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House Impeachment Managers and Defense Team for Former President Trump Present Arguments to Senate Regarding Constitutionality of Impeachment Trial; Senator Bill Cassidy (R-LA) Changes His Mind and Votes in Favor of Constitutionality of Senate Impeachment Trial; Sources: Trump Fuming Over His Legal Team's Performance. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired February 10, 2021 - 08:00   ET

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

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CROWD: Fight for Trump! Fight for Trump! Fight for Trump!

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ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: During much of the presentation, some Republican senators tried to act indifferent, unmoved, as if they could not be bothered to pay attention to it, though they are tasked as jurors. A mask-less Rand Paul doodled squiggly lines on a white piece of paper as it played. "The Washington Post" reports Senators Rick Scott, Tom Cotton, and Marco Rubio studied papers on their laps instead of watching that video.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Now, there was one mind changed, and that's significant because it shows that maybe opinions are not as rigid as some would have you believe here. Republican Senator Bill Cassidy changed his previous position on the constitutionality of impeachment. He changed his vote largely because, he says, the former president's attorneys did such an awful job.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. BILL CASSIDY (R-LA): President Trump's team were disorganized. They did everything they could but to talk about the question at hand. And when they talked about it, they kind of glided over it, almost as if they were embarrassed of their arguments.

Now, I'm an impartial juror, and one side is doing a great job, and the other is doing a terrible job on the issue at hand.

As an impartial juror, I'm going to vote for the side that did a good job.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: CNN has learned that the former president is said to be fuming over the lawyers' performance. The client not happy, at the verge of screaming at the television, we're told. Sources close to the former president tell CNN's Jamie Gangel, quote, this was a disaster, this was a lunacy, quote, if Trump could fire him, he would fire him.

Today it is a big day on Capitol Hill. The House managers begin presenting the meat of the case. CNN's Lauren Fox is there. What do we expect, Lauren?

LAUREN FOX, CNN CONGRESSIONAL REPORTER: We expect to see 16 hours over the next two days, and 16 hours that House managers have to make their case to 100 senators, and specifically try to win over 17 Republican senators to convict the former president on this charge of inciting an insurrection.

We expect to see more video evidence very similar to what we saw yesterday at the opening of the House managers' arguments yesterday with Jamie Raskin playing this 13-minute chilling and compelling video. Today is going to feel a little different, though, John, than what we saw yesterday in that there will not be an interruption by the former president's defense team where they won't be able to speak for the next two days.

So it's going to be really hard for senators to come out of this moment. They are going to try to bring lawmakers back to the events, back to those feelings of January 6th. And I think that that is what we can expect in the next couple of days, in the next couple of hours. This all gets started at noon today.

I do want to touch on the fact that Republicans were disappointed. They thought that it was a rocky start for the former president's defense team yesterday. You had many Republicans, including John Cornyn, including Ted Cruz, Kevin Cramer, all people who still voted with the president's defense team on this question of constitutionality. But they all argued that it was not a strong start. And I think that that is something that you can expect over the next couple of days. They may have to retool where they are moving on this. You had some, like Cornyn arguing, that they basically just rambled on and on for several minutes and really into two hours.

And I think that that is a deep concern for not just the former president, who is on trial here, but also Republicans who feel like their party is also on trial. So that gives you a sense of where we're moving in the next couple of days. Look, this is going to take some time. We expect that this could wrap as soon as Saturday or Sunday if there are no witnesses, but we still don't know for sure whether or not House impeachment managers will want to hear from additional people. Alisyn?

CAMEROTA: Lauren, thank you very much for all of that reporting.

Joining us now, CNN political analyst David Gregory and CNN senior legal analyst Laura Coates. Laura, I've seen some of that video, much of that video they showed dozens of times. I still wince, I still physically -- I have a visceral reaction to it still while watching it because it is so painful to see how horrifying the things that unfolded in the Capitol were.

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And so today, it sounds like House impeachment managers are going to rely on more video, some of it previously unseen. How do they get the Republicans' attention? Since some of our reporting is that the Republicans were doodling, averting their eyes, reading their notes, not watching the video. What do House managers do differently today?

LAURA COATES, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: How frustrating to know that even if you had that very compelling video evidence, which I would note is a memory for many of these particular members of Congress. They actually lived through it. They are watching what they could have happened to them on the other side of those doors. It's really ridiculous that they were not paying attention.

But you to see this is what's different about a criminal trial versus an impeachment trial. In a criminal trial, I had to simply prove my case to an unbiased juror who did not already have the facts in front of them. Now they have to change minds, even in spite of the facts that are given to them in front of them. It's very startling to think about that.

