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Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees
Exclusive: Warren Said To Sanders "I Think You Called Me A Liar On National TV" After Debate; House Managers Deliver Impeachment Articles To Senate As New Documents Shed Light On Giuliani's Shadow Efforts In Ukraine; Hyde Says Texts With Giuliani Associate Taken Too Seriously, Denies He Surveilled Ambassador Yovanovitch; Interview with Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR). Aired 8-9p ET
Aired January 15, 2020 - 20:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[20:00:14]
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST: Good evening.
Millions of people watched or have seen the moment and wondered what were Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders saying to each other on stage, miked, during what appeared to be a tense confrontation after last night's debate.
Tonight, CNN has the audio and we'll play it for you. It's potentially significant for the campaign ahead. You'll see it here, and it comes at the end of a day like few others in the country.
So, we want to begin with the history that was made today and what could be a lot more in the making. This evening, with a portrait of George Washington looking on behind her and for only the third time in the country's history, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi signed a resolution to transmit articles of impeachment against the president of the United States to the Senate.
A few moments later, the House clerk, accompanied by impeachment managers walked from the House chamber through statutory hall, down the Ohio clock corridor, and on to the Senate floor.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHERYL JOHNSON, CLERK O THE U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES: Mr. President, I have been directed by the house of representatives to inform the Senate the House has passed H. Res. 798, a resolution appointing and authorizing managers for the impeachment trial of Donald John Trump, the president of the United States.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The message will be received.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: And history was made. And as we said, perhaps more in the making, because even as that was unfolding, the official Washington was grappling with and fighting over some remarkable new potential evidence in the case. New documents from Lev Parnas, the indicted associate of President Trump's alleged bag man in all of this, Rudy Giuliani.
And yes, that is where we are tonight, an impeached president with an alleged bag man formerly known as America's mayor, also formally known as a mob-busting U.S. attorney.
These documents are so explosive because they appear to tie so directly into the alleged extortion scheme at the center of the impeachment and connect the president more tightly to it. One is a letter from Giuliani to Ukraine's then president-elect, requesting a private meeting in his capacity as the president's personal counsel and done, quote, with his knowledge and consent. This was in May, back when Giuliani was also boasting to "The New York Times" about gathering dirt in Ukraine for the president on the Bidens. The documents also include this: a note that Parnas scribbled to himself on hotel stationary. You can see it appears to be a to-do list of sorts, and item one is, quote, get Zelensky to announce that the Biden case will be investigated.
There's also ominous, thuggish-sounding text messages, which we'll talk more about shortly between Parnas and a man named Robert Hyde. They suggest the ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, was being surveilled or possibly stalked. How true that is is yet to be determined.
These documents could make it that much harder for the president to claim he was acting on behalf of the country and not himself, when he asked President Zelensky to, quote, do us a favor, though. The Giuliani letter, especially.
The question now, would senators who take an oath to evaluate the evidence impartially, will they decide to even look at this, let alone call witnesses on it?
Our Phil Mattingly starts things off for us tonight at the Capitol.
So, Phil, a remarkable day on the Capitol, and a third time in U.S. history. What exactly happens now?
PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, you're going to see something tomorrow, Anderson, that looks a little bit similar to what we saw today. Another procession of the seven House managers, the House sergeant at arms, as they go over to the Senate floor at noon to officially present and read those two articles of impeachment on the Senate floor.
Now, after that occurs, about two hours later, 2:00 p.m., the chief justice of the United States Supreme Court, John Roberts, will make his way over to the United States and be sworn in to oversee the impeachment trial. Once he is sworn in, Anderson, he will then proceed to swear in all 100 senators for the duration of the trial.
Now, what we're seeing, basically, both today and tomorrow is kind of equal parts ceremonial and procedural. What happens next, likely on Tuesday, will really be the kind of meat and bones of this Senate trial. We are going to see presentations from those seven managers, 24 hours in total over the course of a couple of days. Then the president's defense team will get their turn, also 24 hours.
And then 16 hours, again, spread over several days, for any senator that wants to ask a question of either of those teams. That is the first part of the Senate trial that is really locked in. It is after that that the big questions remain about how long this trial will go, will anybody testify.
But that's what's locked in at the moment. And, obviously, a lot of ceremony on this first day, certainly history made. But it's when that trial really kicks off on Tuesday that everybody is going to be paying very close attention, as they wait to see if the president will be removed, first and foremost, but also the reality of this moment, just the third impeachment trial for a United States president in the history of the country, Anderson.
COOPER: And whether or not there'll be a vote to allow witnesses, it still remains really one of the biggest questions.
MATTINGLY: I would argue at this point in time, there's probably two big questions that I'm interested in at this point.
