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Cuomo Prime Time
Three Legal Experts Say President Trump Committed Impeachable Offenses, One Disagrees; Report: Giuliani Is In Europe Meeting With Former Ukrainian Prosecutors To Help Trump; Turley: If You Prove A Quid Pro Quo, You Might Have An Impeachable Offense. Aired 9-10p ET
Aired December 04, 2019 - 21:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST, ANDERSON COOPER 360: Quick breaking news out of Hawaii, live pictures of Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, which is currently on lockdown, base security there responding to reports of gunfire at the Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard, which is on the base.
Local hospital telling us it has received one patient. No word yet whether there are going to be more. We'll update you throughout the night.
News continues. Want to hand it over to Chris for CUOMO PRIME TIME. Chris?
CHRIS CUOMO, CNN HOST, CUOMO PRIME TIME: All right, thank you very much, Anderson. I am Chris Cuomo. Welcome to PRIME TIME.
Tonight, we saw a brawl in the Judiciary, and they are just talking to historians. What comes next? We have two Judiciary Members here, and also one of the professors who testified before them today. The main question is can this process ever yield any progress?
And the GOP is doing its best to ignore the obvious. But how do they hide from Rudy Giuliani maybe back in Ukraine digging for the same dirt that is all over the President. Our investigators are on the case.
What do you say? Let's get after it.
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TEXT: CUOMO PRIME TIME.
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CUOMO: Three constitutional scholars in complete agreement, backing up Democrats in their push to prove President Trump committed impeachable offenses. The shorthand, abuse of power, check, bribery, check, obstruction of Congress, check.
Now, a fourth professor, at this first Judiciary hearing, provided caution against impeachment. His name is Jonathan Turley. He was called by Republicans.
But he wasn't the only person in that room, on the Right, to get the reality here right, admitting that the President's call was far from perfect. He even urged Democrats to do more investigating.
So, where does this go? Speaker Pelosi held a closed-door meeting this morning with her Members. Sources say she asked her troops, if they're ready to keep going, and that she got shouts of approval.
Adam Schiff, the House Intel Chair, reportedly - reportedly got a standing ovation when Pelosi turned the mic over to him. Democrats are unified. But here's the problem, so are Republicans.
Now, what does that mean in a process of impeachment that is supposed to be based on some measure of consensus? We have one of the players here. Judiciary Committee Member, Steve Cohen.
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CUOMO: Good to have you, Congressman.
REP. STEVE COHEN (D-TN): Thank you, Chris.
CUOMO: Very important day today. Were you at the meeting this morning with Pelosi?
COHEN: No, I was not. I was preparing for the hearing.
CUOMO: The idea that you guys are all rah-rah, and ready to go forward, based on what is the enthusiasm?
COHEN: Well the fact that there is definite - the facts are clear. They're pretty much uncontroverted.
There was abuse of power. There was a betrayal of the nation. And there was a corruption of the - of the election processes, or attempt to corrupt the election processes. That's what high crimes and misdemeanors are.
There are - there are violations by the President and high officials that make it difficult for the country to go on, and democracy to survive. And - and - and these are the - exactly the type of offenses that are looked upon to - to show that as an impeachable offense.
And I think our three experts said that that they were all there that it was as impeachable of - crime or set of facts as there ever has been, and that we needed to protect the country from foreign influence in our elections, and keep our democracy, which is the - the basic framework of - of the Constitution, and our government alive, by having free and fair elections.
And that the - the Framers were afraid of this. They were afraid of foreign entanglements.
CUOMO: Right.
COHEN: They were afraid that somebody would each try to rich themselves as President or they would use their Office to guarantee their - their reelection.
CUOMO: Right.
COHEN: And the - the Framers said we need to have impeachment.
It's so important that the original person that thought we didn't need impeachment in election, was sufficient, Mr. Morris - Gouverneur Morris changed his mind during the debate, and said, "You know, you're right. We've got to have impeachment in there because we can't let"--
CUOMO: Going back to the Founders.
COHEN: --"Presidents get away with this."
CUOMO: Yes. Let me ask you something in terms of the facts on the table.
Rudy Giuliani may be back over in Europe, maybe even Ukraine, doing more digging for dirt. He says, "I'm here just trying to defend my client, and show he is innocent." What's your take on that?
COHEN: You know, President Trump can't get over the fact that he won the election with the help of the Russians.
He asked for it. He said "Russia, if you're listening, you know, get me those emails." His - his son, and son-in-law, and they all met with the Russians at the Trump Tower, wasn't about adoptions. It was about getting dirt on Hillary Clinton.
And - and there what - Mueller couldn't show conspiracy, but they could show there was collusion. They were - there was involvement with the election. He can't get over that.
CUOMO: Right. But I'm - I'm looking at it--
COHEN: And so, he's trying to put it off on Ukraine, which is something Russia wants to do, and Russia's put out this line, and people like Senator Kennedy, and others, Senator--
CUOMO: Right.
