Dershowitz had to say about where we should draw the line.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DERSHOWITZ: And if a president does something which he believes will help him get elected in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in an impeachment. The fact that he's announced his candidacy is a very good reason for upping the interest in his son.

If he wasn't running for president, he's a has-been. He's the former vice president of the United States, OK, big deal. But if he's running for president that's an enormous, big deal.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCHIFF: So it is certainly true that when public officials take actions, they may have a mind when they make a policy judgment, what's the impact on my political career going to be, or what's the impact going to be on my reelection prospects? But that's a very different question than whether they can engage in a corrupt act to help their election -- this case to get foreign help to cheat in an election.

I think we can distinguish between the fact that political actors have political interests with what the president's defense would argue, and that is if he believes it's in his reelection interest then no quid pro quo is too corrupt. If we go down that road there is no limit to what this or any other president can do.

There is no limit to what foreign powers will feel they can offer a corrupt president to help their re-election if that is the precedent we intend to establish.

J. ROBERTS: (Inaudible). Thank you, Mr. Manager. Senator from New Jersey.

MENENDEZ: Mr. Chief Justice ... J. ROBERTS: Thank you. The question for the House Managers from Senator Menendez. The president was seeking investigations from a foreign power based partly on what Fiona Hill called, quote, a fictional narrative perpetrated and propagated by the Russian services. End quote.

The U.S. Intelligence Community has warned that the Russian government is already preparing to attack our election in 2020 and the president has said publicly he would welcome foreign interference in our elections.

Why should Americans be concerned about foreign interference and why does it matter that the president continues to solicit foreign interference in our elections.

CROW: Mr. Chief Justice, Senator; thank you for the question. Let's outline the facts that we do know about today. None of the 17 witnesses who testified as part of the Houses Impeachment Inquiry.

We're aware of any factual basis to support the allegations that it was Ukraine and not Russia that interfered in the 2016 election. FBI director, Christopher Wray who is nominated by President Trump and confirmed by this body stated as recently as this past December that we have no reason to believe that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 U.S. election.

We say the quote we have no information that indicates that Ukraine interfered with the 2016 presidential election. President Trump's own homeland security advisor, Tom Bossert said about this allegation, quote, it's not only a conspiracy theory it is completely debunked, end quote.

He added, quote, let me just repeat here again, it has no validity, end quote. And of course Ms. Hill, as the question indicated, said the -- said quote, fictional narrative that is being perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services themselves.

The U.S. intelligence community has unanimously determined that there's no validity to this. Our own intelligence and law enforcement, Special Counsel Mueller found that Russia's interference was quote, sweeping and systematic. But don't take our own law enforcement and intelligence community's word for it.

[16:35:00]

Let's hear what Vladimir Putin himself said recently about this. In November of 2019, Mr. Putin was overheard saying quote, thank god no one is accusing us of -- of interfering in the U.S. elections anymore. Now they're accusing Ukraine. End quote.

And let me end with that one. Because that one demonstrates to my why this matters. That one demonstrates to me why anyone in the United States should matter. Vladimir Putin could care less about delivering healthcare for the people of Russia, for building infrastructure in Russia. Vladimir Putin, as many people in this chamber know well because I've worked with some of you on this, wakes up every morning and goes to bed every night trying to figure out how to destroy American democracy.

And he's organized the infrastructure of his government around that effort. This is a battle over resolve; it's the battle over the hearts and minds of our people. It's the battle over information and disinformation. And if the message from the very top of our government from the very top of our leaders -- if the message from -- from some folks over the last couple of weeks is that facts don't matter.

That our law enforcement doesn't matter. That our intelligence community's unanimous consensus doesn't matter, that is dangerous. That is what Vladimir Putin and Russia are looking for. And that makes us less safe.

J. ROBERTS: Thank you, Mr. Manager. Senator from Wisconsin.

(UNKNOWN): Mr. Chief Justice, I send a question to the desk on behalf of myself and Senator Hawley, Cruz, Cramer, Braun, Perdue, Barrasso, Rubio, Risch, Sullivan, Ernst, Scott of Florida, Daines, and Fischer for the House -- for both the House Managers with response from the counsel of the president.

J. ROBERTS: Thank you. The question from Senator Johnson and the other senators for both parties. Recent reporting described two NSC staff hold-overs from the Obama administration attending an all hands meeting of NSC staff held about two weeks into the Trump administration and talking loudly enough to be overheard saying we need to do everything we can to take out the president.