[20:05:03]
One, what is the defense that the president's team is actually going to lay out, but witnesses is the question that every U.S. senator is getting at the moment. Obviously, Democrats have been very keen on trying to pressure their Republican colleagues to agree to subpoena witnesses, to subpoena documents. Whether it's John Bolton, acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, even based on the latest evidence that they've transmitted over the course of the last 24 hours, Rudy Giuliani.
Here's the rub. They need at least four senators to join with the 47 Democrats in the United States Senate in order to make that happen. A simple majority is all it takes. And at this point in time, they don't have those commitments.
What they do have right now is four senators who have said they are at least open to the idea of witnesses and documents. But all four of those senators are firmly behind Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and that is not a question that should be considered until after that initial stage of the trial.
So, basically, Anderson, we're going to get two weeks of a trial, with everyone wondering what's coming next, and the reality is we probably we aren't going to get the answers to those questions until that moment of the initial presentations, Anderson.
COOPER: And just lastly, from what I understand, the rules so far stipulate that there will be a ban on senators using phones during the trial. What else is going to be sort of different about this?
MATTINGLY: Yes, it's going to be very different from what you're used to seeing. Obviously, instead of a senator presiding over the trial, you're going to have the chief justice of the United States Supreme Court presiding. The senators themselves, once they take their seats at 1:00 p.m. on Tuesday, when the kind of the central part of the trial begins, they are not allowed to speak.
I've talked to a number of senators who like to joke about the fact that they and many of their colleagues aren't really super excited about the idea that they can't speak. It's something that they enjoy doing quite a bit. But the electronics is a -- we kind of look at it as a side issue, but it's actually really important. These individuals are going to be sitting in their Senate chairs for hours on end. They can't have their phones, they can't have their iPads, they can't communicate really with staff.
They are not allowed, Anderson, to have any reading material on their desks that's outside of the scope of the trial itself. This is really going to give them only one option and one option alone, and that is to listen to the presentations.
And one senator I talked to today made a really interesting point. He said, look, you guys have been paying attention to every iteration of this over the course of the last four months, the depositions, the public hearings, the votes. Most of us have been watching the news, but haven't really gone into a granular detail of things.
That's about to happen. And whether or not that changes minds or at least gets senators to the point where they want to hear more from witnesses or subpoenaing documents is going to be the question going forward, Anderson.
COOPER: All right. Phil Mattingly, thanks very much.
I want to go next to CNN's Alex Marquardt who's got the latest the new evidence from Giuliani associate Lev Parnas that could shake up the impeachment trial if it's allowed in -- Alex.
ALEXANDER MARQUARDT, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Anderson, this is a stunning new trove of documentation from Lev Parnas. Text messages, photos, voice mails.
And what a lot of it focuses on and really highlights is how deep this irregular channel was that Rudy Giuliani was leading in Ukraine. And much of these documents, and frankly we're still going through a lot of them, Parnas' legal team just handed these over to the House over the weekend, a lot of these documents do focus on the removal of Marie Yovanovitch, who was the U.S. ambassador recalled by Trump from Ukraine in May after what she called a concerted campaign against her by Giuliani.
There's one text message from Lev Parnas to a top GOP fund-raiser in which he says, it's crazy we have enemies of our president surrounding the new president of Ukraine. It's more important than ever to get a good ambassador that's loyal to our president.
Anderson, there's also a much darker side to this. These text messages between Lev Parnas and that guy that you mentioned, Robert Hyde, who until now was an unknown name. He's a Republican running for Congress in Connecticut.
And there's a series of text messages between the two of them again about Yovanovitch. One of them says from Hyde, wow, I can't believe Trump hasn't fired this B, referring to Yovanovitch.
Then he talks about surveilling her, insinuating that he is tracking her around Kiev. Hyde writes, on March 25th, they are moving her tomorrow. She's next to the embassy.
Then, Anderson, there's this much more nefarious tweet where it sounds like he's planning something with others and talks about payment. Hyde saying, they are willing to help if we/you would like a price. I guess you can do anything in the Ukraine with money.
Now, it's unclear who "they" are, what they would do in exchange for money, and if anything was done.
One thing, Anderson, that is clear is that there has been total silence from the State Department about one of their top diplomats, someone who has served in Foreign Service for three decades, a three- time ambassador -- Anderson.
COOPER: What's not known if this guy, Hyde, was just making this up and kind of being -- trying to puff himself up as if he has extensive contacts in Ukraine. It's not -- I mean, am I correct in that it's just not known. He's now come out and said that he was just joking around, basically.