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COHEN: --I think it's Thune, and - and maybe in North Caroline, they've taken it on, and they're mouthing what the KGB or--
CUOMO: There's no question about that.
COHEN: --what the F - FSB wants you to say. CUOMO: There's no question about that there is nothing to this Ukraine thing, and everybody knows it. It's just adding to the intrigue. But I'm looking at it a little differently.
When we look at the forensics here and the evidence, everything runs through, or leads to, Rudy Giuliani, in terms of understanding why this happened. Now, with that said, I don't think he's the problem. I think he's an agent for the President.
But here's why I ask you the question. Do you believe that he is the President's lawyer?
COHEN: I think he is. I think that he's been acting as the President's lawyer. He's been acting as a kind of a renegade self-dealing Secretary of State, but - with Pompeo's authorization. But he's - he's the President's lawyer, yes.
CUOMO: Now, I'll tell you why I ask. It matters because if he is not the lawyer, then he doesn't have any privilege, and there is really no explanation for him being put into this process, except to subvert it.
And if he is the lawyer, there is still a big problem because, you know, you say, "Yes, he's the lawyer." Now, on this show, he said he wasn't the lawyer - he was lawyer.
Then, a few days later, in an article, he said he's not. He's acting as a political person who's always rooted out corruption. And then he said he was over there for the State Department.
Here's why it matters for your investigation.
How do we know he's his lawyer? Trump says it. He says it. Is he getting paid? He says, "No." Well then that means he's given hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of legal advice, based on what his charges are, over this much time, for free.
But we don't know of him ever filing that as an in-kind donation. And we don't know of the President ever filing that. So, what if he doesn't pass the test for being his lawyer?
Think about what the implications here would be, not just for Rudy and his law license, and maybe a FARA investigation. But he is not acting as a lawyer, what does that mean to the investigation?
COHEN: Well you're probably - you're probably right. Trump probably hasn't paid him because he - there's a lot of people in his past he hasn't paid.
CUOMO: Unless he's paying him by these other meetings that we've been hearing about.
COHEN: Well--
CUOMO: Letting him get clients before people, and show a lot of access. COHEN: Well he's - he - that that's - that's a payment of a different kind. It's not one that might be reported. But he's giving him access. And he's using it to his - to his advantage.
Rudy's Dennis the Menace. He likes being in the mix. He likes to cause havoc. He likes Trumps, and he seem to be, you know, a good payer.
And - and you don't know what he's doing. We - we'll find out eventually, I guess. But we won't find out with Bill Barr, because Bill Barr is - is Trump's other lawyer. And--
CUOMO: I think that that's going to be very - lawyer - Barr is certainly - we understand his capacity though.
See, what Rudy's capacity is, yes, it has legal implications for him, ethical implications for him. But see, he may be Dennis, but I don't see him as the Menace.
I think that he was put in play by this President, and if he was put in play just as an operative, just to subvert the system, and get things that he wanted done, and really in no capacity that gave him any right to any of the access he had, I think that adds a very different dimension to it.
But let me ask you, with what we saw today, Congressman, that got ugly early, and you were just talking to historians. What's going to happen when you get into the meat of the matter here?
How can it resemble anything like progress with zero buy-in, something we've never seen anything like this kind of recalcitrance from the Party of the President?
COHEN: Well I'd like to say Chairman Nadler did a great job running the Committee. He - he ran it firmly and fairly.
And on the Democratic side, there were no recriminations against the Republicans. There were no people jumping in, and - and trying to question Republicans' motives or trying to put them down.
There were Republicans that tried to put down Democrats and put down the - the --the witnesses, questioning who they voted for, did they - did they give money to - to - to Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, and questioning them a lot, and putting them on the seat for things that really was - weren't relevant.
But the Democrats, I thought, ran a very, very structured and orderly process, to try to loose - elicit facts that would show the violation of our Constitution, and the need, why we need to protect it, so that this election, which is coming up, will not be interfered with more.
You know, just the day after Robert Mueller told the Committee that the Russians at that moment were trying to interfere with our elections in 2020, and they had systematically gotten involved in the elections in 2016, and - and - and - and then, one day later, he calls and says, "Although I'd like a favor," with the Ukraine President. The man doesn't learn. He didn't learn from - from George
Stephanopoulos when he said, "Oh, if I got some information, sure I'd want to see it." And FBI Director Wray had said, "No, you call the FBI immediately."
He doesn't learn. The man--
CUOMO: Well--
COHEN: --the man is - is lawless and reckless.
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CUOMO: You only learn if you think your current position is wrong. And he clearly doesn't. And he's getting a lot of affirmation from his side. Again, we've never seen anything like it in modern history.
Nixon's own Party went bad on him. That's why he resigned. In '98, you guys split on Clinton. You had 31 of you vote to impeach, five of you voted to impeach, 31 voted to advance the impeachment. We'll see what happens here.
