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Sanders and Warren Clash Over Claim He Said a Woman Can't Win the Presidency; Warren Snubs Sanders' Handshake After Iowa Debate; House Vote Kicks Off Process to Start Trial in Senate. Aired 9-9:30a ET

Aired January 15, 2020 - 09:00   ET

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

[09:00:34]

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning to you. It's going to be quite a day. I'm Jim Sciutto.

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: And Poppy Harlow. We're glad you're with us.

The breaking news right now, America is on the verge of the third presidential impeachment trial in U.S. history. One hour from now, Speaker Nancy Pelosi will reveal who she's picked to prosecute the case against the president in the Senate. The House will later vote to approve those so-called impeachment managers. They will then transmit the articles of impeachment to the upper chamber.

A lot going on. We're following all the developments on Capitol Hill.

SCIUTTO: That's right. We're headed towards a Senate trial of a sitting president.

Ahead of the trial, Democrats have released new evidence on the push for Ukraine to announce an investigation into the president's political rivals, but also a disturbing effort to surveil then ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch involving an associate of the president's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani. Those documents include text messages and handwritten notes from Giuliani's indicted associate Lev Parnas which suggests he and others were monitoring and following Yovanovitch.

Her lawyer is now demanding an investigation. A big question, will impeachment managers be able to use this new evidence that has emerged since the House impeached Trump?

Joining us now live CNN's Lauren Fox. She's on Capitol Hill.

Lauren, the Judiciary chairman Jerry Nadler has told CNN he expects to be named House manager. Who else do we expect to be on this list?

LAUREN FOX, CNN POLITICS CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Jim, this is the moment that a lot of members who have been on the Intelligence Committee and Judiciary Committee have been waiting for, the moment where Nancy Pelosi will announce who those House managers will be. And look, there is an expectation that Jerry Nadler and Adam Schiff, the two men who had really been leading these investigations and these hearings over on the House side when it comes to impeachment will be managers, but the question of who else will join them is one we just don't know.

And I will tell you that lot of aides and members who are hoping that either their boss or they themselves will have the job have been in the dark and it's been a long few days because they were hoping to get a call from Speaker Nancy Pelosi. We expect that she probably won't tip her hat until she delivers this address at her press conference at 10:00 a.m.

HARLOW: Yes. Well, we waited a month, so I think we can wait another 58 minutes for that. Before you go, so then what happens? Right? We'll get the names of the managers and then what?

FOX: Well, Poppy, there'll be a formal vote this afternoon in the House chamber approving the House managers, then there will be some pomp and circumstance this evening when we expect that the House managers will march those two articles of impeachment over to the Senate, really signaling the beginning of the second part of the phase of impeachment here, this Senate trial.

And I will tell you, Poppy, that this has been a long time coming like you said. There has been a stalemate between Pelosi and McConnell over the last month. And the fact that we are going to start this Senate trial, there will be some swearing in tomorrow we expect, then next week, on Tuesday, we'll see the very first arguments made by the House managers and of course the president's defense team.

So that's where things stand. Of course that timeline can always change, but that's where we are today -- Poppy and Jim.

HARLOW: All right, Lauren, thank you so much.

Now let's get to more on those newly released documents, text messages, handwritten notes, all of this evidence about -- from Rudy Giuliani's indicted associate Lev Parnas.

SCIUTTO: CNN's Kara Scannell joins us now.

Lara, you look at these messages, this seems to indicate a disturbing effort to surveil a sitting U.S. ambassador and with a tie to the president's personal attorney.

KARA SCANNELL, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes. I mean, we've seen a lot of this new information and the text messages and documents that were provided to Congress by Giuliani's former associate Lev Parnas. This was a number of previously unknown details about the efforts to dig up dirt on the Bidens and to take down the ousted Ukrainian ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, as you said, Jim.