On July 26, 2019 the House Intelligence Committee hired one of those individuals, Sean Misko. The report further describes relationships between Misko, Lieutenant Colonel Vindman, and an individual alleged as the whistleblower. Why did your committee hire Sean Misko the day after the phone call between President Trump and Zelensky and what role has he played throughout your committee's investigation. The House will begin.

SCHIFF: First of all, there have been a lot of attacks on my staff. And as I said when this issue came up earlier, I'm appalled at some of the smearing of the professional people that work for the intelligence committee.

Now this question referrers to allegations and a newspaper article, which are circulating smears on my staff and ask me to respond to those smears. And I will not dignify those smears on my staff by giving them any credence what-so-ever. Nor will I share any information that I believe could or could not lead to identification of the whistleblower.

I want to be very clear about something. Members of this body used to care about the protection of whistleblower identities. They didn't used to gratuitously attack members of committee staff. But now they do, now they do. Now they'll take an unsubstantiated or (ph) press article and use it to smear my staff. I think that's disgraceful. I think it's disgraceful.

[16:40:00]

You know, whistleblowers are a unique and vital resource for the intelligence community. And why? Because, unlike other whistleblowers who can go public with their information, whistleblowers in the intelligence community cannot because it deals with classified information. They must come to a committee, they must talk to the staff of that committee or to the inspector general. That is what they're supposed to do. Our system relies upon it.

And when you jeopardize a whistleblower by trying to out them this way, then you are threatening not just this whistleblower, but the entire system. Now, the president would like that -- nothing better than that, and I'm sure the president is applauding this question because he wants his pound of flesh, and he wants to punish anyone that had the courage to stand up to him.

Well, I can't tell you who the whistleblower is because I don't know, but I can tell you who the whistleblower should be. It should be every one of us. Every one of us should be willing to blow the whistle on presidential misconduct. If it weren't for this whistleblower, we wouldn't know about this misconduct, and that might be just as well for this president but it would not be good for this country.

And I worry that future people that see wrongdoing are going to watch how this person has been treated, the threats against this person's life, and they're going to say, why stick my neck out? Is my name going to be dragged through the mud? Will people join our staff if they know that their names are going to be dragged through the mud?

J. ROBERTS: Thank you, Mr. Manager.

SEKULOW: ... Senate. There's two responses that I'd like to get to. One, with regard to the issue of witnesses -- in this case, the whistleblower. Mr. Schiff put the whistleblower issue front and center with his own words during the course of their investigation, he talked about the whistleblower testifying.

Retribution is what is prohibited under the statute against a whistleblower, that's what the whistleblower statute protects, that there's no retribution. In other words, they're not going to be fired for blowing the whistle.

But this idea that there's complete anonymity -- and I'm not saying we should disclose the individual's name, and you handle that in executive session or any way you'd want -- but we can't just say it's not a relevant inquiry, to know who on the staff that conducted the primary investigation here was in communication with that whistleblower, especially after Mr. Schiff denied that he or his staff initially had even had any conversations with the whistleblower.

It goes back to the whole witness issue, and I want to go to that for just 30 seconds here. It seems to me that the discussion for witnesses -- I heard what Mr. Schiff said about the 30 -- we'll do (ph) depositions in a week. Democratic leader said I could have any witnesses I want yesterday, I got it in the transcript. And you couldn't get all the witnesses you'd want in a week, you couldn't get the discovery done in a week.

But if in fact -- if in fact they believe that they presented this overwhelming case that they have, all the big talk about subterfuge and smokescreens, the smokescreen here is that they used 13 of their 17 witnesses to try to prove their case, and we were able to use those very witnesses to undercut that case. So I think we just have to keep that in perspective.

Thank you, Mr. Chief Justice.

J. ROBERTS: Thank you, Counsel.

MURRAY: Mr. Chief Justice?

J. ROBERTS: Oh, the senator from Washington.

MURRAY: Thank you, Mr. Chief Justice. I send a question to the desk for the House managers.

J. ROBERTS: Thank you.

The question from the -- for the House managers from Senator Murray: If there are no consequences to openly defying a valid congressional subpoena, how will Congress be able to perform its constitutional oversight responsibility to make sure any administration is following the law and acting in the best interests of American families?

GARCIA: Well, they could have very serious, devastating, dire consequences. If the Senate ignores President Trump's ongoing obstruction of Congress, it would lead to the end of congressional oversight as we know it today.