Congressman Steve Cohen, thank you for being with us on such an important day.
COHEN: You're welcome, Chris.
CUOMO: All right, you saw today the state of play. Man, this is a deadlock, OK? So, we have ahead the argument against impeachment - impeachment with one of the Republicans that was there today.
What do they see is what matters. What do they see as any chance of progress? How do they rationalize the way Steve Cohen and the Democrats do, why they're doing the right thing? Next.
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CUOMO: Jonathan Turley was the sole witness called by Republicans today.
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He made two points that matter here. One, "Why are you moving so fast, Democrats?" And that's an interesting discussion. The second was this notion that assumes that this situation is still a mystery.
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JONATHAN TURLEY, HOUSE JUDICIARY IMPEACHMENT HEARING WITNESS, GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY LAW SCHOOL PROFESSOR: If you prove a quid pro quo, that you - you might have an impeachable offense.
JONATHAN KARL, ABC NEWS CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: But to be clear, what you just described is a quid pro quo. It is, "Funding will not flow unless the investigation into the - into the Democratic server happened as well."
MICK MULVANEY, ACTING WHITE HOUSE CHIEF OF STAFF, DIRECTOR OF THE OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET: We - we do - we do that all the time with foreign policy.
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CUOMO: And don't forget what EU Ambassador Sondland said. "There was a quid pro quo. Everybody knew it. I delivered the message." Now, that doesn't mean it's worthy of impeachment. But why ignore the obvious?
Judiciary Committee Member, Mike Johnson, of Louisiana.
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CUOMO: Thank you for being here after such a long day. You know it's important for us here to test both sides on these things. And we can talk about the rate of the investigation. I know that's important to you guys.
But this idea that if you show a - basically a bribe, if you show that there was a solicitation here that there was a pressure campaign, that's all that came up in the testimony, why do you guys ignore what happened, instead of just arguing that what happened isn't enough?
REP. MIKE JOHNSON (R-LA): No, look, Chris, I would dispute all of that.
CUOMO: Go ahead.
JOHNSON: We are paying attention to exactly what happened. No witness that testified, either in the basement, or out in public, has said anything about a bribe or extortion. That - that was a term that the Democrats were using to justify this whole charade where we are (ph).
CUOMO: But that's a legal conclusion.
JOHNSON: Well--
CUOMO: Sondland said there was a quid pro quo.
JOHNSON: Yes.
CUOMO: Everyone who testified who was around there said there was a pressure campaign that you don't get the aid if we don't get the announcement. That's the same thing. You don't have to speak Latin.
JOHNSON: Right. But you don't have to take Sondland. You can't take Sondland out of context. You have to take the full Sondland, as we've said. That means that he asked the President directly, September 9th.
CUOMO: How do you know?
JOHNSON: "Mr. President, what do you want from Ukraine?" Because it's in the transcript. He testified to it under oath.
CUOMO: But where is the record that the call happened?
JOHNSON: We have to take him at his word.
CUOMO: You have to take him at his word, but you can't take him at his word at this stuff you don't like.
JOHNSON: Well no, no, no. Here's--
CUOMO: That's the full Sondland.
JOHNSON: --here's the important point. He said the President himself said to him, and replied--
CUOMO: Right.
JOHNSON: --"I want no quid pro quo. I don't want anything. I want Zelensky to do the right thing."
CUOMO: But we don't know that the call happened.
JOHNSON: Well OK, you can say that Sondland was not being truthful under oath. But when he - when he talked about the quid pro quo that - that he thought, he was forced to admit that that was his assumption. It was a presumption. It's conjecture on his part. There - there's no evidence of that in the record. And so, we are pointing to the record.
CUOMO: Wait, hold on, Mike.
JOHNSON: Yes.
CUOMO: Just let's slow it down for one second just for the audience.
JOHNSON: Sure. Sure.
CUOMO: You're a very talented attorney. You know what you're doing. But here's the point. When you say it's just conjecture, Sondland spoke to the President on a regular basis.
He says that he was given every indication by working through Giuliani, and working with others, that this is what they wanted. Everybody who testified says this is what we were told that they wanted, this was the plan.
Rudy Giuliani said it right on this show. The President said it on the call. The only thing I agree with you that changes the calculus is this September 9th phone call, when the President said the opposite.
He even used the language that the whistleblower used. What a coincidence, even though the whistleblower hadn't come out yet, but the President knew about the whistleblower complaint.
Here's the problem. We don't know that the call happened.
JOHNSON: All right, look that's - that's the first I've heard anybody make that argument. Look, you - you have to--
CUOMO: Really?
JOHNSON: Well for your line of - of reasoning to apply, Chris, you also have to ignore what the officials in Ukraine said.