MARQUARDT: You are correct. In fact, Lev Parnas' lawyers came out today saying that he did nothing with Hyde in terms of tracking or harming Yovanovitch. They talked about his dubious mental state.
And then we also have seen a series of tweets from Hyde which are much more aggressive. He denies that he was ever in Kiev. He talks about Parnas calling him a dweeb, that he was playing with, that these were texts written by him and his buddies while they were drinking. So he is dismissing that.
But, Anderson, this is still something that folks on Capitol Hill, particularly Democrats, are demanding they get briefed on, demanding that gets looked into. It is no small thing for these insinuations that a U.S. ambassador was tracked by these shadowy figures across the Ukrainian capital -- Anderson.
COOPER: And Parnas is going to be on this program tomorrow night. He was on with Rachel Maddow. What did he say?
MARQUARDT: Well, he's saying that he could have done nothing without the approval of the president. That everything he did, all the movements he made, those were tracked and known about by the president and the president's personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani.
And, Anderson, it's just another direct line between the people in this irregular channel, as it became to be known during the impeachment hearing, directly back to the president. And it really is reminiscent of one of the other point men in Ukraine for the president, Gordon Sondland, to the ambassador to the European Union, who said, yes, there was quid pro quo, and everyone was in the loop, including the president -- Anderson.
COOPER: Alex Marquardt, thanks very much.
Now, a juror as well as a lawmaker is openly interested in hearing from witnesses and weighing the evidence. Joining us now is Jeff Merkley, Democrat of Oregon.
Senator, first of all, what do you make of the new documents that have been released from Parnas? How much stronger do you think this makes the Democrats' case against the president?
SEN. JEFF MERKLEY (D-OR): Well, this start sketching (ph) and really critical details about how Giuliani was operating and about communication between that operation and the president. Certainly, it isn't the whole picture. I think information is going to continue to come forward, but this starts to fill in some of the gaps.
COOPER: As of now, none of what Parnas has revealed is part of the evidence that the Senate is going to consider. To your Republican colleagues who are hesitant to include any new information during the trial, for, I guess, a variety of reasons one can interpret -- some stated, some not stated -- what do you say to them?
MERKLEY: Well, I say to them that there's really two steps here. An indictment is based on sufficient information that a serious act has occurred. And of course, in the context of an impeachment, that doesn't necessarily mean a crime. It can mean abuse of power in other ways. But it's just that there is serious information that merits a full trial.
A full trial is the full examination of evidence. And like any other trial, it continues to pull on any information that is available for witnesses to come forward, for documents to be examined, and that's what a trial is.
It is really a situation where the president's lawyers deserve to pull in whoever they feel contributes to their case and the House managers in presenting their case need to be able to pull in and have a subpoena for the witnesses and for the documents. That's what a trial is, full fairness to present the case on both sides.
COOPER: So if Republican lawyers wanted to pull in Hunter Biden or Vice President Biden, you would support that?
MERKLEY: My belief is that the jurors, the hundred of us, should not be determining who is relevant to the case. And quite frankly, I think that if either side tries to turn this into a circus, pulling in people who are clearly not relevant or continuing the persecution of a political opponent, it would do great harm to that side. So I would say that in this case, the right of the defense to choose who they think is relevant and present that information something no one else should be able to interfere with.
COOPER: Republicans are united in their opposition to include any new evidence. Do Democrats really have any leverage, though, to force this issue?
MERKLEY: The leverage is 51 votes. The leverage is people doing their responsibility under the constitutional framework of checks and balance. The leverage is the oath we're going to take at the start of the trial, where we pledge to do impartial justice.
Leverage is that the American people understand that impartial justice envisions a full access to witnesses and documents. Lack of witnesses and documents, that's a cover-up.
COOPER: Impartial justice, which is something that all the senators are going to be swearing to, is that something -- I mean, senators who have come forward and said, you know, I'm -- I -- this is not -- you know, we are not going to find the president guilty, can they swear to that oath?
MERKLEY: Well, I think they're going to have to search their heart and ask if they're able to set aside their preconception, all of us, all hundred of us.
[20:15:04]
And if we are unable to do that, if we're unable to in good faith say, we'll set aside our preconceptions, look at the exact language of the House articles of impeachment, the exact evidence and how it fits, then we should recuse ourselves. Because it would be really a deep violation of any form of integrity to go forward and swear that you can do impartial justice when you're unable to do it.
COOPER: The Republicans have been criticizing the House impeachment hearings as rushed, saying that Democrats were more interested in getting it done fast than they were in conducting a thorough investigation and that if they really wanted to do a thorough investigation, they would have gone through the court process in order to get the testimony that they wanted that they couldn't.
There is new evidence that has come to light. The fact that new evidence is still coming to light, does that prove their argument correct?