These materials include letters to the Ukraine's president. In it Giuliani requests in the meeting knowing that he is working with the president's -- the U.S. president's knowledge and consent. This is the first document made public where Giuliani links his efforts in Ukraine directly to President Trump. There was also this handwritten note that Parnas scrolled on a sheet of hotel paper in the end that mentions President Zelensky's -- getting President Zelensky's to announce an investigation into the Bidens.

These documents that Parnas provided also included a series of exchanges between Parnas and the Ukrainian prosecutor Yury Lutsenko. We've heard a lot about. He was helping Giuliani dig up some dirt on the Bidens and one WhatsApp message that simply says to Parnas he was making progress in getting information on Trump's rivals and appeared to reference that Ambassador Yovanovitch. He writes, "And here you can't even get rid of one female fool."

[09:05:01]

So the trove of new information also reveals a new player in the story, a Connecticut congressional candidate named Robert Hyde. He's an ardent Trump supporter and in the text messages that we've seen, that between Hyde and Parnas, it shows them attempting to smear Yovanovitch and even alluding to the surveillance operation that you mentioned.

In one of these text messages on March 23rd, 2019, Hyde texts Parnas, "Wow, can't believe Trump hasn't fired this B. I'll get right in that." Two days later, Hyde texts Parnas again, "They know she's a political puppet. They will let me know when she's on the move." Parnas replies perfect. Hyde makes a quip to Parnas saying, you can do anything in the Ukraine with money, that's what I was told. To which Parnas replies LOL.

And he later updates Parnas on Yovanovitch's whereabouts which suggests that they really are surveilling her. And in a statement late last night, Yovanovitch's attorney called for an investigation into whether she was under surveillance in those weeks before she was recalled from her post in May of 2019.

We've reached out to Hyde for comment last night and asked him if he intended to hurt Yovanovitch in which he replied a text to me, "No, effing way." He went on to say, "What kind of bull Schiff question is that," in apparent reference to the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee Adam Schiff, who is running this impeachment inquiry.

SCIUTTO: Well, it raises questions about the president's knowledge, right, because you remember in the July 25th phone call, he said specifically to Zelensky, President Trump did, she's going to go through some things and called her bad news.

SCANNELL: Exactly. And even in Yovanovitch's testimony, she said that she was warned that there were some security issues about her. She had to get back to Washington but she didn't even understand what they were. Maybe this is what that was about.

SCIUTTO: And to date no public defense of her from the Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

SCANNELL: Not yet.

SCIUTTO: She worked for the State Department for many years. Kara Scannell, thanks very much.

Joining us now to discuss all this, CNN senior political analyst David Gergen, former adviser to Presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Clinton, and CNN legal analyst Elie Honig, he's former federal and state prosecutor.

David, I just want to zero in on this evidence because it's quite remarkable here. You have the president's personal attorney working with someone who is now indicted, a congressional candidate, Republican congressional candidate, appearing to surveil or involved in an effort to surveil the ambassador, and this is an ambassador the president singled out for criticism, and said to the Ukrainian president she's going to go through some things here.

Tell us about the significance of this. I think it's hard for folks at home because of so much information is coming their way, but is this significant evidence as we start a trial of the president?

DAVID GERGEN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes. It's extremely relevant information. And thank goodness there is a trial because -- and I must tell you, Jim, even after this trial is over, it's now apparent that the House is going to have to keep the doors open to any new evidence that comes in about almost anything.

Yes, there may be a lot more things out there that we don't know about, this is only one country we put pressure on. Are there other countries that have been under political pressure for one reason or another? We don't know. But there is going to have to be an accounting and that's got to be done by the House, obviously. But now in this particular case, this evidence is, as if we needed anything more to be persuasive, shows clearly that the people were acting on behalf of the president, that he had knowledge.

And that contrary to what our president has been telling us, his interests was not in general corruption in Ukraine. The interest was focused on one thing and that it was digging up dirt on the Bidens. And this really I think sews that case up. It is -- but to go to your point, who would have thought just a few weeks ago we would have this flows, flood of sort of sewage kind of evidence coming in between the process in the House, the indictments and then going to the Senate.