It was November 14th where the Foreign Minister in Ukraine same - came out and said there was absolutely no link whatsoever between any request for an investigation and the - the funding that they didn't know about it.
CUOMO: Then why did they go to Vindman, and say, "What do we do with Rudy? How do we deal with all these offers? We don't like this." Why were they wringing their hands like that?
Why did Zelensky come out last week, and say, "Hey, if you're our partner, you don't cut off aid to anything in the middle of a war." Why would he say something like that?
JOHNSON: Zelensky has been defending President Trump's version of this, his understanding that you have to take this in full context. That's what the President had, the full context. You--
CUOMO: But isn't the full context that Zelensky was desperate for access to the American Presidency, to show that threshold of power, and that they needed the aid because they're in an existential crisis?
JOHNSON: There's no - no--
CUOMO: Why would you go against your pocket?
JOHNSON: There's no question about that. But - but the full context is also that Zelensky was elected as the President of his country on a - on a platform similar to what Donald Trump has said. He was going to drain the swamp, so to speak, in Ukraine.
The President knew that. He regards Ukraine as most objective - observers do, as one of the most corrupt governments, nations in the country, right, in the world, in the top three.
And - and he's talking to Zelensky - Zelensky about that. He wants him to clean up the corruption there. He has a fiduciary obligation to the taxpayers in this country, not to
misspend our - our resources overseas. And that's how President Trump was thinking about this. That's what was in his mind.
CUOMO: But if that's how he was thinking about it, reasonably, the - the full reasonable, if you were to ask people in Ukraine, the - the officials there, "When you think of corruption in Ukraine, what comes to mind," how many do you think would bring up a debunk conspiracy theory about their non-interference in the 2016 election or the Bidens?
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If you care about corruption in Ukraine you talk about the endemic corruption. You say what are you doing with Naftogaz, what are you doing with your pay-for-play with Russia, what are you doing with your resources, what do you do with your barons who are getting all of this public property?
That's what you'd ask, not about the Bidens who's a U.S. citizen. You go to the DOJ. That's what Mike Johnson would do. But that's not what the President did.
JOHNSON: Well, look, the - the President operates the way he does. But if you ask citizens in Ukraine about it--
CUOMO: That's not acceptable.
JOHNSON: No, listen--
CUOMO: "He operates the way he does," what does that mean? What if you throw a rock through the window, and you take a necklace, and say, "That's the way I operate?"
JOHNSON: Again, in the full context to what the President was talking about with Zelensky, they're thinking about that corruption that's widespread. There was a poll that came out, I think, 68 percent of Ukrainians had bribed a public official in the previous year.
CUOMO: Right.
JOHNSON: I mean this is a very corrupt country. They see it everywhere.
CUOMO: So, you should look at the corruption inside Ukraine. That's fine, if you want that as your litmus test for money. But he only asked for things--
JOHNSON: And - and that's what the President was after.
CUOMO: --only asked for things that were good for him, not Ukraine.
JOHNSON: No, he--
CUOMO: Let me ask you something else.
JOHNSON: OK.
CUOMO: While I have you.
JOHNSON: All right.
CUOMO: Rudy Giuliani, are you OK with him in the midst of all this going back there, and doing more digging? And if so, on what basis?
JOHNSON: Well I'm seeing conflicting reports about Rudy, what Rudy Giuliani is doing right now.
CUOMO: If he's there. If he's not there, God bless him, I hope he's safe.
JOHNSON: If he's there, if he is asking questions, and none of us know that. It's all speculation.
CUOMO: OK.
JOHNSON: That's not relevant to the impeachment question. It's not relevant to what the Congress is doing right now.
And I just want to say because we were talking about the hearing today, I don't think the Democrats moved the ball at all. I think the American people are very frustrated by this. Every witness today was forced to admit they had no personal knowledge at all about any material fact in the Schiff report.
CUOMO: No.
JOHNSON: I mean that's--
CUOMO: They're just historians.
JOHNSON: --that's an important thing.
CUOMO: But Mike, I don't disagree with you about any of that. They were just historians today.
JOHNSON: Yes.
CUOMO: The only guy who I think is relevant - I mean I guess a couple of them were here in '98.
But Turley made a couple arguments in '98 that were interesting to hear his take on the state of play today. But a lot of that was academic. I don't disagree with you about the needle so much.
But wait, I think Rudy matters a 100 percent, and not because he's the bad guy. I don't think Rudy Giuliani is the bad guy in this story. I don't think he's a fall guy.
But what I'm saying is how can it not matter to the impeachment investigation if the underlying premise of why the President was using undue pressure was to get the Bidens, if he's there doing it right now, and you don't even know the color of his authority in doing so. JOHNSON: Well--
CUOMO: You don't even know his capacity of being over there, do you?
JOHNSON: No. We don't know that. And - and--
CUOMO: Well shouldn't you?
JOHNSON: --I'm not sure it's relevant to.
CUOMO: How - how? How could it not be relevant?