[16:45:00]

President Trump's attorneys argue that our congressional subpoenas are constitutionally invalid until a court determines otherwise. Their argument is false, it is an attack on congressional oversight powers.

A vote against Article II is a vote to condone President Trump's corrupted view of America's constitutional balance. Voting against Article II will grant President Trump and every other president, from now until forever, the power to simply ignore all congressional subpoenas, unless and until we seek to a court to enforce it.

Under President Trump's view, even if all of you senators were to vote to favor to issue a subpoena for documents or witnesses, the administration could still ignore that until a court ruled on it.

I think Mr. Schiff addressed some of that earlier, in another question. It could take us -- you could go to court to enforce it, then it would get appealed, then go back to court. We could go on and on because, quite frankly, that's what their position is. So, again, as Mr. Schiff said earlier, imagine yourselves having jurisdiction over an item that you care deeply about, and you needed information, you heard of some wrongdoing, you heard there was a whistleblower complaint on something and you decided that you wanted to do a hearing.

It's very possible that the president would just flatly refuse your subpoena because if we ignore Article II, that would be the precedent to ignore all subpoenas. But we need you to issue a subpoena for us today, not only to get Mr. Bolton here, but Mr. Duffey, Mr. Mulvaney, and everyone else with relevant evidence on this case.

Now, when the administration exerts executive privilege, there might be some privilege, one, that is available to them on any of these documents. But those have to be asserted with every document, as we send a subpoena.

So don't buy the White House argument that our subpoenas are invalid because we don't have any authority to issue them. We know we do, you know we do, so let's make sure that this body will - will make sure that no future President will just simply defy, disrespect and ignore subpoenas because some day, you may be in our shoes wanting to get information, wanting to get to the bottom line to ensure that no President is above the law. Thank you.

J. ROBERTS: Thank you, Ms. Manager.

SULLIVAN: Mr. Chief Justice?

J. ROBERTS: The Senator from Alaska?

SULLIVAN: Mr. Chief Justice, I send a question to the desk on behalf of myself, senators Risch, Blunt, Kennedy and Johnson for the President's counsel.

J. ROBERTS: Thank you. The question for Senator Sullivan and the other senators for counsel for the President - "Given that the Senate is now considering the very evidenciary record assembled and voted on by the House, which Chairman Nadler has repeatedly claimed constitutes overwhelming evidence for impeachment, how can the Senate be accused of engaging in what Mr. Nadler described as a cover-up, if the Senate makes its decision based on the exact same evidenciary record the House did?"

PHILBIN: Mr. Chief Justice, senators, thank you for that question and I think that's exactly right. I think it's rather preposterous to suggest that the - this Senate would be engaging in a cover-up to rely on the same record that the House managers have said is overwhelming.

They've said it dozens of times. They've said that, in their view, they've had enough evidence presented already to establish their case beyond any doubt, not just a reasonable doubt, and it's totally incoherent to claim at the same time that it would be improper for the Senate to rely on that record.

[16:50:00] Your judgment may be and should be, we submit, different from the House managers assessment of that evidence because it hasn't established their case at all but if they're willing to tell you that it's complete and it has everything they need - has everything they need to establish everything they want, I think you should be able to take them at their word that that's all that's there.

And to switch now to say "well, no, we need more - we need more witnesses" I think just demonstrates that they haven't proved their case, they don't have the evidence to make the case. And as I went through a minute ago, you know, they have already presented a record with over 28,000 pages of documents that's here, they've already presented video clips of 13 witnesses, you've heard all of the key evidence that they gathered. It was their process, they are the ones that said what the process was going to be, how it had to be run, who ought to testify and when to close it - when to decide they had enough and you've heard all of the key highlights from that and that is sufficient for this body to make a decision.

If - in the time I have remaining, I just want to turn to one point in response to something that was said a couple of minutes ago - and we keep hearing repeatedly today the refrain of - the idea that President Trump was somehow trying to peddle Vladimir Putin's conspiracy theory, that it was Ukraine and not Russia that interfered in the 2016 election.

And the House Democrats tried to present this binary view of the world, that only one country and one country alone could have done something to interfere in the election and it was Russia and if you mention any other country doing something related to election interference, you're just a pawn of Vladimir Putin trying to peddle his conspiracy theories.

That is obviously not true. More than one country and foreign nationals from more than one country could be doing different things for different reasons in different ways to try to interfere in the election. And that's exactly what President Trump was interested in in the telephone call, the July 25th transcript. He mentions Crowdstrike, he mentions the server but he talks about - he says "there are a lot of things that went on, the whole situation. I think you're surrounding yourself with some of the same people."

