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House Dems Close Impeachment Arguments Against Trump; Trump Defense Begins Arguments Saturday; Sekulow: Biden and Dossier Central to Trump Defense; Schiff Implores GOP to "Give America a Fair Trial". Aired 1-2a ET

Aired January 25, 2020 - 01:00   ET

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

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: All right. We are a big piece of the way to the end through now. The Democrats, the House managers have wrapped up their arguments that President Trump should be removed. It took three days.

The first day was kind of general. Second day was much more focused. And today was on the allegations of what we call the second article that the President allegedly obstructed Congress and engaged in a cover up. How did it go? Sara Murray lays it out for us.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. HAKEEM JEFFRIES (D-NY): President Trump tried to cheat, he got caught and then he worked hard to cover it up.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SARA MURRAY, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: After three days of laying out the case against President Trump, the impeachment managers pressed stir crazy senators today for more, more evidence, more witnesses.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. VAL DEMINGS (D-FL): The President abused the powers entrusted in him by the American people in a scheme to suppress evidence, escape accountability and orchestrate a massive cover up.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MURRAY(voice over): In their final day of opening arguments, Democrats condemned President Trump's efforts to block witnesses.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. ZOE LOFGREN (D-CA): President Trump forced those officials to choose between submitting to the demands of their boss or break the law.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MURRAY(voice over): And the Trump administration's refusal to hand over any documents to impeachment investigators.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. SYLVIA GARCIA (R-TX): No documents. Zero. Goose egg. Nada.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MURRAY(voice over): Impeachment managers set the stakes, arguing the President abused his power when he attempted to withhold a White House meeting and security aid unless Ukraine pursued investigations into Joe Biden in 2016 and claiming everything that came after that was an attempt to cover his tracks and obstruct Congress.

They warned senators that Trump's behavior was part of a pattern. Once again, using his own words against him.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Then I have an Article Two where I have the right to do whatever I want as president.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MURRAY(voice over): And they cautioned of the consequences if Congress fails to intervene.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JEFFRIES: The President is not a king.

REP. JERRY NADLER (D-NY): Is there a consequence for a president who defies our subpoenas? Absolutely.

REP. ADAM SCHIFF (D-CA): Do you think if we do nothing, it's going to stop now? All of the evidence is to the contrary. You know it's not going to stop.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MURRAY(voice over): Senators who are supposed to listen quietly to the lengthy proceedings have taken the passing notes, whispering to their neighbors and reading books. At least one senator snuck in a cell phone, but at points they fell silent.

Like when lead impeachment manager, Adam Schiff, revealed how Trump shrugged off the U.S. intelligence assessment that Russia meddled in the 2016 election.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: My people came to me, Dan Coats came to me and some others. They said they think it's Russia. I have President Putin. He just said it's not Russia. I will say this, I don't see any reason why it would be.

SCHIFF: Whatever profile Russia did have our president, boy, did they have him spot on. Flattery and propaganda. Flattery and propaganda is all Russia needed.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MURRAY(voice over): Saturday, the President's defenders get their shot on the Senate floor.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JAY SEKULOW, WHITE HOUSE COUNSEL: Tomorrow? No, I think you'll see a, I guess, I would call it a trailer, coming attractions, that'd be best way to say it. Obviously, we have three hours to put it out, so we'll take whatever time is appropriate during that three hours to kind of lay out what the case will look like. But, no, next week is when you'll see the full presentation.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MURRAY(voice over): Democrats tried to anticipate their response.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SCHIFF: Now, you'll also hear the defense. The President said there was no quid pro quo. This is a well-known principle of criminal law that if the defendant says he didn't do it, he couldn't have done it.

[01:05:04]

That doesn't hold up in any court in the land. It shouldn't hold up here.