JOHNSON: Well the President has a right to hire private counsel to do anything he wants.
CUOMO: But how do you know he hired him as counsel?
JOHNSON: I don't - I don't know that.
CUOMO: You just--
JOHNSON: We don't know. That's my--
CUOMO: But then--
JOHNSON: --well that's my point here.
CUOMO: --what if he didn't hire him as counsel?
JOHNSON: Rudy Giuliani is a private citizen. He can fly around the world, and do whatever he wants.
CUOMO: But he said he went there under the color of authority of the State Department.
JOHNSON: I haven't seen him say that. I don't know if it's true. If it is true--
CUOMO: Would you like me to read it to you?
JOHNSON: Yes. So, he gives a statement today, says he's over there on the - on the President's behalf.
CUOMO: CBS interview, September 29, 2019, "I did it at the request of the State Department, and I have all of the text messages to prove it."
So, either he went over there for the State Department - oh, I'm sorry, three days earlier he said, "I'm not acting as a lawyer. I'm acting as someone who's devoted most of his life to straightening out the government."
So, he's not there for the State Department or his - oh, I'm sorry, on this show, seven days before that he said, "I'm here as the President's lawyer." Aren't you a little interested in finding out who Rudy Giuliani's
working for, and why he'd be in Ukraine right now, or asking anybody about the Bidens when you guys say that that's not what the President wanted?
JOHNSON: I - I believe that the President genuinely wanted to clean up corruption to make sure American taxpayer dollars are being spent.
Was he concerned about corruption in the election? Of course he was. 2016, he talks about it all the time. He tweets about it all the time. I think that's a really important thing.
And the overarching theme here, and what everybody needs to remember, is what our own Chairman Nadler in Judiciary said 20 years ago. He said a single-party impeachment is destructive to the country.
CUOMO: Yes.
JOHNSON: That's what we're seeing. That's the division that has been sown by the--
CUOMO: You are 100 percent correct. But I do have to ask you. And I'm going to argue it as the closing. I'd love if you or someone on the staff can listen to the closing, get back to me about it.
Whom is responsible, which side, for making this one-sided? I know you'll say the Democrats. I'm going to look through the case, and make an argument that it is your side that has changed this from a place looking for a consensus to just strictly adhering to Party.
But I'd love your take on it privately, and you're always welcome on the show. Congressman - Congressman Mike Johnson of Louisiana, thank you for making your case here tonight.
JOHNSON: Thank you. I'll give you a response when we get a chance.
CUOMO: Please! I appreciate it. I know you're busy. I'll have you back on the show as well. Take care.
JOHNSON: Thanks a lot.
CUOMO: All right, look, this Rudy stuff, remember that we were talking about Rudy. I'm not painting him as the bad guy. This isn't about the investigation into him.
Is he the President's lawyer? Is he paying him? "Oh, he's not paying him." Well then how is he getting - is he getting access as payment? No? So then, it's a donation? Did he file it as one? Did the President?
This matters because if he's not his lawyer, then he doesn't have any attorney-client privilege, and all this is open, if they want them.
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Now, the President's Ukraine actions are not impeachable, says the Right. But then the constitutional law witnesses today say if it isn't, nothing is. Where does that leave us?
All right, let's bring in one of the professors, Michael Gerhardt. Now, he was there today. He was there in 1998. How is this different? And where does he think it goes? Next.
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CUOMO: Professor Michael Gerhardt joins me now. He was at the Judiciary hearing this morning. And he testified in the same capacity during the Clinton impeachment.
Professor, thank you for being with us.
MICHAEL GERHARDT, HOUSE JUDICIARY IMPEACHMENT HEARING WITNESS, SAMUEL ASHE DISTINGUISHED PROFESSOR OF CONSTITUTIONAL LAW AT THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA SCHOOL OF LAW: Thanks for having me.
CUOMO: What do you think the most meaningful distinction is between this impeachment situation and with President Clinton?
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GERHARDT: I - I think there are a couple important distinctions. I mean the first one is that with President Clinton, I think, there was virtually no disagreement about the basic facts.
Everybody understood that he had lied or at least given some kind of falsehood, under oath, when talking about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky. The question there, very cleanly, was whether his lies were impeachable.
In this situation, I think there's obviously not consensus about the facts, at least admitted consensus, though it seems so far they're - they're indisputable, in the record.
And I think the other difference is that the President's defenders, I think, are really focused on personal attacks, not so much attacks on the facts or - or the law.
CUOMO: Right.
GERHARDT: But on attacking the messenger, and in this case, the three of us who were called by the Democrats. CUOMO: Well listen, you know the old adage, Law School 101, "If you don't have the facts, you start going after the person, if you don't have policy," and they don't have either here.
But, to your point, what happened here is pretty obvious. Yet, they keep arguing that it wasn't what it seems to be. I don't get that as a winning argument. Their real position here is something you didn't see in Clinton. That's why I wanted you tonight.