MERKLEY: Well, recognize that a lot of this information was solicited in the House examination and it was blocked, in all kinds of various ways. People who refuse to testified and in this case, information that they subpoenaed, but they weren't able to get until now.
But again, it goes back to the fact that the House setting is a different setting. Is there substantial information relevant to what would be the -- an indictment? And in a trial, it's full examination of the facts, with everything brought to bear.
My colleagues, my Republican colleagues know this. They know that the president would have -- his legal team because of tied up the subpoenas for probably a year, taking it through the next election, and that therefore, we could not have executed our responsibility under the Constitution if the House waited until the courts could process each and every of the cases in which they were seeking documents and witnesses.
So, the House has to ask themselves a key question. Is what we have so strong that this merits a full trial? And the House concluded that it was.
COOPER: Yes.
MERKLEY: And now we have a different set of responsibilities in the Senate.
COOPER: Senator Merkley, I appreciate your time. Thank you very much.
MERKLEY: Good to be with you.
COOPER: Just ahead, how the trial might be received and what happens to Republicans if they pull the plug and then more evidence comes to light.
Coming right up next, though, right after the break, a CNN exclusive. The -- well, the lyrics to what looked like anything but a love song. We now have the audio of what Sanders and Warren said to one another after the debate. It looked tense and it was. We'll play you the audio in just a moment.
Later, a former top U.S. diplomat on the text messages and surveillance of America's ambassador to Ukraine.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[20:21:46]
COOPER: Tonight, a CNN exclusive on probably the most talked about moment in last night's Democratic debate, which actually happened just seconds after the debate, after the confrontation over whether Senator Bernie Sanders once told Senator Elizabeth Warren that a woman could not be elected president.
Even without the sound, the moment did not look like a warm and friendly encounter. But without actually knowing what was said, it was impossible to know for sure.
Tonight, CNN is the first to obtain the audio and we're going to play it for you shortly.
But, first, Jeff Zeleny joins us now with more on the story that it tells.
Jeff, go ahead.
JEFF ZELENY, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Anderson, good evening.
It was an extraordinary mean. As you said, it was seen, but not heard as Elizabeth Warren came face-to-face with Bernie Sanders in the moments right after the debate last night in Iowa. Now, rivals were shaking hands and they're congratulating each other for a job well done, but Warren clearly had something on her mind to tell Sanders.
And tonight, we know just what it was.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ZELENY (voice-over): With applause still ringing at the end of the Democratic debate in Iowa last night, the simmering feud between Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders suddenly boiled over.
SEN. ELIZABETH WARREN (D-MA), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I think you called me a liar on national TV?
SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (I-VT), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: What?
WARREN: I think you called me a liar on national TV?
SANDERS: Let's not do it right now. You want to have that discussion, we'll have that discussion. I think you called me a liar, you told me -- all right, let's not do it now.
TOM STEYER (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I don't want to get in the middle of it -- I just want to say, Hi, Bernie.
SANDERS: Yes, good, OK.
ZELENY: She walked away without a handshake after intentionally trying to de-escalate the fight earlier in the debate.
WARREN: Bernie is my friend and I'm not here to try to fight with Bernie.
ZELENY: But Warren wanted to make a point that a woman can win the presidency. It was one of the most memorable lines of the night.
WARREN: 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.
ZELENY: They were sparring over a comment Warren says Sanders made during a private meeting in 2018 that a woman couldn't win the White House. Sanders strongly denied ever making such an assertion.
SANDERS: As a matter of fact, 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.
ZELENY: In the moment, Warren disagreed, but waited more than an hour later until after the debate, to accuse Sanders of calling her a liar.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ZELENY: Now, we reached out to the campaigns all day long and again tonight. Once we went through this audio, Anderson, neither campaign wanted to give a comment on this. We caught up with Senator Sanders on Capitol Hill today. He did not want to talk about this at all.
One thing that's clear, both sides were trying to de-escalate this feud on the debate stage, but it clearly did not work. Now, it's escalated once again. I'm told that they did not speak today.
But they will be side by side in close proximity tomorrow at that Senate impeachment trial, Anderson.
COOPER: And, Jeff, just explain how the audio -- how we got this audio now.
ZELENY: Well, Anderson, we saw it play out, but we couldn't hear it play out, but my colleagues here at CNN spent the day looking through backup audio. It was not recorded from the primary audio system, it was a backup separate system, and they found it late today, we listened to it, we matched it with the video, so that's how we were able to reveal this moment.
[20:25:02]
So, certainly interesting. Nineteen days before the Iowa caucuses, they are going after some of the same voters here, the progressive voters. We will see how this feud continues.