But where they have to go from there is they have to now fill in the gaps. If this is where they began, what else will they present that we have not seen? There was no mention yesterday of Liz Cheney. There was no mention, really, of what happened in Georgia. There was not a lot of discussion of the big lie that led up to their appearance on the ellipse and then the capitol. And so all of that will have to form the context around this issue of what the former president intended to do and whether it was to actually intend to incite a riot.

BERMAN: So David, that's the case to make to the senators, the people who will be inside that chamber. What do you think the case is to make to the American people, because I think clearly there are two different audiences here?

DAVID GREGORY, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: I think you're absolutely right. And I think while there's not a lot of confidence they get to 17 Republican jurors to actually convict here, they are speaking to a broader audience. For me, this reminded me of the most important case I think I ever covered, which was the trial of Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bombing. People don't tend to remember it. I bring it up because of that experience I had. This was terrorism before 9/11 and had a searing impact on the country.

And what the government did in that case was to juxtapose, just as Jamie Raskin did yesterday, fact, incontrovertible fact, alongside heart-rending emotion. That combination is really, really compelling. And Americans are taking all this in.

So, in other words, as a political matter, you could be somebody who thinks, gosh, those Democrats, they are overreaching. They're always impeaching Trump. And at the same time, you can look at this and say, this video, this behavior, this was an attack on our Capitol. That cannot stand. What remedy do we have? We have to stand up against that kind of behavior. And I think that's what's compelling about the case that's been laid out so far. CAMEROTA: I agree with you, David. I just don't even know if those

people that you're talking about are even seeing it. There are some channels, so-called news channels, that opted not to report on it and play much of it.

GREGORY: Yes. So this is the divide, right, is that the politics of it will overwhelm. But what you can't -- whether you talk about the constitutional arguments which have now been defeated, the reality is that there's really no dispute about how awful this event was. And Republicans are just making a political calculation, just please let it go away so that we don't have to focus on Trump and we can get back to the cancel culture, taking on Biden, or the economy.

But nobody is going to dispute what's at hand, and it's a thin argument from the defense, which got panned yesterday, that somehow Democrats are doing all of this because they don't want to take on Trump. It was Trump who was trying to disenfranchise voters. So I do think those people who are going to see it are going to see through that.

BERMAN: Look, I think this is all why Bill Cassidy, Senator Cassidy from Louisiana, was so important yesterday, because he proves that there's someone listening. There's someone willing to change his or her mind here. He said he changed his mind on the constitutionality largely because the president's lawyers did such a bad job, which we'll talk about in a moment. But the mere fact someone is willing to change his mind, Laura, is significant, I think, for the House managers going forward, not necessarily to get to 17, but this isn't just about that. This is about presenting a case and having people listen to it. And someone is willing to listen.

COATES: That's exactly right. Remember, at the last impeachment trial, this is now so many more Republican senators who were willing to listen. This is not a foregone conclusion. But I think what's so key here is that these senators were looking for some semblance of an offramp, John, some way to actually justify their preconceived notions, to justify the self-fulfilling prophecy perhaps of acquittal. And what they did not find in the defense counsel was any convenient argument that was coherent enough to give them that offramp.

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You didn't have a real attack on the arguments in favor of constitutionality. You didn't have a real, true justification as to why this was protected speech. And if this is how it begins, it will be very difficult for the senators to simply rest on their laurels and say to themselves, OK, I will have the work done for me. They're going to have to engage. They're going to come up with their own reasons that will justify if they choose to acquit, an acquittal, because the lawyers are not going to do it for them. And the House impeachment managers' actual prosecution so far has been strong enough to compel that you're going to have to do your jobs right now, senators. And the bare minimum is going to be objectivity and an open mind and listening.

CAMEROTA: David, you wrote up -- GREGORY: Can I just underline --

CAMEROTA: Quickly.

GREGORY: I just want to underline what Laura said, which I think is so important. To Donald Trump, performance matters, above all, right? But it's a good point here, because if you are not persuasive through performance, it makes the job of acquitting him because you don't want to go down this road much more difficult because the American people are taking all of this in as well. And I think some of the reporting this morning is also significant that Mitch McConnell is sending out the message that this is a vote of conscience, giving other Republicans -- now, look, he's done this before -- some room to convict if they feel it's the right thing to do.

CAMEROTA: That is interesting, isn't it, his messaging on that. So guys, stick around. We have many more questions for you, including what went wrong with the Trump legal defense yesterday.