GERHARDT: OK.
CUOMO: This is the first time in modern history we've seen the Party of the President refuse to acknowledge any oversight duty. They are the President's line, and they will not move. What does that do to this process?
GERHARDT: I think that's a really terrific point. That - that is different from - Clinton situation's different from Nixon's. And Nixon and Clinton admitted it was illegitimate for there to be an impeachment inquiry. They then disputed some facts and - and some law. But here, the President's defenders are doing exactly what you just
said. They're defending the - they - they are attacking the legitimacy of this inquiry at all, and - and attacking the people making, who are fact witnesses, attacking the people who are talking about the law, but attacking them for being disloyal--
CUOMO: Right.
GERHARDT: --for being idiots, or whatever, but not really attacking the substance of what they're saying.
CUOMO: But, you know, that really throws a wrench in the works because that's not what the Founders intended. So, that's my last question for you.
GERHARDT: OK.
CUOMO: I read, you know, The Federalist Papers 65 and 66, but the middle section of 65 is germane here.
They didn't want this to be a battle of numbers. This was supposed to be about some measurement of consensus in the Constitution itself. That's why they put two-thirds of the Senate in there. You got to agree with each other to some extent here.
So, what's the right thing to do in this situation? If one Party basically won't participate, do you impeach if you have the numbers, or do you abandon the effort because this was not what impeachment was made for?
GERHARDT: Chris, that's a really terrific question. And I think - and I've given it a lot of thought.
I think what you're - the answer to your question is - is, in my opinion, that the what - that's what - what is at stake here is really the conflict between two different kinds of precedents. What is the precedent we're going to set here?
If the House impeaches, or goes forward, it sets a precedent for the House, and sets down a marker that what the President did, at least got the disapproval of the House.
The other kind of precedent that could be set is Presidents can do this and get away with it. This is OK for the President to do. And that, in many respects, this whole episode, this whole situation, is about which of those precedents is going to be established.
CUOMO: Professor, thank you for what you did for the country today. I know it's not easy. But these aren't easy times. And thank you for being with us tonight. Appreciate it, Professor Michael Gerhardt.
GERHARDT: Thanks.
CUOMO: Now, somebody who actually agrees with him, you're never going to believe this, but it was the person the Republican called today, not now, but back in '98. It's part of our closing. Please stick around for that. It's worth it. It's food for thought.
Now, we got to get back to Rudy Giuliani, OK? And it's not because I'm in love with my own idea here, all right?
He isn't denying reports that he's in Ukraine. I'm not even saying it's wrong, if he's in Ukraine, or illegal, but in what capacity? And I believe that this may be a big key to the case.
Why? Well that's where we're going to bring in better minds, Misters McCabe and Baker. We're going to put their investigative know-how to this set of facts, next.
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CUOMO: Everybody's getting caught up about the back and forth of today, but it's a mistake. You got to see where progress is, in this investigation, and I think we're on to it tonight.
The House Intel report lays out how the timing of Rudy Giuliani's phone calls are oddly in line with key moments and key players in this Ukraine saga. Investigators are still trying to determine who is behind the blocked
number. It's identified in the report as "-1." Something that's interesting, the calls from -1 or one, or whatever you want to call it, come after every time Mr. Giuliani has reached out to the White House first.
Provocative question is could it be the President? What would the relevance be? Ah! That takes us to a huge question. Andrew McCabe, and Jim Baker are here.
Gentlemen, as always, feel free to shoot me down for being in love with my own idea.
But Jim, this is why I keep saying how do we know Rudy's his lawyer? Because they say so? He says he wasn't paying him? Was he paying him back with access? That's one problem.
If he wasn't paying him at all, and he didn't list it as a contribution, and the President never booked it as a donation, that's another problem. But the biggest reason I ask isn't penny ante. It's full fold.
If he's not really his lawyer because he doesn't qualify, Jim, he doesn't have any privilege because you know that's going to be his answer about the phone calls, right? What if he didn't have that answer at his disposal?
JIM BAKER, FORMER FBI GENERAL COUNSEL, DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL SECURITY & CYBERSECURITY, R STREET INSTITUTE: Yes, there's three - exactly, you're - you're - you're right on that. There's three things that I'm looking at.
One is who was he working for? Was he working for the President? Was he working for the State Department, as - as he has said in the past? Was he working for Lev Parnas? Was he working for some other person? Is he over there now working for this television network that's supposedly doing this documentary?
That is very unclear. That then drives the other question that you were just referencing, who's paying for all this, right?
And of great concern to me is, are any federal funds being spent in support of this travel? And if so, like how is that being approved, how is that being accounted for?
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And if he's working for the federal government, and he's not using federal funds, how is the government accepting his services? That's not consistent with the law either. That doesn't make any sense.
