Return to Transcripts main page
Inside Politics
Giant Week Ahead For The Public Impeachment Hearings; Speaker Nancy Pelosi Says The President Is Welcome To Come Testify In His Own Defense; New Reporting Raises Questions About Gordon Sondland's Prior Testimony; GOP Rep. Mike Turner: Ukraine Call Is "Not OK"; CNN Poll: Mayor Pete Buttigieg Jumps To First Place In Iowa. Aired 12-12:30p ET
Aired November 18, 2019 - 12:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[12:00:00]
KATE BOLDUAN, CNN HOST: Yes, absolutely, fascinating. Kate, thank you so much and it's great to see you. I really appreciate it. Thank you all so much for joining me today. "INSIDE POLITICS" with John King starts right now.
JOHN KING, CNN HOST: Welcome to INSIDE POLITICS. I'm John King. Thank you for sharing your day with us. A giant week ahead for the public impeachment hearings, the witnesses include White House aides who were alarmed by the President's Ukraine dealings and the donor turned Ambassador who is described as the President's point man in pushing Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden.
Plus, what to make of this new wrinkle? Speaker Nancy Pelosi says the President is welcome to come testify in his own defense, in person or in writing. The President says he likes the idea and he says he will consider it.
And its debate week for the 2020 Democrats Mayor Pete Buttigieg now leading the pack in Iowa. The Former Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick learning a quick campaign lesson entering the race just last week means you get the last spot on the dinner speaking order.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DEVAL PATRICK, (D) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I have a chance tonight to introduce myself. Maybe I'll do so briefly so that you can get home because events like this are fabulous, as good as they are, but I still believe they should end the day they begin.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: We'll get back to 2020 a bit later in the program but a big courtroom development just this morning that could dramatically up the President's legal jeopardy. Lawyers for House Democrats say they are now investigating whether President Trump lied to the Special Counsel Robert Mueller. House Democrats saying they need access to the raw grand jury materials collected during the Mueller investigation to determine if the President of the United States committed perjury.
That happens as we start an already big week in the impeachment inquiry public testimony from those with firsthand knowledge because they work inside the Trump White House. See the eight witnesses here they will testify over three days, all are involved in a policy that Democrats say became a big corrupt bribe. Ukraine gets its White House meeting for example or its military aid only after it announces investigations that would help President Trump politically back home.
The witnesses include White House officials, National Security staffers who worked with the President and two of the three so called three amigos. The President tapped those three amigos to steer off the books Ukraine policy. Gordon Sondland is the biggest names on the witness list this week and the witness with the most direct line to President Trump.
A veteran U.S. diplomat telling Congress in private on Friday he overheard Sondland and the President talking about the investigations. While Sondland told Congress he did not recall being part of any push for a Biden investigation, new reporting today by "The Wall Street Journal" includes emails detailing how Sondland kept the White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney up to speed on his negotiations, the back and forth with Ukraine over those desired investigations.
With me this day to share their reporting and their insights, Vivian Salama with "The Wall Street Journal" Michael Shear with "The New York Times," CNN's Jeff Zeleny and Heather Caygle with "POLITICO".
Let's start I don't know what to make of it, but is it just you up the bar to get access to the materials. You tell the judge you need them for an impeachment inquiry, or the Democrats now seriously going to look at the prospect in the wake of the Roger Stone trial that President Trump lied to the Special Counsel.
In the Stone trial the President remember, candidate Trump said he had no advance heads up with WikiLeaks, he said that flat out. President Trump said I do not recall any conversations about that in his answer to the Special Counsil. Rick Gates testified to Roger Stone's trial, he was in the car sitting next to the President of Untied of States, when he took a phone call from Roger Stone and got a heads-up.
VIVIAN SALAMA, WHITE HOUSE REPORTER, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: Yes, so I think that this is one other thing that we were trying to determine right now is who knows what? There have been a lot of issues, especially with Sondland in particular, where we keep going back and forth about what he does know? What he doesn't know? And this is - he has had to return back to the Hill, to the Committees, to basically clarify some earlier remarks that he made and whether or not the President - he was acting at the directive of the President, so this is one of the issues that we're trying to determine.