How do you explain the poor performance by the former president's lawyers? More on the talking points that the Trump team sent out overnight, and what you'll be hearing from the mouths of many Republicans today.

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BERMAN: So the former president's lawyers did a bad job. That's not me saying that. That is virtually every Republican senator who sat through their arguments yesterday. That's the former president himself, reportedly, who was so upset he wanted to throw things practically, Kaitlan Collins reports, at the television.

Back with us, David Gregory and Laura Coates.

And, Laura, apparently, it didn't stop with the presentation before the Senate because David Schoen went on Fox TV last night to make more of the case that he was making before. And he was talking about trying to equate the violence at the U.S. Capitol, and he was trying to accuse Democrats of inciting violence or talking about violence from demonstrations before.

But in doing so, in doing so, he laid out exactly what's different about these two cases. Listen.

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DAVID SCHOEN, TRUMP ATTORNEY: They are using rhetoric that's just as inflammatory or more so. The problem is they don't have followers, you know, their dedicated followers and so -- you know, when they give their speeches.

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BERMAN: The problem, the former president's lawyer says, is the former president's followers will do exactly what he says. And to that, the House managers say what? Case closed, right?

COATES: Absolutely not. I mean, the idea here, first of all, the what-aboutism they tried to pursue, number one. But also, number two, are you trying to suggest that had Democrats had bigger or better followers then we would have had earlier insurrections? I mean, just think about what he's trying to convey there.

What's also absurd about this issue is that the former president is on trial for impeachable offenses. He's already been impeached. And we've actually seen the footage that led to what happened.

This is not something we can gloss over and say, you know what, what- aboutism works here when you imperil a co-equal branch of government. It's about what this particular person who I note is in a unique position as president. Not only to be a puppeteer, but also to be somebody who could have quelled the unrest, could have sent reinforcement.

I'm looking to see at today's trial on day two what they're going to say about the unique position of then-president Trump who could have done something about these followers and chose not to the day our capitol was attacked.

BERMAN: I guess what I'm saying is he even is losing at his own game of what-aboutism which is, he's playing a game what-aboutism, saying the president's followers are actually more prone to violence, which is exactly, I think, what the house managers ultimately will say.

CAMEROTA: Let's just -- for people who might have -- hold on, hold on.

GREGORY: Yeah.

CAMEROTA: For people who might have missed their argument yesterday in the senate, the Trump legal team, let's just play a portion of it so everyone knows what we're talking about.

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CAMEROTA: Sorry, what I meant to play was the legal team so people would hear their meandering argument of Bruce Castor. I'll re-create it for you. At one point, he was waxing nostalgia --

GREGORY: Put the cat filter, put the cat filter on.

CAMEROTA: The cat filter would have been more cogent, OK? This was a nostalgic trip down memory lane toward record players and albums which are charming. So I guess my question is, how do they recover today? I mean, what happened last night afterwards in a board meeting, and what do they come back with today, David? Your thoughts.

GREGORY: Well, I think it's -- look, the performance aspect is not just how cogent the argument is and how pointed the argument is in rebuttal. But it is performance because there's a larger audience. We know that the jury in the room is not really an open-minded jury. So, you know, there's a larger audience at play, and they've got to work to be a lot more pointed and a lot more clear. I mean, I think what the House managers did effectively yesterday, and this overall presentation, was also prebut a lot of the arguments the Trump team would make. You know, in this particular case we brought up before, the idea there's a lot of examples of inflammatory speech on the part of Democrats toward Republicans, I don't excuse any of that. I think that should be condemned.

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But the issue at hand here is when a president does it and does it to actually launch an attack on another branch of government and undermine our elections and specifically, to your point, John, has followers who are doing exactly what he encourages them to do. That's what the big difference is. And I think the House managers, I think we should look for them to really try to anticipate and take down that argument.

BERMAN: All begins again in just a few hours. I know you'll both be watching very closely as will we. Thank you so much for being with us this morning.

So we all saw it play out. I'm very curious as to what the senators are saying to each other.

CAMEROTA: Are you as curious as a cat?

BERMAN: I am just -- oh, man. How I wish that never happened. I mean, it's like -- it's like worse than Ron Burgundy. You are like a caricature of a caricature at this point.

CAMEROTA: You've just given me fodder.

BERMAN: It was actually lines from "Anchorman" that you're repeating out loud here.

We're going to speak to a U.S. senator, thank God, in just a second.

Stay with us.