We didn't know but I do think strongly -- I'm looking forward to hearing from your other guest now. I do feel strongly that whatever comes in, I do think before the vote on acquittal should be admissive -

HARLOW: Yes.

GERGEN: You should be able to admit it and examine it in the Senate. Independent of what the House has done, this is new information and the Senate needs to do it and it makes the case for witnesses more compelling.

HARLOW: That is the key question, Elie Honig, is will this be admissible. Looking back this morning at the Senate rules governing Clinton's impeachment, one key sentence stands out. Quote, "Such records from the House will be admitted into the evidence, printed and made available to senators." So that sort of precedent that could back this up going. And also, as you know, the Constitution grants the chief justice broad power when it says shall preside over a Senate impeachment trial. Could Justice Roberts say this is admissible?

ELIE HONIG, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Yes. So a couple of things. First of all, to David's question, and to your question, Poppy, in a normal criminal case, evidence is admissible all the way up to the point when the jury starts deliberating. So sometimes as a prosecutor you do find evidence right before a trial or even during trial. And for the most part, that evidence can be admissible.

[09:10:04]

Now, of course, this is a little bit different, but as you said, the Clinton precedent was that at least documents, written pieces of paper, e-mails.

HARLOW: Yes.

HONIG: Could be admitted. And so I think the same thing should hold here. The bigger question is, will there be live witnesses. And yes, to your final question, I believe the chief justice -- look, the Constitution tells us the chief justice shall preside over this trial. That's it. That's a very broad unqualified grant of power. And so I think if Democrats don't have a majority vote, if they can't flip three or four Republicans on any important issue, I think they can and should go direct to Chief Justice Roberts.

SCIUTTO: David, you've got a fair amount of experience, watching things going back to Nixon, but also observing the Clinton trial as well. I just wonder if all of the conventional wisdom that the trial is a forgone conclusion and that we're not going to learn much, and that folks are going to vote along party lines, and we already know the end result, if that was premature given that in this time period between the House investigation and now the trial you have a witness raising his hand in John Bolton, you seem to have Republican support growing for calling witnesses, and you have really interesting at a minimum new evidence here. I mean, do we know how this all ends up?

GERGEN: Yes. I don't think we know. I don't think it ends up well. I think there are going to be a lot of people in the country who are going to be dissatisfied with the final conclusions. But I do know that the center of gravity in the case has shifted and that the case against the president has been strengthened. That information that should have been in the hands of the Intelligence Committee when they were going through the impeachment process should have been available and was held back.

We do know that the stonewall is cracking and things are coming through. What we don't yet know, Jim, is whether in fact there are going to be these four extra votes among Republicans. We have indications there might well be, you know, the effort there and that they would call witnesses. But then will they get into fights over the witnesses themselves as when the Republicans demand that they get Hunter Biden in exchange for putting Bolton up.

And we also don't know what the president is going to do. He can continue to -- he has indicated that he's going to exercise executive privilege. And how will that all come out.

HARLOW: Yes.

GERGEN: So there are a lot of ifs and uncertainties about this but there's no question that the weight of evidence against the president has strengthened.

HARLOW: Thank you both. We'll have you back.

GERGEN: OK.

HARLOW: All of this starts in about 48 minutes.

SCIUTTO: Still to come, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders facing off at last night's debate. At issue, a key question, whether Senator Sanders said a woman could not win the White House in 2020. Who's telling the truth?

HARLOW: Yes. And President Trump set to sign phase one of the trade deal with China. He'll do it at the White House in just a few hours. But could new tariffs be on the table if China does not meet its end of the deal?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:15:00]

HARLOW: Nineteen days, can you believe it? Nineteen days --

SCIUTTO: Yes --

HARLOW: Until the Iowa caucuses. And on the debate stage last night, a clash among progressives.