This will another defense, because what they hope to achieve in the Senate trial is what they couldn't achieve through their scheme. If they couldn't get Ukraine to smear the Bidens, they want to use this trial to do it instead. So let's call Hunter Biden. Let's smear the Bidens. Let's succeed in the trial with what we couldn't do with this scheme.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MURRAY(voice over): And they urge senators to set party allegiance aside as they judge the President's conduct.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SCHIFF: What happens when our heartfelt views of right and wrong are in conflict with the popular opinion of our constituents? What happens when our devotion to our oaths, to our values, to our love of country, to part from the momentary passion of a large number of people back home? Those are the times that try our souls.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MURRAY(voice over): Sara Murray, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE) CUOMO: All right. So that is the end of the beginning. What are the

arguments to come next? Let's bring in friends to show Jim Schultz, Professor Michael Gearhart and Renato Mariotti. We have perfect for you to present what we think we'll hear. Renato you can rebut. I can be righteous and you are the perfect judge. So we have a great mix for this. How do you think they come out of the box?

JIM SCHULTZ, CNN LEGAL COMMENTATOR: So I think they're going to attack the process to begin with in terms of how this thing came through the House of Representatives to begin with. They started with that. You saw a preview of that in their first round.

I think they're also going to take issue with some of the overreaches during the Democrats' presentation. I think you're going to see them attacking. You heard Schiff and Nadler. Schiff concentrated so much on Russia collusion throughout his presentation. I think that's an overreach, especially what we know now.

It kind of reminds people of all the overreach that he's taken time and time again throughout this process that he's undermine ...

CUOMO: Process overreach on Russia?

SCHULTZ: Over.

CUOMO: And what about Schiff?

SCHULTZ: And undermining the prosecutors' credibility, if you will, the manager's credibility, if you will and lastly with Nadler. They keep talking about different crimes like extortion, mentioned extortion in a number of times here. That wasn't charged. If they had extortion, they would have charged it.

They're trying to insert crimes into this blanket abuse of power. They just can't do that.

CUOMO: All right.

SCHULTZ: Hate crimes, they should have (inaudible) ...

CUOMO: So Renato, one, you guys rushed the job. You did a lousy job. Two, you bring up Russia, reminds everybody that you shot and missed that time. You make stuff up. Three is that if you had the real crimes, you would have charged them instead of this blanket abuse of power. Responses?

RENATO MARIOTTI, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: You know what I didn't hear, Chris, is I didn't do it or he didn't do it. The President didn't do it. When you have a really good - I'm a criminal defense attorney now and I argue on behalf of my clients, the best argument you want to be making is my client didn't do it. There's no evidence he did it. There's no proof here. There's no evidence.

That's not what they're arguing. They're trying to distract. I mean, essentially, this argument is a process argument. The Democrats did a bad job. They're trying to distract you. They didn't charge it the right way.

Well, that implicitly is saying they have enough evidence to prove what they did charge and I think that's just shows the weakness of the Republicans' case?

CUOMO: hold. What do you think?

MICHAEL GERHARDT, HOUSE IMPEACHMENT HEARING WITNESS: Well, something to recall about this whole process is this is not really a trial in a court of law. This is about political theater. And so it's not just a course in the Senate either, it's going to be on television.

So the lawyers, I think, for the President are playing primarily to the President, but they're also playing to his base. They're playing to the Republican senators. They don't have to make great legal arguments. They don't have to get into the weeds, so to speak, on any kind of legal issue. They just have to make arguments to remind these senators, look, who do you not want to offend, who do you want to make sure is on your side, who's the bad guy here, Democrats, and so on. That's effective in that kind of forum.

I think for the Democrats, yes, the evidence, I believe, does support a lot of what they're saying and charging in this situation. But that's not an argument that's going to seep into the Republican mentality and it's not an argument that may make a difference in this trial.

However, they may also be speaking to the American people more generally and we're going to have to see to what extent they can make a persuasive case.

CUOMO: Quick, help me with this, if you have a sense about it, but if you don't, don't worry about it and don't betray anything you're not supposed to. Who do you think they're going to lean on most out of the box in terms of presenting their case? And do you think they go as long as the Democrats did?

SCHULTZ: I don't think they have to go as long as the Democrats did, because it's their job to poke holes in the Democrats' case. And I think they can do that very effectively just by talking about the things I talked about earlier, but also the fact that a lot of these witnesses they don't get directly to the President.

Now, we can argue all day that there should be more witnesses, all those other things.

[01:10:01]

And you know my argument there, Chris, they should have taken that through the courts. They had an opportunity to do it and you're going to hear a lot of that tomorrow. But I think they lead off with Cipollone. I think he leads ...

CUOMO: Cipollone first.