COOPER: It's also interesting, Jeff, because they were -- they were miked. It was literally the debate, you know, the applause was still going on. And they were aware they were miked and Senator Warren went over and had this exchange with a camera moving right past them.
ZELENY: And it was so interesting, when we watched all of that, she had nice words to say for Joe Biden. She had nice words to say for Tom Steyer, Pete Buttigieg.
And in an instant, she saw Senator Sanders there, went directly to him and accused him of calling her a liar on national television. He was taken aback by it, obviously, you can see there. And he essentially said the same thing, accused her of calling him a liar.
So this debate, I think, will continue between the two of them. And we should say that they had a non-aggression pact for more than a year. Perhaps it's surprising it held this long. It clearly is not in effect now, Anderson.
COOPER: All right. Jeff Zeleny, thanks very much.
Joining us now is CNN political director, David Chalian, and CNN chief political analyst, Gloria Borger.
Gloria, it seemed like on the debate stage, this was kind of maybe put away, because neither used the opportunity while they were in the midst of the debate to kind of go back and forth on this. But, clearly, Sanders or Warren had something she wanted to say to Sanders.
GLORIA BORGER, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes, I mean, she made a beeline for him at the end of that debate. And, you know, Anderson, we were talking about it last night. We were trying to get Tom Steyer to tell us what they were saying, because he was hovering over them.
And I think when you look at this, it really a pretty significant development in this campaign. The two progressive candidates, as Jeff was pointing out, who had really tried not to get in each other's way during this campaign, suddenly, have exploded into, you know, this barrage of name-calling, saying, you called me a liar, no, you called me a liar.
And the question I think we all have is how are they going to resolve this? Are they going to resolve this? I know we've tried to figure out whether they spoke to each other today and as Jeff points out, it seems that they haven't.
And what do progressives do? I mean, these are their standard-bearers. And suddenly, they're not arguing over the issues, but they're arguing over who said what to whom.
COOPER: David, there's two things that are so interesting to me about this exchange and hearing the audio on it. One is that it's so real. It's not -- there's no -- I mean, this is two people who have been in the public eye, who have been on the campaign trail a lot. This is two people talking in a very real way with each other.
And also -- and I mean, one can't say that Senator Warren was not aware that her mic was on and I mean, we take up audio all the time from after the debate, people on the stage, talking to each other or shag their hands, what they say when they're shaking hands.
DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR: Right.
COOPER: I mean, she knew the cameras were there and knew the mics were still on.
CHALIAN: Yes, I mean, you see that at the end of every debate, that you can hear them sometimes greet their spouses as they come up, or as you said, greet supporters. So, clearly, she wasn't aiming to have this conversation entirely in private, but you can -- as you said, it was so real, the moment. I mean, her -- however you want to describe it, her frustration, her anger, her desire to have -- make this point to Bernie Sanders was crystal clear.
And what I find so interesting, Anderson, is that it is not at all how she wanted to handle it in the debate. So, you're talking about real moments among politicians, maybe they sound a little different there than we normally hear them on the stump. But during that debate, as Jeff pointed out, they were trying to de-escalate.
She wanted -- she said, Bernie's my friend. Well, that's a totally different approach than what she took at the end of this -- at the end of the debate here. And I think perhaps that indicates she didn't think having this moment, even though you're right, she knew she was on stage and right after the debate, but she did not desire to have this moment front and center in the debate itself, which to me suggests maybe she doesn't think it plays well politically for her or for the progressive movement more broadly or both.
That's why I think she was trying to have an interaction with him after the debate.
BORGER: You know, when I -- COOPER: But, Gloria, I mean, clearly, this was a private dinner that
they had had a year ago or so. So whatever was revealed about it by a variety of sources, and there were a number of sources on this, it came from, you know, either -- somebody in that room or somebody who -- the people in that room, the two people in that room talked to about it.
BORGER: Right, and now you have these two candidates involved in a he said/she said. And you know, she is clearly furious about it. She shouldn't have been surprised, by the way, by his response, because he had before the debate said it was ludicrous. And I think he repeated it again at the debate.
[20:30:00]
But, you know, they know where each other stands on this and I don't know how they get around it because clearly they have different views of what occurred and she was so angry, really angry that -- she's a professional politician, she knows that she was miked. She knows she was on camera. And yet, she was so mad that she could not really restrain herself from going right up to Bernie Sanders and saying, you called me a liar. And so --
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST: Or didn't care if it got out there.
BORGER: Or didn't care.
COOPER: I mean --
BORGER: Or didn't care. I mean, I think that's another possibility. But, you know, sometimes --
COOPER: It's interesting, Gloria, though, that she didn't say to Bernie Sanders, you lied.