KING: It's in a big week where the pressure for the Democrats has been get this done as quickly as possible, try to get it done before Christmas. There are some doubts that will happen now. Listen to Jamie Raskin, he is a member of one of the key committees here, saying, sure, we want this information, to do what, though? Even he's not sure.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) REP. JAMIE RASKIN, (D-MD): The Special Counsel Mueller in his report to Congress, which the Judiciary Committee received and investigated, has ten different episodes, precisely, of obstruction of justice, witness tampering and so on, and the President committing perjury in the process of the investigation would be another article under the obstruction of justice or it could be - I mean, it could be another point under that or it could be a separate article. None of that has been decided yet.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: We have had this conversation many times, about how Speaker Pelosi, reluctant to do this in the first place, now that she's in this path says keep it narrowly focused. Keep it to Ukraine. Will the Democrats feel compelled, by politics or the evidence, to expand it?
HEATHER CAYGLE, CONGRESSIONAL REPORTER, POLITICO: So I think there are two things at work here.
[12:05:00]
CAYGLE: You have lawmakers like Raskin who do want to see a wide range of articles and have been pushing for that, and so of course he doesn't want to close the door on that. That goes against what Speaker Pelosi wants right, she wants to keep it narrow and finish it before Christmas if we can.
But also Democrats are still fighting in court to obtain this grand jury material and they don't want to box themselves in and say we're only looking at Ukraine on impeachment and give the judges a reason to not want to give them that material. So I think you need to consider both of those when this news comes out today.
KING: So as we watch this play out, we have eight witnesses in the chair this week. We had a dramatic week in the week just behind us. In the week ahead of us we have national Security Council staffers, other White House aides who will build a case and get us to Gordon Sondland who was the - on paper the Ambassador to European Union but who became the President's point man by all accounts for dealing with this policy.
Gordon Sondland is already on record telling Congress this. I recall no discussions with any State Department or White House official about Former Vice President Biden or his son. Nor do I recall taking part in any effort to encourage investigation into the Bidens. That is sworn testimony to the United States Congress. If you look at the David Holmes testimony, he's a diplomat at the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv, or if you look at this new "Wall Street Journal" reporting about the back and forth emails to Mulvaney, Gordon Sondland minimum has some explaining to do.
MICHAEL SHEAR, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, THE NEW YORK TIMES: He does. He's already gone back in to adjust his testimony once after he realized that may be he hadn't told everything that he had to tell and now he is going to have to do it again. I mean, I suppose that he could go back from a legal prospective and try to avoid jeopardy by actually amending his first testimony.
But the problem is he's going to sit there in front of the cameras, in front of the public, and be questioned not only about that particular restaurant discussion that he had with the President on the phone, apparently, but what else haven't you told us? That statement in which he described to the Congress in his initial testimony, look, I wasn't part of any conversations, I never really talked to the President that seems just not to be true. And the question that the Democrats are going to want to know is what else haven't you told?
KING: And I assume if he gives damaging testimony, the Republicans will say, well, this is a guy who has changed his testimony, now he is changing his tune again. He is not credible, he was a freelancer. That's where you see the Republicans going which is why Tim Morrison, who will also testify this week very important, this is from his private testimony.
He, meaning Sondland, he understood his responsibilities doing what the President asked him to do. Tim Morrison answers, he relayed it to me, he was acting. He was discussing these matters with the President. Chairman Schiff, and in fact, every time you went back to check to see whether he had in fact talked to the President, you found that he had talked to the President Mr. Morrison, yes, Mr. Chairman. So this is why Republicans have stopped saying you can't connect this to the President because the President's own aides are connecting this to the President.
JEFF ZELENY, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Exactly and that's going to come front in center on Wednesday when Sondland testifies. He has a choice to make. Is he going to protect the President and show his loyalty, or is he going to be perhaps more forthcoming. We don't know the answer to that.