The - the third thing, Chris, is just like doesn't anybody around Rudy Giuliani actually like care about him enough to tell him, "Look, even if this is a lawful thing that you're doing, it's an awful idea.
In the time - in this - in this time period right now, for you to be over there, doing this, talking to those people, it just looks bad. You're not helping yourself. You're not helping your client, if he is your client, the President of the United States. It's a really bad idea."
And if - presumably, people around him care about him, and somebody needs to step in, and tell him like "This is a bad idea, man."
CUOMO: Well Jim - well Andy, I'll bounce it to you, Andrew. The - the bounce is going to be "No, we're doing it in plain sight because it's not wrong, because the Bidens are dirty, and I'm over there for my client."
And again, this is - I know this sounds like some lawyer issue to people at home. I'm telling you it isn't. I don't make those kinds of arguments.
If he doesn't have the privilege at his disposal, then all the conversations he had with the President in any form that they've been recorded, on any level, are open to discovery in this process, and that would be a big deal, and on side of the ethical problems and the campaign finance violations for both of them, Andrew, no?
ANDREW MCCABE, FORMER FBI DEPUTY DIRECTOR: Well, yes. And I mean, in terms of the investigation, it's a very big deal because, quite simply, he can't have it both ways.
If he is there as an official emissary of the State Department, conducting national security diplomacy, then he has no attorney-client privilege with the President.
And, as you've noted, that could expose all of his communications with the President. There are other privileges the President could assert to try to protect those things. But he wouldn't have attorney-client privilege.
On the other hand, if he is there as the President's personal attorney, which he has also said several times, then that completely undercuts the President and his defenders' argument that all of this was in pursuit of eradicating corruption in Ukraine, and this was all part of an official U.S. diplomatic effort to try to make Ukraine a cleaner place.
If he's there as the personal attorney of the President, he is pursuing the President's personal business, and I think that makes the case in a substantial way for the abuse of power.
The President asked for these investigations, or the announcement of them, because he was pursuing his own interest, not the nation's interest.
CUOMO: Right. And Jim, just for context on this, the reason we question whether or not he is the attorney is because of his own words.
On this show, he said, September 19th, "I was acting for the President. He's my client. That's how I did it," and kind of shut me up on any questions about what they talked about because obviously, I would know it was privileged.
But then, one week later, he told, I think, The Atlantic, that "I'm not acting as a lawyer. I'm acting as someone who has devoted most of his life to straightening out government."
Then, he said, three days after that, "I did it all at the request - I did it at the request of the State Department, and I have the text messages to prove it."
Each one of those answers creates a different level of expectations and obvious consequences.
BAKER: Yes, absolutely. And, you know, if this ever ends up in a court, where a judge has to figure out whether there was any attorney- client privilege that was left, he's made a hash out of it, quite honestly.
And I think that he's created enough doubt about exactly what he was doing, and who he was doing it for that it would be difficult for the attorney-client privilege to survive under - under this context.
I - I think it'd be a very tricky argument for him to try to assert, to - to prevent some exploration of the - of the communications with the President.
CUOMO: Boy, I'll tell you.
MCCABE: And - and others as well.
BAKER: If any story ever fell into the category of "Oh! What a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive," this is the story for that. We're going to have to make up a nursery rhyme all about this.
Andrew McCabe, Jim Baker, thank you so much. Be well.
MCCABE: Thanks, Chris.
CUOMO: All right, now, there is an argument to be made that this is at a stalemate, polls, the optics of what you see in the room.
What does that mean about impeachment, all right? It's hyper-partisan. It wasn't meant for hyper-partisanship. So, the argument becomes what is the right thing to do now?
I'm going to use sound from '98 and now, rationales from then and now, and common-sense on what we see, to make the argument of who's in the wrong, and which way is forward, next.
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CUOMO: Half of you want the President impeached and removed from Office. A little under half of you don't. Hearings didn't make it any more or less so.
No House Republican crossed the aisle when it came to voting to formalize the impeachment process, and it doesn't look like any is going to do so now. So, we're at a stalemate.
But I argue this is no good-faith dispute on the facts. What happened here and why is obvious, and reflected by all we've seen and heard. President Trump abused his power. He did it for his own gain. He did it with a foreign power. He did it to interfere in his election.
Republicans complain about rushing through the process, and that's fair criticism. It has gone fast. But the documents and players at the top of the food chain are being withheld by Trump, something both Nixon and Clinton got impeached for by Republicans, by the way.
So, here's my argument. We are stuck because this process, impeachment, was meant for a measure of consensus, coming out of an elevation of principle over Party. How do we know?
Just go right to the Founders. Federalist Papers, Alexander Hamilton, read this part.
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"There will always be the greatest danger that the decision will be regulated more by the comparative strength of the parties, than by the real demonstrations of innocence or guilt."
Now, the Right says, "See? See what he said? That means the Democrats are to blame. They have the numbers."