SCIUTTO: Yes, this is when votes start to count. Senators Sanders and Warren face-to-face after she claims he told her a woman could not win the 2020 election.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (D-VT) & PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I didn't say it. And I don't want to waste a whole lot of time on this because this is what Donald Trump and maybe some of the media want. Anybody knows me, knows that it's incomprehensible that I would think that a woman could not be president of the United States.

SEN. ELIZABETH WARREN (D-MA), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I disagreed. Bernie is my friend and I am not here to try to fight with Bernie. Can a woman beat Donald Trump? Look at the men on this stage. Collectively, they have lost 10 elections. The only people on this stage who have won every single election that they've been in are the women! (END VIDEO CLIP)

SCIUTTO: That might have been the most memorable moment of that debate. Even more contentious moments afterwards, Senator Warren denying Senator Sanders a handshake in that moment there. Let's break this down. All the headlines with CNN's Leyla Santiago and Astead Herndon; national political reporter for "The New York Times", thanks to both of you.

Astead, it's a key question here. Someone is lying, right? I mean, if Sanders says he didn't say it, and Warren says he did, I mean, that's quite a moment of disagreement between the two leading progressive candidates in this race.

ASTEAD HERNDON, NATIONAL POLITICAL REPORTER, THE NEW YORK TIMES: It is a big moment of disagreement, but it also can be a version where two people heard different things. Our reporting and the reporting that came out of CNN initially was that Senator Warren certainly heard and believed that Senator Sanders was expressing that a woman could not win.

And that, that was the impression which she later told colleagues and some who were briefed on the meeting. This is something that Senator Sanders vehemently denies, said that he only mentioned the pervasiveness of sexism, that -- and the widespread nature of it, but that he never went that next step.

This could be a situation in which the implications and contexts of the conversation allowed the receiver to hear one thing, and the person who is saying it not believing they're saying it. That happens in life all the time. What is important here is that this is playing out at a critical moment right before Iowa. These are people --

SCIUTTO: Yes --

HERNDON: Who have --

HARLOW: Yes --

HERNDON: Some overlap in their supporters, but also are ranked one and two some in that latest "Des Moines Register" and CNN poll. They know that this is a critical moment, and it is interesting to see that their public alliance is breaking down at a time when Biden is still leading. The left is asking them to get along, and they are getting more and more contentious --

HARLOW: Yes --

HERNDON: Between them at this critical time.

HARLOW: So, Leyla, to the statement of the night, if you ask many people that, you know, the men on the stage have lost 10 elections, the two women on the stage have lost none. What did that mean for the women still in the race, but also for Senator Klobuchar who is going to have to go back to Washington, who is not going to have at least herself as part of the ground game in Iowa leading up here to the caucuses.

[09:20:00]

Who does not have as much money, who is polling behind the others, but who has the ability and has shown that she can win red districts. She won Michel Buchman's district in Minnesota. What did that moment --

LEYLA SANTIAGO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Right --

HARLOW: Mean?

SANTIAGO: Well, and you saw her reaction, right? As soon as Senator Warren said that, Klobuchar -- Senator Klobuchar was quick to say that's true, that's true. So obviously, she was embracing that statement as, wow, we know that right up until this debate, Klobuchar typically has a lot of town halls leading into debates, she did not do that this time.

And that's because she was studying in a way that really she hasn't before, understanding how critical this debate was, given that, yes, she may need to go to D.C. now, and this was sort of the last opportunity to make a moment for herself and break through under three weeks before the Iowa caucuses.

So clearly that's something that she embraced. She was a bit more aggressive than we typically see her last night because she knows that she needed that moment. You know, what she will do to sort of get creative during the trial, we'll have to wait and see. She's not alone in that sense because Senator Sanders and Senator Warren may also have to do the same thing.

But I think your point is correct, in that, the difference between them is that she's not where they are in the polls or in terms of raising money --

HARLOW: Yes --

SANTIAGO: For her campaign.