BORGER: No.
COOPER: She said, you called me a liar. Let's just hear it one more.
BORGER: Yes.
COOPER: I don't -- we don't want to play it too much, but I just -- let's hear it once.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. ELIZABETH WARREN (D-MA) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I think you called me a liar on national TV.
SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (D-VT) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: What?
WARREN: I think you called me a liar on national TV.
SANDERS: Let's not do it right now. You want to have that discussion, we'll have that discussion. WARREN: Anytime.
SANDERS: You called me a liar, you told me. All right, let's not do it now.
TOM STEYER, PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I don't want to get in the middle of it. I just want to say hi, Bernie.
SANDERS: Yes, good. OK.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: It's so interesting, Gloria, because -- first of all, she said, you know, I think --
BORGER: I think you called me a liar.
COOPER: I think you -- and there's not, I think you lied, it's, I think you called me a liar.
BORGER: But by the way, on national TV, in front of millions of people, many of whom are going to vote for Democrats and who were watching this debate. So you can clearly understand her fury at that. And again, it's one of those moments you don't see very often in politics, where she felt very frustrated, used whatever word you want, and she just went over to him and told him what she was thinking.
COOPER: Yes. Fascinating. Gloria Borger, thank you, David Chalian as well. Coming up next, where the impeachment trial may go now that there's new evidence on the table, including a second batch of Lev Parnas material, the associate of Rudy Giuliani, just out tonight.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[20:35:46]
COOPER: Again, the House Judiciary Committee today published a new batch of documents from indicted Rudy Giuliani associate, Lev Parnas. They were provided over the weekend to the House Intelligence Committee and transmitted to the Judiciary Committee. This batch includes Parnas celebrating the departure of former National Security Adviser John Bolton. Lev Parnas will be on the program tomorrow night.
Gloria Borger is back. Joining us as well is CNN Senior Political Analyst David Gergen. So Gloria, the documents and the text messages from Rudy Giuliani's former associate, Lev Parnas, that we mentioned at the beginning of the program, do you think all of this puts even more pressure on the Senate to bring forward witnesses and documents during the trial?
BORGER: Well, I think it should. The question is, how do Republicans feel about it? Democrats are clearly applying the pressure here and we've heard from Republicans today saying, well, if this was so important, why didn't the Democrats hear from Lev Parnas earlier? Why weren't they doing their job? And let me just share a little timeline to you on this point. Parnas was arrested on October 9th. And the Fed seized his phones and all his other materials. And the House subpoenaed him on October 10th. And the request to get all of his documents was just cleared this week. And he started complying with House subpoenas.
So, they were doing this as fast as they could. There was no way they could get it earlier. But, they did manage to get it before the articles of impeachment went directly over to the Senate. So it could be that they got in under that deadline, and that it will be used and will perhaps put more pressure on Republicans.
COOPER: David, I mean, it sort of, again, raises the questions of what other evidence is out there. This is Lev Parnas who, you know, met the President a number of times by all accounts. There's lots of photographs and clearly has a long relationship with Rudy Giuliani, as well. If, you know, what he has to say is significant, one can only imagine what John Bolton or Mulvaney would say.
DAVID GERGEN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes. There's no question, Anderson, it does strengthen the case for the Democrats to get both documents and witnesses. There are two damning stories here in all of these documents we got from Parnas.
The first is that the Rudy Giuliani letter leaves no doubt that the President was directing this from the beginning. He writes to the new president-elect of Ukraine to say, I am the personal counsel of the President and I am acting with his knowledge and consent. So, and all of the evidence has pointed that way. This is very hard evidence, though.
The second damning thing is, though, and what's spooky, is the whole story that they had gum shoes essentially following Yovanovitch, the American ambassador, around on the streets of Kiev, you know. And we heard, when she came back, she was frightened because she was forced out of there very quickly.
Clearly, their efforts to get rid of her succeeded and that in itself raises all sorts of questions about abuse of power. So I think there's a lot here. You can argue process, but I personally believe that in any trial, the door should be open to new evidence right up until the time that the jury decides.
COOPER: And Gloria, we should point out that we don't know if this person, Mr. Hyde, who is apparently kind of running for Congress from Connecticut, whether he was just making stuff up to try to make himself seem like he's sort of an international man of mystery who has contacts in Ukraine who can infiltrate, you know, the diplomatic service protection or whoever it was protecting the ambassador.
It may just be talk, and that's basically now what he's saying, he's saying he just made this stuff up with his drinking buddies, which, I don't know, that I guess says something else about him. But it's not clear, you know, if that's real or just an imagined fantasy.