SCHULTZ: I think he leads off. He's the counsel to the President. I think he leads off. But then they lean on Sekulow a lot. Sekulow is a trial lawyer who's a very good - he's, if you want to call it theatrical like Schiff is a theatrical process.

CUOMO: Yes. I don't think it's a dirty word here.

SCHULTZ: I don't think it is.

CUOMO: I mean, you want to be persuasive.

SCHULTZ: Right. You want to be dynamic and I think I use the word dynamic. He's the more dynamic of that bunch. But Cipollone is a surgeon and he will surgically take this case apart looking at each - at the testimony. They will put contradictory testimony up and they will poke holes in all the things the Democrats overreached on in the House phase of this and the Senate phase.

CUOMO: The big stick to deal with, Renato, is the idea of, well, you could have done it in the House. Yes. There were stall tactics. Yes, you could argue all day in a legal forum somewhere that this president has subverted the Constitutional exercise of oversight.

But it was a strategic choice by the House to not engage in what they saw was necessary in protracted litigation. How haunting is that?

MARIOTTI: I have to say I think that that's really an excuse that's being offered by Republicans here. It's hard for me to take that seriously because really the attitude that the White House had, they essentially stonewalled entirely. They told no witnesses to cooperate. They withheld all documents and their justification wasn't privileged or anything like that.

It was essentially a blanket immunity. We're not going to cooperate. This is a legitimate. Even though the Constitution provides for this exact type of process. So I don't really think the House had a choice here. And I think Senate Republicans are in a tough spot, because the last time that President Trump was investigated, it didn't see consequences. What did he do? He went and did this Ukraine scheme that is at the heart of this entire impeachment.

And if he gets off scot free here, who knows what he's going to do next?

CUOMO: He does never help you guys in terms of defending him for what that's worth. But on the judgment of this particular issue, yes, they stonewalled. Arguably, they shouldn't have done it. If you have a great alibi, Renato is the defense guy now but you understand it as well. If you have a good defense and you're accused of something, you bring out your alibi, because you want the investigation to go away.

But they made the decision not to chase it through the courts and they could have, is it on the House?

GERHARDT: I don't think it's on the House. I think it's part of the Constitution. The Constitution says the House has the sole power of impeachment. And so the Constitution only uses the word sole twice. Once with respect to the House having the sole power of impeachment, once with respect to the Senate the sole power to try, so sole means sole, only.

So the House has a constitutional power here, which the President has stymied, which the President has paralyzed by standing up to them and not complying with the subpoenas. And so in some respects, we're facing a question of constitutional law, I think it's haunted people for a long, long time and that question is whether or not if the House can charge something, if the President doesn't cooperate and stands back and does what he's doing here, who wins? Well, we'll see. It's going to be the President.

CUOMO: Let's continue the conversation. But let me take a break, Jimmy.

SCHULTZ: OK.

CUOMO: Let's keep the conversation going. Will you stay? Will you stay?

SCHULTZ: Sure.

CUOMO: Where else you're going to go at this time of night? Renato stay, we'll take a quick break. We'll come back. We'll talk about what can be expected starting tomorrow because the Democrats have finished their case. But now is a very big phase. Everything sounds impressive before it's countered. What do we expect tomorrow or today, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[01:17:12]

CUOMO: All right. Everything is impressive until you hear it countered. So you've heard the managers ended their case with Adam Schiff who was certainly a star in Democrats' minds. He ended on a passionate note. But now it's going to take a different term, because now you have the defense.

And really their job is not to do what the House managers had to do, play to prove and they're about deficiencies. They're about raising questions that can ease the conscience of just a handful of senators that they're a little worried may want more added to the case.

So let's bring back our team. We got Jim Schultz. We got Professor Gerhardt and we got Renato Mariotti. So one of the main points of contention, I think we all agree we're going to hear about is, hey, you guys want these witnesses. Were they kept from the House so that we can only get them here or did they misplay it in the House and now they're asking for something extra from here? You obviously take the latter position that it was the deficiency of the House.

SCHULTZ: So I think Michael's argument is a little misplaced in that, that the buck stops with Congress. It can't stop with the Congress. So when a subpoena issues, it has to go through the court system if you're going to find it. If it stopped with Congress, then it blows the whole theory of separation of powers, because this Congress could basically use that power to leave the executive branch around by the nose when they don't like the policy by threatening impeachment every time.