SCIUTTO: Astead, foreign policy played a role in this debate to a greater degree than prior debates. And of course, there's a lot in the news to make that. But it was interesting that the candidates and focusing a lot of it back-and-forth on the Iraq war -- I mean, we're going back 17 years to the vote to go to war there. Have a listen to Sanders and Biden back-and-forth, and I want to get your reaction.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SANDERS: Joe and I listened to what Dick Cheney and George Bush and Rumsfeld had to say. I thought they were lying. I didn't believe them for a moment, I took to the floor, I did everything I could to prevent that war. Joe saw it differently.

JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: It was a mistake to trust that they weren't going to go to war. They said they were just going to get inspectors in. The world in fact voted to send inspectors in, and they still went to war. From that point on, I was in the position of making the case that it was a big mistake.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCIUTTO: Yes, Biden on somewhat shaky ground there, kind of, I voted -- I was against it when I voted for it, you know, I was trusting their word there. How did he do on that answer, and is this the right focus for the candidates now, given that you have -- I mean, for instance the immediate threat with Iran?

HERNDON: This -- that's actually the interesting thing about the Bernie-Warren back-and-forth, taking up so much space is that, this is the fight that the Sanders campaign wanted to have coming into this debate. They wanted to create a contrast, particularly on foreign policy as obviously the Iran question has loomed over the political discussion at large.

And they think this is Bernie Sanders' strength. He has articulated a non-interventionist world view, and that only comes from a kind of anti-war place. But also he links it back to the money that it would save and bring back for domestic policies. Obviously, he has a robust agenda there. And Biden also sees this as a strength.

Now, that doesn't come from his previous decision, certainly, he's stepping away from his decision to back the Iraq war. But he sees it as a place where he can project his readiness on day one, that world leaders know him, that he was entrusted by the Obama administration to make some of those choices and chosen him as vice president partly because of that foreign policy experience.

This is both kind of a turf in which they want to play on, and was interesting seeing Senator Warren use her Armed Services Committee placement to --

HARLOW: Yes --

HERNDON: Hype her credentials, and also Buttigieg talking about his service as an ability to try to get in there because they know that the top two candidates Bernie and Biden want to shut them out by having this foreign policy --

HARLOW: Yes --

HERNDON: Discussion at each other.

SCIUTTO: Yes --

HARLOW: That's really true. All right, Astead, thank you, Leyla, appreciate the reporting on the ground. Today, one step closer to the Senate impeachment trial of the president. Is Mitch McConnell closer to a decision on witnesses?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:25:00]

SCIUTTO: Welcome back. The house is set to formally send impeachment articles of the president to the Senate, allowing them to move on to a trial of the president. With those articles comes new evidence from house Democrats, and its remarkable highlights efforts to press Ukraine to announce an investigation of the Bidens.

But it also includes text messages talking, it appears about surveilling the sitting U.S. ambassador to Ukraine. I'm pleased to be joined now by Democratic Senator Tina Smith of Minnesota, she will soon be sitting as a juror in this Senate trial. Senator, we appreciate you taking the time this morning.

SEN. TINA SMITH (D-MN): Good morning, Jim.

SCIUTTO: I want to draw your attention and our viewers' attention to this new evidence here, because you look at these WhatsApp messages from Robert Hyde, he's a GOP candidate for Congress, speaking to Lev Parnas, who is now being indicted and associate Rudy Giuliani. I'll just read from one of them. "Wake up Yankees men, she's talked to three people, her phone is off, computer is off, she's next to the embassy, not in the embassy.

Private security been there since Thursday. They will let me know when she's on the move." Those messages appear to show that the U.S. ambassador was under surveillance here, as you'll recall in President Trump's conversation with the Ukrainian president, that supposedly perfect phone call, he talked about Yovanovitch, she's going to go through some things.

I wonder, are you concerned that this harassment of Yovanovitch might have happened with the president's OK?

SMITH: Well, I'm very concerned about this. This data just came out yesterday, and I've just had a chance to look at a little bit of it.

[09:30:00]