I argue the Right is wrong. Majorities have always led the way in this process. It was no different with Clinton. But what did change is the GOP becoming the Republi-cants, OK? They complain that impeachment can't be one-sided, and that's not new as a concept.
Judiciary Chair, Jerry Nadler, back when it was his side in the soup, he made the same argument.
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REP. JERROLD NADLER (D-NY): There must never be a narrowly-voted impeachment or an impeachment substantially supported by one of our major political parties and largely opposed by the other.
Such an impeachment would lack legitimacy, would produce divisiveness and bitterness in our politics, for years to come, and will call into question the very legitimacy of our political institutions.
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CUOMO: Ah! They got him. There he is making their argument for them. Wrong! Because in '98, it wasn't all one-sided in the House. Almost three dozen Democrats crossed the line to start the process. Five Democrats voted to impeach Bill Clinton.
And let's remember, the facts there were far less damning, and far further from the origin of that investigation than what we have here.
Remember, Clinton lied about Monica Lewinsky, a tryst, in an investigation that was supposed to be about land deals. Here, you have a textbook example of courting foreign interference in a probe that is looking at exactly that.
Imagine if, right now, the Democrats said, "Oh, we have proof that the President lied in this civil deposition in some lawsuit about an ongoing affair. We're going to impeach him for that now," that's the most obvious example, people would go crazy, OK?
So, it was - and remember, with Nixon, it was members of his Party that told him he was done. So, this is the first time where we've seen a Party go all-in, exclusive of their constitutional duty.
So, you know who is right here? The President. He was dead-on when he said this.
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DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: You'll have a Democrat President, you'll have a Republican House, and they'll do the same thing, because somebody picked an orange out of a refrigerator, and you don't like it.
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CUOMO: Forget about the orange part, but he is correct. That's exactly how it went with Clinton. So, he is living his own prediction, except he is not looking into the future. He is the future.
The Democrats are doing what the GOP did, the way the GOP did it, except the GOP is not acting like the Democrats, right? Because the Democrats have him on worse facts than the GOP did with Clinton, I'm telling you.
But it is the GOP that perverted the process by refusing to do constitutional checks. Instead, all they're doing is showing they lack the Constitution to do their duty, and all they're checking on is checking in with the President, what he wants done, what he wants said, and how.
Proof, Lindsey Graham, then.
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SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC): You don't even have to be convicted of a crime to lose your job in this Constitutional Republic.
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CUOMO: Lindsey Graham, now.
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GRAHAM: Show me something that - that - that is a crime.
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CUOMO: You see what I'm saying? They have just capitulated to Trump. Forget the truth. It's all Trump. So, what to do?
This impeachment process wasn't made for this, but you can't let this stuff go, or Trump will feel invincible, and future Presidents may feel the same. But impeachment and removal can't work without some kind of consensus.
That leads to two-thirds seeing it the same way. That's the constitutional standard in the - in the Senate, and for a reason, can't be partisan. You've got to see it the same way basically.
So, maybe the answer is in what you see as an acceptable, if imperfect end, not removal, but removal of all doubt that what was done here, and how it was done, was wrong.
Maybe the lone witness the GOP had today once made the best case to impeach today.
"There is great significance," listen to this, "There is great significance to where an impeachment process terminates," ends. "If the process terminates in the House, the underlying conduct becomes precedent of exclusion," meaning you can't do this. "If the process terminates in the Senate without conviction, no precedent is established for similar conduct in the future."
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That was Professor Turley in 1998, in making the case, "Go ahead and impeach Clinton, even though you won't remove him." And I say that argument stands today.
If the Democrats' goal is for history to remember that you don't do this, you don't get away with it, that Trump can't trump the law and proper Presidential behavior, then maybe this is their best path, as imperfect as it is, because they have the facts on their side, even if the process exacts no greater toll on this President.
The question then becomes what toll will it exact on the GOP? How will they explain ignoring obvious proof of Presidential perfidy in favor of a Presidential pat on the head? That's my argument.
Now, beyond impeachment, you see what happened at the NATO Summit? Some unexpected drama for our President. That's next.
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CUOMO: NATO Summit is going on over in London. It's not going to be remembered for posing in photos like this, but for the truth of how world leaders respect this President. Listen to this.
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BORIS JOHNSON, BRITISH PRIME MINISTER: Is that why you were late?
EMMANUEL MACRON, PRESIDENT OF FRANCE: (INAUDIBLE).
JUSTIN TRUDEAU, PRIME MINISTER OF CANADA: He was late because he takes a four - 40 minute press conference off the top every time.
Oh, yes, yes, yes, 40 minutes. He announced--
MACRON: (INAUDIBLE).
TRUDEAU: I just watched, I watched his team's jaws just drop to the floor.
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CUOMO: Now, it's mostly Justin Trudeau, obviously the leader of Canada. But you saw them all laughing.