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CAMEROTA: If you had trouble following the case of Donald Trump's defense team, you're not alone. John Avlon has our "Reality Check."

Hi, John.

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JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST (voice-over): So we should have known things would get weird when Trump finally unveiled his defense team because instead of being constitutional experts, his lawyers' past clients included the KKK, accused mob bosses and Roger Stone. David Schoen had been in discussions to represent Jeffrey Epstein. Bruce Castor is best known for refusing to prosecute Bill Cosby.

But even with that somewhat bizarre background, you probably didn't expect to see a bizzaro world defense on the floor of the Senate. Now, bizzaro world, for the un-initiated, is a D.C. comics alternate universe where everything is backward. Trump's legal team didn't bother with linear arguments that addressed evidence about how impeaching an ex-president is constitutional. In fact, one of the few legal scholars they cited in the pre-trial brief to step in to say they misrepresented his research.

But if you could find a thread to connect their presentations, which Paul Begala joked belonged to the firm of meandering and furious, it was this bizzaro world argument, that the most bipartisan impeachment in our history would be too divisive for the country to handle.

DAVID SCHOEN, FORMER PRESIDENT TRUMP'S LEGAL COUNSEL: This trial will tear this country apart. This is a process fueled irresponsibly by base hatred.

BRUCE CASTOR JR., FORMER PRESIDENT TRUMP'S LEGAL COUNSEL: Republicanism, throughout history, has always and without exception fallen because of fights from within.

SCHOEN: They are willing to sacrifice our national character to advance their hatred and fear that one day they might not be the party in power.

AVLON: You know what's divisive? Inciting an insurrection. Lying to your supporters about a free and fair election being stolen, and then watching them attack the capitol, causing five people to die. That's hate and fear for partisan gain.

But irony is dead in bizzaro world. Schoen said impeachment was an attempt to disenfranchise 74 million Trump voters, when Trump was actively trying to disenfranchise 81 million Biden voters. He criticized House managers for showing a 13-minute video featuring the attack, calling it blood sport and then turned around to show video of Democrats criticizing Trump with scary music as a backing track.

Every step of the way, they deployed Trump's projection and deflection. It was all backward bizzaro world.

But amid the rambling there were some unexpected revelations, like Castor admitting that Trump actually lost the election.

CASTOR: People are smart enough. They're smart enough to pick a new administration if they don't like the old one. And they just did.

AVLON: But while some Republicans said Trump's lawyers were unprepared, only one senator switched his vote as a result of this dumpster fire defense. That was Louisiana's Bill Cassidy.

SEN. BILL CASSIDY (R-LA): The House managers made a compelling, cogent case, and the president's team did not. AVLON: Which brings us to the final insult in this bizzaro world.

Senators take an oath to do impartial justice in an impeachment, but 44 Republicans just indicated that evidence might not matter in this trial. They seemed to have already made their minds up on the opposite of their oath. And that's a deeper sign of the danger for our democracy. And that's your "Reality Check."

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BERMAN: And thanks so much for that, John.

Joining me now is Democratic whip, Senator Dick Durbin. He is the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Senator Durbin, thanks for being with us.

You have said, of this historic moment we're in, that you think it's important because we as a nation need to make a record of this. What do you mean exactly?

SEN. DICK DURBIN (D-IL): If you're a student of history, you know the Soviets and Russians, when they came upon an inconvenient or embarrassing chapter in history, just rewrote the history books and said it didn't occur that way.

So I read in "The Washington Post" this morning that the Republican majority leader in the state of Michigan went before a group of loyalists just a few days ago and said that what we think we saw on January 6th was not the case. These were not Trump supporters. This was a hoax. It was all prearranged.

Listen, this is what we're going to put up with. Forty percent of the loyalists to President Trump dispute the very basic reality that this was a mob inspired by him to come here and literally engage in violent and murderous conduct. We've got to make a clear record of this for current people, of course, but for future generations.

BERMAN: What will that record say?

And, again, Marjorie Taylor Greene, member of Congress from Georgia, yesterday also said that the people who stormed the capitol weren't Trump supporters. One way you can sometimes tell if someone is supportive of someone else is if they're carrying an actual sign. And there were many signs there.

But again, what do you think the record will say of this?

DURBIN: Well, I think the record is already being displayed. We saw it yesterday in the 13-minute video and I'm sure we're going to see more.

In the meantime, the Department of Justice and FBI are investigating those who did attend and they are saying things like that loony guy with the horns on his head that he was waiting for orders from Trump as to when he should leave the building.

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