CUOMO: But what about the concept in the law of the frivolous lawsuit where you challenge every subpoena even if they're in the ordinary course, because you don't want to do anything?

SCHULTZ: Well, they have an argument that at least in the first phase when - there are three phases of this. The first and second phase when they were subpoenaing witnesses or calling witnesses, if you will, before the entire house voted on it, that's a procedural defect. And you're going to hear that legal argument posited by Cipollone tomorrow, because he alluded to that in the beginning and I think it's a good argument to be made.

So you're also going to hear that as it relates to this obstruction of Congress, that this is a made up crime, because in essence it's the same argument I just made. You can't have it both ways. You can't have Congress. I mean, yes, they're the sole arbiter of impeachment but at the same time they're not the sole arbiter of every subpoena that they issue. That has to go to the courts and that's why the courts are there to satisfy those issues.

CUOMO: This was argued in Nixon also by Hogan who was the first guy to go back on Nixon, it was the same thing.

SCHULTZ: But Nixon was a court subpoena, it was not a subpoena from Congress. They were courts of history.

CUOMO: Well, that is true. It was coming through the grand jury.

SCHULTZ: And there's more power in a court subpoena than there is in a congressional.

CUOMO: Do you agree?

GERHARDT: Well, the third article of impeachment against Richard Nixon that the House Judiciary Committee approved was his failure to comply with four legislative subpoenas and so it wasn't just judicial subpoenas.

[01:20:00]

And the difficulty here is basically whether or not Congress in a sense can stand on its own and not depend on the courts and again, I come back to the word sole. So the idea is with impeachment, that's the one power Congress has to hold the President accountable. But if it has to depend on the courts or the President to exercise that power, it becomes really weak and that power is eviscerated.

SCHULTZ: No. I don't think it's eviscerated at all, because that's why you have that other check with the judicial branch of government. I agree, they have the sole power to be the arbiter of impeachment. The sole power to vote on impeachment. That doesn't extend the documents and what I was talking about earlier was the case that actually went to court in Nixon were court subpoenas.

Yes, he was charged, but the issue of obstruction of Congress was never taken to the courts.

CUOMO: All right. But now there's another issue, which I think is much more common sense. Renato, you're doing defense work now. You're getting investigated. You have your client. It goes to trial. You have no reason to put a case in chief up (ph). It's the prosecutor who has to do it. Of course, you have the presumption of innocence.

But I've never heard and now you're doing defense work. We got Michael here. We got Jimmy. I've never heard of anybody having an alibi document or personal witness that gets them out of an investigation and they don't bring it forward to make it stop. Only here do we have the President of the United States Pompeo, Bolton, Mulvaney, they'll clear me.

The documents, he said, the other day, we have them. We're all right. Who does that?

MARIOTTI: Yes. I have to say usually you present them before the charges are even brought. In fact, usually what I would do on behalf of a client is go to the prosecutor and have a meeting with them, a pitch meeting and say, look, I'm showing you the evidence here. I believe I've done it before. I believe my client is innocent. Here's why. Here's what I see that shows that I think my client is actually not guilty of this crime. You shouldn't charge him at all or you should drop the charges.

Usually, that's what you would do.

CUOMO: Yes.

MARIOTTI: I don't know why you wouldn't bring that here. It's one thing if you think maybe it's just they think they've already got the jury locked up. They don't want to take any chances because they feel like they've already got the jury locked up. It's not an impartial jury and they don't really need to do anything.

But if that's the case, why spend days arguing. I guess it's just to get air time where the ...

SCHULTZ: That's all well and good that, yes, you go and meet with the prosecutor at a time either when you have a grand jury secrecy involved or you have the ability to know the person across the table isn't going to leak that information. There's no way you're going in and doing that ahead of time, if what you're saying to the prosecutor or anybody you have to go in before is just going to blast that out to the public and that's what Congress was doing.

CUOMO: Who cares? Look, you know how I feel about leaks. One, I want them as a journalist. Second, I've never seen anyone leak like this White House does. But my point is different than that. You say Mulvaney, Pompeo and Bolton, not you, the President, you listen to them, they're going to clear me. We have documents to clear me. I did nothing wrong here. The call was perfect. Why doesn't he let him testify?