But look, he's someone who, his whole involvement of this, he's not steeped in these issues nearly as much as the witnesses we saw last week obviously. He's a political donor who became an Ambassador. That's how it works, it's not unusual in this administration by any means at all, but we'll see if he ups his game in terms of being savvy. His side already releasing, it seems, to be some information to perhaps soften his landing on Wednesday here, but be sure that President is going to be watching that on Wednesday because he is the closest link to him.
KING: Well, President again, you get -he was with the Ukrainians the new government the day before the July 25th call. The July 25th call happens, and then David Holmes testifies he took the phone call President of the United States great judgment in a restaurant, holding the phone out so you could overhear the voice of the President of the United States. He was with the other amigos, Kurt Volker and Rick Perry who was central essentially Ambassador Yovanovitch has recalled.
The President decides to put Secretary Perry, Ambassador Volker and Ambassador Sondland in charge of Ukraine policy. He has direct conversations with the President, direct conversations with the top officials in the Ukraine government, conversations in text with the charged affairs Bill Taylor. And this "Wall Street Journal" reporting today these communications, this is significant which, again, gets to the idea of when they would say he testified under oath he wasn't involved in arranging or pushing for these investigations, these emails say something very different.
SALAMA: That's right. Someone will argue that maybe they didn't see the emails or that there were something else at play, but the bottom line is that Sondland was keeping various administration officials apprised of his actions and his conversations with the Ukrainian government, the guidance that he was going directly to Zelensky with, and that's going to be very significant in the line of questioning.
The other issue is that Gordon Sondland also was the one who briefed the President right before the July 25th phone call. He personally briefed him on that, so whether or not there was sort of an MO in terms of getting Zelensky on the phone call to agree to any kinds of investigations, that's going to be something that they're going to try to push him on as well.
[12:10:00]
SALAMA: They went into that phone call with some result in mind that would have ultimately equated to a quid pro quo.
KING: And we saw the President attacked one witness, Ambassador Yovanovitch, while she was testifying on Friday. Yesterday he attacked another witness. We'll get later in the program more into the details of what Jennifer Williams can tell to the Congress? But the President's tweet was pretty amazing.
Tell Jennifer Williams, whoever that is, to read both transcripts of the presidential calls and see the just released statement from Ukraine. Then she should meet with the other never Trumpers who I don't know and mostly never even heard of and work out a better Presidential attack.
Again, we can get to the substance she said something's that are not favorable to the President, not helpful to the President from a fact prospective in the case. But what is it tells about the President's mind set? Now twice has specifically attacked witnesses both of them - by the way in this case.
ZELENY: Without question he's sending a message perhaps to other witnesses, and there is a slate full of them this week. We know exactly, A, he's watching, and B, if you go against him, you're accused of not liking him or his politics, et cetera. So I think the interesting reaction to that was the Vice President's office walking a line by siding with the President, not surprisingly, by saying oh, she was a State Department employee.
But the reality is the Vice President's Office supervises and brings in who they want. There is no sense at all that she was acting sort of out of the ordinary here. She is a career government official here like many others who don't have a dog in the fight. You talk to these people endlessly. This is their job. They're not here for a Republican or Democrat and they're being maligned by this President. SHEAR: And you know the truth is President Trump likes to think that his kind of verbal assaults on people are actually going to have the effect of cowing them, right? That's what he does to politicians all the time, that's what he does to members of his own party and to rivals, whatever. The problem is that these are State Department employees, national security officials who don't actually have a dog in the political fight.
They're members of the administration, whether they're Democrat or Republican. They don't actually, I mean, they certainly have their jobs at stake, and as Yovanovitch said, she felt threatened, but they don't actually - he doesn't have the same political power over them that he might over a representative in a district or a senator.
KING: They're also speaking under oath.
SHEAR: And they're speaking under oath and they have the legal jeopardy of that, so I think you really sense some sort of frustration on the President's part that he's sort of raging against these folks, but the attacks aren't having the effect that he wants.