BORGER: Well, look -- and this is what the investigators are trying to sort through right now. There's a lot of documents here and they're doing this as fast as they can. And the question is, will the Senate say, wait a minute, you know, we can't try a case without seeing all the evidence here.
[20:40:02]
And there's a lot of information that is yet to come out whether it's from Lev Parnas or Mr. Hyde or whether it is from Bolton, the former national security adviser. So I think that all taken together, it seems to me that at least four Senate Republicans might be able to say, well, we need to hear more.
The question for the Democrats is, well, OK, if the Republicans say, well, we'll give you a witness or two, then what do the Democrats have to give? Do they then have to say, OK, we'll let you talk to Hunter Biden? I don't think that's going to happen, because he's irrelevant to this case, but you know Republicans are going to be asking for it.
COOPER: Yes. Gloria Borger, David Gergen, thank you very much.
Just ahead, more on the campaign against former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, and the question of whether she was being surveilled and by whom.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
COOPER: More on the breaking news. House Democrats plan to turn over evidence, suggesting the ousted former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, may have been under surveillance, not by a foreign entity, but allegedly somehow in connection to an American in touch with an associate of President Trump's personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani.
Now, as we said earlier, the evidence, text messages, turned over by that associate, Lev Parnas, between him and the American Robert Hyde. In them, Hyde repeatedly calls the ambassador a bitch and he text this, appearing to suggest that he had the ambassador under physical surveillance, "Wake up Yankees man. 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."
A short time ago, Hyde said during a radio interview that the messages were being taken too seriously, "It was just colorful. We were playing. I thought we were playing." Yovanovitch's lawyer calls the texts disturbing and is asking for an investigation. In November, she was asked about what President Trump said about her to Ukraine's president.
[20:45:06]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What did you think when President Trump told President Zelensky, and you read, that you were going to go through some things?
MARIE YOVANOVITCH, FORMER U.S. AMBASSADOR TO UKRAINE: I didn't know what to think, but I was very concerned.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What were you concerned about?
YOVANOVITCH: She's going to go through some things. It didn't sound good. It sounded like a threat.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Did you feel threatened?
YOVANOVITCH: I did.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: Today, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has never directly addressed the ambassador's concerns or even publicly backed her. In November, he would only tell reporters, "I always defend State Department employees," but apparently not.
Joining me now is former U.S. ambassador to NATO and Greece and Under Secretary for Political Affairs, Nicholas Burns. Ambassador Burns, thanks for being with us. It certainly seems as if Ambassador Yovanovitch had certainly plenty of reason to say she felt afraid or threatened.
NICHOLAS BURNS, FORMER U.S. AMBASSADOR TO NATO AND GREECE: She certainly did. And that was back in October, Anderson, during the House impeachment inquiry. Now we know over the last 24 hours that if this story is true, people deputized by the President, Lev Parnas, perhaps even Rudy Giuliani, wanted to put her under surveillance, it's unprecedented.
I think in American history, for anyone representing the president as Giuliani said he was representing them to associates working for him would actually try to track an American ambassador, as they were defaming her character. And so there's obviously got to be a congressional inquiry to this.
Chairman Eliot Engel of the House Foreign Affairs Committee has already written to the State Department, demanding this. It should be taken up by the senators looking into the impeachment of President Trump. It's got to be part of it, because it gets to the larger story that President Trump deputized Rudy Giuliani, to an affect, hijack our policy towards Ukraine and we all know the dramatic and very negative consequences of that.
COOPER: Parnas' attorneys put out a statement earlier saying, essentially, that his client, Lev Parnas, was not involved in the surveillance, clearly indicating that it's this Mr. Hyde who was alleging that he had her under surveillance. And again, we don't know if that's even true or just fantasy on his part.
But as a former ambassador, I mean, there's one thing to be monitored by a foreign government, which is almost expected in some cases. I would imagine particularly in the Ukraine or other areas of the former Soviet Union. It's quite another thing to have it done by someone from the United States and someone potentially representing the President. BURNS: That's the heart of the matter here. Was Lev Parnas operating at the instruction of Rudy Giuliani, who was certainly deputized by the President of the United States? There has to be an investigation of this.
You know, in the State Department, we take security very seriously. Whenever an American ambassador is under any kind of surveillance or there's any threat to the ambassador, we roll out, in every administration, all the support we can for that ambassador.
And Anderson, what really, I think, angers me, and angers a lot of people in the State Department today is that for 24 hours now, Secretary Pompeo has not said one word in defense of Ambassador Yovanovitch. The State Department has been utterly silent and she's still on the payroll. She's still an employee and she's defenseless right now. And I find that to be objectionable and extremely poor leadership.