SCHULTZ: If I'm his lawyers, I'm not doing that. And remember, it goes back, Cipollone represents the office of the President of the United States.

CUOMO: Right.

SCHULTZ: So this has future implications and it's not just about Donald Trump. This is about the executive branch, generally. If you start rolling over every time Congress asked for something, because of that push and pull I've been talking about, you're going to get it time and time again. They're going to ask for more, ask for more, overreach again and again and again and that's going to have implications for future administrations.

Now, typically, these things get worked out before you get to the courts. But I think the vitriol on both sides at this point, there's distrust on both sides. So they're just going to fight one another, tooth and nail.

CUOMO: Well, we're going to see that play out starting tomorrow. Jimmy, thank you very much. Michael Gerhadt, appreciate it. Renato Mariotti, always a pleasure and thank you.

So again, it begins today, OK, it's 1:22 in the morning here in the East. They will, just a few hours from now, they're going to get up, they're going to meet and they're going to start to plan for their presentation. They've already been strategizing it out for days. But we're getting a preview from one of the people on the President's team, Robert Ray. We talked to him. Where he heads? What do you want? How do you see it? His answers ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[01:28:16]

CUOMO: All right. So where's the President's team headed? It's not a mystery anymore. They're looking to distract. They're looking to poke holes and they're looking to get this over as quickly as possible. So the Steele dossier, you're going to hear about it. Hunter Biden, you're going to hear about him.

But amid all of that, they're going to have to make legal arguments as well. It's going to come down basically, to two points, abuse of power is not enough for impeachment. You need a real crime. And on the second article, how can you obstruct if you have the power to do something and how could you obstruct if you were never challenged in court?

So one of the men making that case will be former Whitewater prosecutor, Robert Ray. Here's his take.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CUOMO: Counselor, it's good to have you on PRIME TIME.

ROBERT RAY, TRUMP IMPEACHMENT ATTORNEY: Nice to be with you as always, Chris.

CUOMO: This is the first time we'll hear a president be defended with an argument that abuse of power is not enough for impeachment. That wasn't argued in Clinton. In fact, we've never heard it argued before and it is a bold move for you guys to say abuse of power is not enough. Dershowitz is going to argue that but how can it not be enough?

RAY: Well, but Chris in the Clinton impeachment abuse of power was raised and it didn't even garner a majority vote in the House of Representatives ...

CUOMO: Well, because the facts didn't meet it.

RAY: Well, but the point was is that history has shown that abuse of power allegations as a article impeachment have not fared well. They fared well in the Nixon impeachment as it turned out because it was tethered to the first article of impeachment, which involved obstruction of justice.

[01:30:03]

And so, look, our position is that - and I've made this point on your show as you know. You don't agree with it and I understand that. It's subject to reasonable disagreement, I suppose. But I have argued that the Constitution historical practice, the founders' intent that well- founded articles of impeachment allege both that a crime has been committed and that only a certain category of crimes that also constitute an abuse of the public trust, the violation of the President's oath of office or abuse of power would be sufficient to warrant his removal from office.

CUOMO: Yes. Look, your trick is the extrapolation. That's what you're going to have to sell to the Senate. Because when you look at all the founders documents and all the things that now this country is chewing over and you've had two Supreme Court justices indirectly weigh in on this one directly and obviously Justice Story. But also the one professor Dershowitz cites, Justice Curtis, who once he left the bench went on to defend then President Andrew Johnson.

They both also recognized that abuse of power and crimes of the public trust are a category unto themselves. And that's the trick for you to convince these senators that abusing your power for your own gain is not something that the founders saw as worthy of impeachment. I think it's a tough bar for you.

RAY: I don't agree with that. I mean, I'll leave to Professor Dershowitz the Constitutional argument. I do think, though, importantly you have to acknowledge that you tread on very thin ice if what you're really talking about is a standard list bar for impeachment that leads to all kinds of political mischief, which I do think the founders were intending to avoid.

CUOMO: To limit. They were.

RAY: Yes. You can call that an extrapolation, but I think they were concerned about power.