KING: We'll we see, it's a very important week ahead. We'll come back to it in just a minute. Up next, the impeachment inquiry could get its biggest witness yet.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KING: President Trump today teasing he just might go testify before Congress in the impeachment inquiry. This after the House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's coy suggestion in a Sunday show interview that the president could come, "Present his case".
Well today, the President tweeting this, even though I did nothing wrong and I don't like giving credibility to this no due process hoax, I like the idea. And I will the President says in order to get Congress focused again strongly consider it.
Now, keep in mind the President repeatedly toyed with the idea of testifying for Robert Mueller in the Russia investigation. He ultimately provided only written answers, so don't hold your breath. But the President's key allies in Congress are shifting their focus some, saying, you can't connect this to the President, it just won't fly anymore. The public testimony this week is from people who worked inside the White House directly with the President. So from Republicans, here's the latest.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. JIM JORDON (R-OH): The Ukrainians did nothing as far as investigations goes to get the aid released. So there was never this quid pro quo that the Democrats all promised existed.
REP. STEVE SCALISE, (R-LA): The President's defense is that those things never happened. The real bottom line is he got the money, Ukraine got the money.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: Those things didn't happen. They got the aid in the end, they didn't announce the investigations in the end, so never mind what happened in the weeks and months pressuring them to do that. That's the new Republican strategy?
CAYGLE: That is. And we've seen Democrats already try to rebut it with the witnesses last week, making the point that even an attempted crime like extortion is still a crime. And they point out the timeline.
The aid was released on September 13th, just two days after Schiff announced a wide-ranging investigation into President Trump and Giuliani's attempts to possibly pressure Ukraine, and he learned of the whistleblower complaint. So the Democrats' case is that the White House was giving pressure, they knew what was coming and so they were trying to get out of it the best way that they could.
KING: Right. And it was interesting to listen to Republicans. Number one, they have a hard task because the President does not want them. Some of the Republicans would just like to get to, this was ugly, this was wrong. It never should have happened. We don't think it's impeachable. That's where a lot of Republicans want to go. Rudy Giuliani shouldn't have been involved. President shouldn't have mentioned Biden on the call, it's wrong.
Everyone needs to learn a lesson, we have an election in a year, it's not impeachable, that's what they like to get. The President won't let them get there but if just before you jump in, listen, this is Mike Turner, a member of the Committee who was aggressive in trying to help the President. Trying to question the witnesses but even he admits no this is wrong.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. MIKE TURNER, (R-OH): All that is alarming, and as I have said from the beginning I think this is not okay, President of United States shouldn't even in the original phone call beyond the firm of the President of another country and raise his public opponent. It's not okay.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: How about the President just let them get there as a party. Just tell them all fine, go there just don't impeach me.
SALAMA: Well, this is the issue I think that it's beyond just impeaching or not impeaching. He doesn't want to be accused of any wrongdoing because he believes, again, the call was perfect and he doesn't think that there was any impropriety and his discussion with Zelensky. And so there are two issues here.
[12:20:00]
SALAMA: And this is one of the reasons why the President liked Tim Morrison's opening statement so much when he did his closed door testimony, he said that he didn't see anything illegal in the phone call and the President re-tweeted a thank you to Tim saying, this is great and this is the message they want to get across.
So it was either the legality of it or whether or not there was a quid pro quo, and we don't see that explicitly in the phone call, although a lot of Democrats saying just the sheer asking of a favor to investigate an American citizen and, you know, someone who is running for election, that by itself is bad as well. So that's where the debate lies at the moment.
KING: We have very important witnesses this week. I suspect this whole conversation about will the President testify is a bit of a side show. But it is proof number one that Nancy Pelosi knows how to get provoke the President? She knows to how to get under his skin. So she floats this idea and she also said a lot of things very unfavorable about the President's behavior, calling him an imposter as President of the United States.