COOPER: You know, if you actually read that the, you know, the text messages from this Hyde guy, I mean, Parnas doesn't really reply much at all, but this -- Parnas saying that Robert Hyde at one point says, talking about the people he allegedly has surveilling her or keeping tabs on her, "They are willing to help if we/you would like a price. Guess you can do anything in the Ukraine with money, what I was told."
I mean, it certainly -- you know, it sounds like exactly what it sounds like. It sounds like, you know, he's saying anything is possible to be done to her in a place like Ukraine for a price. What do you want me to do? That's bizarre and threatening.
BURNS: Well, I read -- it certainly is. And I read the same messages you did in the press today and anyone receiving that kind of text message would have to report it to the FBI and report it to the right authorities in the embassy of Ukraine and alerted the ambassador.
And I don't know what Mr. Parnas did and didn't do. I don't know whether Rudy Giuliani was aware of this. But inaction and not responding to that kind of combustible e-mail, there's culpability there as well.
COOPER: Ambassador Burns, I appreciate your time. Thank you. Coming up --
BURNS: Thank you very much.
COOPER: Coming up, a look at the Senate road map starting tomorrow for impeachment proceedings.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[20:53:29]
COOPER: Another historic night. It's time to check in with Chris to see what he is working on for "Cuomo Prime Time". Chris?
CHRIS CUOMO, CNN HOST: So we're dealing with one big known and one big unknown. The big known was you and I and everybody else covering last night knew exactly what Warren and Bernie must have been saying to each other. And now we've heard -- it was obvious from the body language. What are the implications? What does it mean for each of their campaigns, if anything at all? We're going to look at that with a couple of people who are still trying to figure out the best way forward for the Democrats.
And then, you know the President is worried about what happened today. You know he's worried about the implications of this new information and how this is all playing, because they're sending out their best tonight, Anderson. Kellyanne Conway is going to be on the show. She is arguably the President's most trusted adviser. He believes she makes his points the strongest. She will be on tonight to see if she can make the case to our audience that what happened in Ukraine was not wrong.
COOPER: All right. Chris, we'll be watching, about six minutes from now. I'll see you then. Straight ahead, what to expect tomorrow in the Senate impeachment proceedings.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[20:57:50]
COOPER: It's been quite a day for the country, impeachment of President Trump now in the hands of the Senate. Joining us again for a look ahead, CNN Congressional Correspondent Phil Mattingly. So tomorrow, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell directing House impeachment managers back at noon to the Senate. What happens from there?
PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: So you're going to see a similar procession, Anderson. All seven members of the Senate -- of the House manager team will come back over to the United States Senate. When they reach there, they will be announced and then they will take to the Senate floor and they will read the articles of impeachment.
After they conclude, the chief justice in the Supreme Court, John Roberts, will come over around 2:00 p.m. He will be sworn in. Then he will proceed to swear in all 100 senators. They will send a summons to the President of the United States, informing him that he's been impeached, ask him for a response.
And essentially, Anderson, that will be it for the week. It's all teeing up next week when the real trial will start in earnest, presentations, potentially witnesses later on in the process, but for now, ceremony, procedure, locking everything in before everything gets started next week.
COOPER: And what about Chief Justice Roberts, how big a role will he actually play?
MATTINGLY: It's a fascinating question, Anderson, one we've all been trying to figure out. If you go back to 1999, kind of the most recent precedent, Chief Justice Rehnquist really took a passive role. The chief justice could have a very major, important, substantive role if he wants it.
But, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has made clear he expects John Roberts to really mimic what he saw in 1999 with Chief Justice Rehnquist, which is be passive, allow the senators to handle any of the questions they want. But the toughest questions, if they come up, Chief Justice Roberts has the ability and the means to rule on those questions.
However, the expectation is, at least at this point, he will largely defer to the Senate, which would mean votes, which would mean a simple majority of 51 votes would essentially dictate how things move in this trial, Anderson.
COOPER: It's also going to be interesting because, you know, cameras are obviously banned in the Supreme Court hearings. It's not going to be the case during the Senate trial with Roberts.
MATTINGLY: It's a different ball game. Everything he does is going to be on camera, except for the deliberations of the senators. And keep in mind, his team has been preparing for this just like the President's defense team, just like the House managers have been. They have been coming over, back and forth, to the United States Senate, preparing for it, making sure he's got office space. Everything is being set up for a very different process than he's used to, Anderson.
COOPER: All right. Phil Mattingly, thanks very much. Get some sleep.
The news continues. I want to hand it over to Chris for "Cuomo Prime Time". Chris?
CUOMO: All right, Anderson, thank you very much. Appreciate it. Good evening, everyone. Welcome to "Prime Time."