CUOMO: Yes. RAY: And they wanted to ensure that the Congress through the

impeachment power and the trial in the Senate had sufficient wherewithal to be able, if it was done on a bipartisan basis, to muster the ability to remove a dangerous president from office and overturn the will of the people under extraordinary circumstances, which I think was characterize then as a last resort. In today's terms, we would probably more readily characterize it as the nuclear option.

CUOMO: This was put in place to check power, a president's power.

RAY: Right.

CUOMO: And it was put in there with a high standard, the argument for you to contend with will be, well, what you're asking for counselor is that there's no check on the President's power. Unless you find some very hard to identify criminal standard, you are encouraging a president to play with his power for his own personal gain, cover up the investigation and get away with it.

RAY: Well, look, honestly though, Chris, and I know this is an argument in the political process is subject to some disagreement. I mean, the ultimate check on power ...

CUOMO: Is the election.

RAY: ... in this connection is an election and conveniently enough ...

CUOMO: We have one.

RAY: ... we have one nine months away. I guess the question really for the American people to decide through their elected representatives in the states before the United States Senate is whether, again, this is so extraordinary that it calls for no other action but the removal of the President from office.

CUOMO: The idea of witnesses, we both know that except in the case where after closing - opening arguments, you ask a judge for directed verdict. Trials have witnesses. Are you afraid of witnesses in this case?

RAY: No. All we've ever said and the President has made this point repeatedly, if there are going to be witnesses, it has to be fair and it has to be on both sides.

CUOMO: Sure.

RAY: But the question for the Senate to decide as a preliminary matter is whether or not they need witnesses in order to resolve based on this record once both sides have had an opportunity to present, whether or not they need witnesses or further documents or anything else in order to make that judgment, whether or not ultimately their power, which is to decide that there's bipartisan support to remove the President from office.

If that's not ever going to be the case, no amount of witnesses or documents or anything else is going to change that.

CUOMO: Counselor, I appreciate your take on this. Good luck going forward.

RAY: Thanks.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CUOMO: All right. We appreciate Counselor Ray doing that, especially when they have the big job ahead today. That was not from tonight, but it is going to be certainly reflective of what we'll see in just a few hours.

Much more to come on what's about to come and what they'll have to deal with going into it, especially the story that broke tonight about the President and whether he's telling you the truth next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[01:38:56]

CUOMO: All right. So what is tomorrow going or what is today going to be about when the President's team takes up the mantle? They say just a movie trailer, coming attractions, preview of their case, why?

Well, the President is not happy. And you know what, he's not wrong with the TV placement. The President understands media very well and he's like Saturday, who's watching on Saturday. Now, I think that there's going to be a bigger audience than he would expect, typically. But what will be the substance?

Well, is this even impeachable? If they were right about everything they just told you, the House managers, is that anything and along the way they're going to distract. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEKULOW: The Clinton campaign had sought - when it's completely corroborated, it's uncontested, the Steele dossier. Where did that foreign intelligence come from, foreign information come from?

It came from connections from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The number three whose wife happened to work for Fusion GPS.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[01:40:01]

CUOMO: Now, how will the Fox News hitlist play on the Senate floor? We have Scott Jennings here. The idea of how you proceed, I don't think the President is wrong that he doesn't like starting on a Saturday, I get it. I get it. But putting that aside, how do you expect them to come out of the box? What do you think their best foot forward is?

SCOTT JENNINGS, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Well, a couple things. Number one, I would expect them - well, I know that the Senate Republicans are expecting a big presentation on the Bidens. I don't know if that's going to come Saturday or just sort of more to come on Monday, but that that's got to be part of it.

CUOMO: Why? Why do they want that?

JENNINGS: Because it's what legitimizes the phone call. Is the phone call perfect? What legitimizes the purpose of bringing it up is if you can plant some idea that the President had a legitimate concern about corruption that he'd heard about and just because Joe Biden is running for president doesn't absolve his record of review, therefore, it's a legitimate call, so that has to be part of it.

And by the way, they will have a videotape of one of the State Department officials who testified in the impeachment hearings saying, well, back in the Obama years, I raised this issue and they didn't do anything about it. That'll be a powerful piece of tape for them.