Richard Nixon knew it was the right thing to step aside when he faced impeachment. So she is trying to bake President - just writing on the things so the President is going to seriously considering testifying, remembers this?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Would you be willing to speak under oath to give your version of these events?
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: 100 percent I'll see what happens, but when they have no collusion and nobody has found any collusion at any level, it seems unlikely that you'd even have an interview.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Are you going to talk to Mueller?
TRUMP: I'm looking guard to it actually. I would love to go, I would love to speak, but I have that we're going to be treated fairly.
I don't want to be set up in a perjury trap.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ZELENY: So that is a perfect - and I mean, we saw it happen in real time. And even back in the Rose Garden that day, this is the summer of 2017, and I'm thinking, really? Are your lawyers really going to allow you to do this? Of course that didn't happen, so it's hard to imagine, it's impossible to imagine actually. I'll say impossible to imagine the President actually going under oath up to Capitol Hill, A, justify this hearing and B, to testify. If he proves us wrong, then it will be an interesting moment for sure but the reality here is his lawyers wouldn't advise that and--
KING: Especially now. The House Democrats are arguing in court that they think he lied to Mueller.
ZELENY: --without question. So much to the Republican silence we're hearing, from Senate Republicans who aren't really speaking but privately they say, and even some have publicly said this like Alexandra, who was an inappropriate phone call but it's not impeachable. Some of the Republicans believe that that would be a much more simple defense. It's pretty clean it has a good brand to it.
But the President will not let them do that. So we'll see when fast- forward if this was a good decision to make, to avoid that defense, because now it's kind of all over the board which leaves a big opening for some other issues.
KING: The defense has changed almost day to day. We'll see where it is at the end of this week after the testimony from Sondland and others inside the White House. Up next, we're also shift to 2020 politics. There is a new frontrunner in Iowa. Mayor Pete Buttigieg.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[12:25:00]
KING: Iowa votes 11 weeks from today which has a little more urgency to this week's Democratic debate. So does this. Brand new CNN polling that puts Mayor Pete Buttigieg at the top of the pack in Iowa. Let's take a look, CNN Des Moines Register Poll released Saturday night.
Look at Mayor Buttigieg 25 percent now at the top of the pack up 16 points. Elizabeth Warren now down to 16 percent, Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders who are second tier under Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana leading the pack with 11 weeks to go to Iowa. He says it's because he's working hard in the state. He says it's because he has a more centrist appealing message. He also knows when he's close to center stage on the debate this week he's going to come under attack.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MAYOR PETE BUTTIGIEG (D-IN) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Hardest competition is that you have to be ready to take criticism and so I'm going to make sure that we're prepared to explain and defend the vision for America that I have. And debates are great opportunity to lay out the differences between you and your competitors. Our ideas have to be big enough to solve the problem and capable of unifying the American people.
And I do think my approach to that and the kind of presidency that I seek to create is just different than what the others are putting forward.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: Calm and confident there. In the lead in Iowa a pretty healthy lead 11 weeks from tonight - hard to imagine, but 11 weeks from tonight we'll be counting votes in Iowa and it will be officially underway. You've been out there recently, how real is it?
ZELENY: I think it's pretty real. We've been seeing it for the last several weeks. After spending so much time talking to voters and seeing the operation, usually at this time in the cycle, the polls match what you're seeing and we are, indeed, seeing a rise from Pete Buttigieg. Every one of his rivals would say that. No one is surprised by this.
The question here is can it sustain itself? Several others have been in the lead and it has been rotating. Interestingly, a few more people are settling on their firm choices. Some 30 percent say they're locked into who they're supporting. About two-thirds are still not sure. But some strength for Pete Buttigieg, he has strong favorable and he's being actively considered by other voters here.
One thing I thought was really striking, and this is a burden on him to keep introducing himself and showing himself as a plausible candidate, is that only 27 percent of his supporters believe that he can defeat President Trump. So he still has a bit of an electability hurdle. Joe Biden, in that case has 57 percent of his supporters do so, so he still has to make the electability argument.