So he's talking about much more than just the DNC server and he closes it again saying - he refers to Robert Mueller's testimony and he says "they say a lot of it started in Ukraine, there's just a lot of stuff going on." Twice in that exchange he says "there's a - a lot of stuff - the whole situation."

And what is that referring to, "surrounding yourself with the same people"? President Zelensky immediately refers to changing out the Ambassador because the previous Ambassador, who had been there under Poroshenko, had written an op-ed criticizing President Trump during the election.

We also know that there was a Politico article in January of 2017 cataloguing multiple Ukrainian officials who did things, either to criticize President Trump or to assist a DNC operative, Alexandra Chalupa, in gathering information against the Trump campaign.

And they said there was no evidence in the record - no one said that there was anything done by Ukraine. That's not true. One of their star witnesses, Fiona Hill, specifically testified in her public hearing, because she said she went back and checked cause she hadn't remembered the Politico article and then she said that she acknowledged that some Ukrainian officials quote "bet on Hillary Clinton winning the election," end quote.

And so it was quite evident, in her words, that they were trying to favor the Clinton campaign, including by trying to collect information on people working in the Trump campaign. That was Fiona Hill. She acknowledged that Ukrainian officials were doing that.

So this idea that it's a binary world, it's either Russia or Ukraine - if you mention Ukraine, you're just doing Vladimir Putin's bidding is totally false and you shouldn't be fooled by that. The Ukrainians - various Ukrainians were doing things to interfere in the election and campaign and that's what President Trump was referring to.

J. ROBERTS: Senator from Vermont?

LEAHY: Mr. Chief Justice, I would ask to send a question to the desk on behalf of myself and Senator Blumenthal to the House managers.

J. ROBERTS: Thank you, Senator. The question for the Senator - for the House managers from Senator Leahy and Senator Blumenthal.

[16:55:00]

The President's counsel claimed quote "if a President does something which he believes will help him get elected in the public interest, that can't - that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment," end quote. He added a hypothetical, quote "I think I'm the greatest President there ever was and if I'm not elected, the national interest will suffer greatly. That cannot be an impeachable offense."

Under this view (ph) there is no remedy to prevent a president from conditioning foreign security assistance in violation of the Impoundment Control Act on the recipient's willingness to do the president a political favor.

If the Senate fails to reject this theory, what would stop a president from withholding disaster aid funding from a U.S. city until that mayor endorses him? What would stop a president from withholding nearly any part of the $4.7 trillion annual federal budget, subject to his personal, political benefit?

JEFFRIES: Mr. Chief Justice, distinguished members of the Senate -- I thank the Senators for that very important question. Certainly what we have alleged in this case is that the president solicited a personal, political benefit in exchange for an official act, solicited dirt on a political opponent in exchange for the release of $391 million in military aid -- solicited dirt in exchange for a White House meeting. And if this Senate were to day that's acceptable, then precisely as was outlined in that question, could take place all across America in the context of the next election and any election.

Grants allocated to cities, or towns, or municipalities across the country that the president could say, you're not going to get that money Mr. Mayor, Ms. County Executive, Ms. Town Supervisor -- unless you endorse me for reelection. The president could say that to any governor of our 50 states. That's unacceptable, that cannot be allowed to happen in our democratic republic.

Now, by my count as of this afternoon the framers of the Constitution and the founders of our great republic have been quoted either directly or mentioned by name 123 times. Alexander Hamilton 48 times, James Madison 35 times, George Washington 24 times, John Adams 8 times, Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin pulling up the rear 4 times -- seems to me that Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson need a little bit more love, and so let me try to do my part.

Thomas Jefferson once observed that tyranny is defined as that which is legal for the government but illegal for the citizenry. Legal for the government, but illegal for the citizenry -- that's what we confront right now.

President Trump corruptly abused his power, he targeted an American citizen, pressured a foreign government to try to cheat in the upcoming election. And the president's counsel would have you believe that is OK, because he's the president of the United States.

But our fellow citizens cannot cheat the Workers Compensation Board by claiming a fake injury and escape accountability. Our fellow citizens cannot cheat the stock market by engaging in insider trading and then escape accountability. Our fellow citizens cannot cheat the college admittance process in order to get their child in to an elite university and then escape accountability.

Why should the president of the United States be allowed to cheat in the upcoming election and escape --

[17:00:00]