CUOMO: I think here's the legal problem within and then you talk through the political side of it, is that if you are charged with beating a guy up and at your trial you want that guy to be put on the stand to prove why you didn't like him and why you beat him up in the first place, it doesn't absolve you of how you behaved, how you went about it.

So the President could have a problem with the Bidens.

JENNINGS: Yes.

CUOMO: A good faith problem, OK. But how he went about it could still be abusive of power, because he could have gone to the AG, could have gone to the Senate, he could have done a lot of things. He did it this way and only asked for an announcement, not an actual investigation and it makes it look self-serving, how do you handle it?

JENNINGS: But if the President in your scenario had a belief he had a legitimate or righteous purpose in raising it, even if he went about it the wrong way, you could chalk that up to bad judgment. And if you're defending him either if you're his lawyer or a senator, explaining your vote in this particular case, you could say, look, did he use bad judgment, did he go about it the way I would have gone about it?

No. But we're not here to parse that. What we're here to decide is leave the President in office or throw him out of office, because there's no other door to go out of.

So I think a lot of what they're trying to accomplish is to, yes, defend the President, but also make the point that they're asking for the greatest punishment in American politics and there's enough here to say we cannot go all the way to that punishment. That would be ludicrous because the President had legitimate concerns.

CUOMO: How worried are you about the unknown, Lev Parnas' credibility problems, a hundred percent. HADOPI (ph) as they say all the time.

JENNINGS: Yes.

CUOMO: But if you look at the stack of papers that he put out, he was definitely doing what he said he was doing for Rudy Giuliani. The videotape that came out, the President says to us, I don't know him. I have no idea what he was doing.

That seems hard to believe without the tape. With the tape, you don't have a conversation about getting rid of the ambassador of Ukraine with a nobody. This was not a nobody dinner, either. It was 15 people.

JENNINGS: Yes.

CUOMO: Why would he lie about knowing Parnas?

JENNINGS: Well, I think it's plausible that he doesn't know him in a familiar sense. It's obviously implausible that he doesn't know him at all, because he was obviously at a dinner with him.

CUOMO: I'm not saying like they dated. I'm saying you don't talk about that with a guy that you just shook his hand.

JENNINGS: And the most likely thing is, is that he had any familiarity with him because Giuliani was vouching for him. So even if he doesn't know Parnas that well, if you're friends with Rudy and Rudy says, this is my guy, well, then you're going to - his credibility transfers to Parnas.

CUOMO: I give you that a hundred percent. One problem, this was six months this event before he worked with Rudy. Rudy wasn't even at the dinner. So it couldn't have been when Rudy was vouching for him, it was when Parnas was giving money and trying to get in and close to him and telling him this Ambassador is bad for you, Mr. President, because she was bad for Parnas. Parnas wanted to work business deals.

His interests wound up combining with Rudy's. That's how they got together. So why wouldn't the President just be straight and say, yes, I know him. I know what Rudy was doing. Why is he playing by the same book he did with Michael Cohen, which we know there that was a lie also?

JENNINGS: Yes. There are definite questions around this and I've been critical of the President's using Giuliani for this effort. My view is they were - if you have a legitimate concern about corruption and you want that investigated, there are agencies of the government you could use, State Department, the Justice Department, call them and say what can we do about it.

CUOMO: Not if you don't want your hands on it. Not if you don't want your fingerprints on it.

JENNINGS: Well, but some people might say Trump didn't trust those bureaucracies to do it.

CUOMO: Yes.

JENNINGS: And he doesn't trust that world, so he went to his world to do it.

CUOMO: So why did he give him the aid? Why did he give Ukraine the aid?

JENNINGS: Oh, why? I actually think he ultimately gave them the aid because he had a mountain of pressure from Republican senators about it. I mean, you had everybody from Johnson ...

CUOMO: Why do you think (inaudible) why do you think so?

JENNINGS: ... well, because they had voted for it and they knew that it was bad policy, not to give them the aid. They knew that it was bad policy and he doesn't want trouble in the Senate. That's the only thing chamber that's really helping him.

[01:45:02]

So I think ultimately that was, to me, the biggest issue for him was not just the Ukrainian stuff that he cared about going on, on the side. But he had a real problem in the Republican-controlled Senate by not doing this. And he ultimately caved to Portman and Johnson and others.

CUOMO: But how much of it was because they said to them, you can't hold up this aid because you want them to investigate the Bidens. Even the NGO said that was illegal.

JENNINGS: Well, I think that what the case they were making was we voted for this. This is your policy.

CUOMO: That was true too.

JENNINGS: And, oh, by the way, you have a great political argument here, which is your predecessor never sent these people lethal aid and you did take the win. Like I think they were trying to convince them like know when you won, take the win. You're tougher on the Russians in this area than Obama would.

CUOMO: It also coordinated when the whistleblower was coming out and when they started to be - look, we'll see how they deal with it starting today.

JENNINGS: Yes.

CUOMO: Scott Jennings, thank you very much.

JENNINGS: Thank you, Chris. Yes, sir.

CUOMO: Appreciate it.

All right. We're going to play some more closing words from the lead House impeachment manager, Adam Schiff. They were powerful. The Democrats were very happy with them. What will they mean? How will they influence what we hear next? Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) [01:50:17]

CUOMO: There was silence on the Senate floor just hours ago as Congressman Adam Schiff laid out his final argument for the Democrats. Here's what the senators were left with.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SCHIFF: President Trump solicited the interference of a foreign government, Ukraine, in the 2020 election. That has been proved.

He did so through a scheme or course of conduct that included soliciting the government of Ukraine to publicly announce investigations that would benefit his reelection, harm the election prospects of a political opponent and influence 2020 U.S. presidential election to his advantage. That has been proved.

President Trump also sought to pressure the government of Ukraine to take these steps by conditioning official U.S. government acts of significant value to Ukraine on its public announcement of the investigations. That has been proved.

Let me say something about this second article. The facts of the President's defiance of Congress are very simple because they were so uniform. Because they were so categorical. Because they are so uncontested.

There will never be an Article One. Whether that Article One is abuse of power or that Article One is treason or that Article One is bribery, there will never be an Article One if the Congress can't investigate an impeachable offense.

If the Congress cannot, because the President prevents it, investigate the President's own wrongdoing, there will never be an Article One because there will be no more impeachment power. It will be gone. It will be gone.

Whether you like the President, or you dislike the President is immaterial. It's all about the Constitution and his misconduct. If it meets the standard of impeachable conduct as we approved, it doesn't matter what you like him. It doesn't matter whether you dislike him.

What matters is whether he is a danger to the country, because he will do it again. And none of us can have confidence, based on his record, that he will not do it again because he is telling us every day that he will.

Real political courage doesn't come from disagreeing with our opponents but from disagreeing with our friends and with our own party, because it means having to stare down accusations of disloyalty and betrayal. He's a Democrat name only or she's a Republican in name only.

What I said last night, if it resonated with anyone in this chamber, didn't require courage. My views, as heartfelt as they are, reflect the views of my constituents. But what happens when our heartfelt views of right and wrong are in conflict with the popular opinion of our constituents? What happens when our devotion to our oaths, to our values, to our love of country, to part from the momentary passion of a large number of people back home? Those are the times that try our souls.

The founders gave us more than words. They gave us inspiration. They may have receded into mythology but they inspire us still and more than us, they inspire the rest of the world. They inspire the rest of the world.

From their prison cells in Turkey, journalists look to us. From their internment camps in China, they look to us. From their cells in Egypt, those who gathered in Tahrir Square for a better life, look to us. From the Philippines, those that were the victims and their families of mass extrajudicial killing, they look to us.

[01:55:01]

From Elgin prison, they look to us. From all over the world, they look to us.

And increasingly, they don't recognize what they see. It's a terrible tragedy for them, it is a worst tragedy for us, because there's nowhere else for them to turn. They're not going to turn to Russia, they're not going to turn to China, they're not going to turn to Europe with all of its problems. They look to us because we are still the indispensable nation.

They look to us because we have a rule of law. They look to us because no one is above that law. And one of the things that separates us from those people in Elgin Prison is the right to a trial. It's a right to a trial. Americans get a fair trial.

And so I ask you, I implore you, give America a fair trial. Give America a fair trial. She's worth it. Thank you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CUOMO: All right. That's all for us. Thank you for watching. We have a special Saturday edition of CUOMO PRIME TIME at 9 pm tonight. Right now, the news continues on CNN.