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The Lead with Jake Tapper

Subpoenas Fly in Impeachment Inquiry; Trump Announces Troop Withdrawal From Syria. Aired 4-4:30p ET

Aired October 07, 2019 - 16:00   ET

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

[16:00:03]

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: President Trump changes the focus from Ukraine by abandoning U.S. allies in Syria.

THE LEAD starts right now.

Breaking today, the impeachment investigation expanding, the new subpoenas now even targeting the Pentagon, as House Democrats try to get the full story on President Trump leaning on Ukraine for election help.

The sounds of silence. Why so many Republicans are refusing to step up and say that the president asking foreign powers to investigate his domestic political opponents is just wrong.

But the president's biggest defender in the Senate is slamming his decision today to pull troops out of Northern Syria. Top Republicans now fearing the move is going to leave allies to die and is a gift to Russia.

Welcome to THE LEAD. I'm Jake Tapper.

We start today with our politics lead and the strategy of the White House and its allies of spinning, dismissing and outright lying to the American people on full display today, as the impeachment investigation expands and Democrats slap brand-new subpoenas on the Trump administration.

Today, the three House committees leading the charge on impeachment, Intelligence, Oversight and Foreign Affairs, subpoenaed both the president's defense secretary and his budget chief, not only demanding documents about President Trump's interactions with Ukraine and his withholding of hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid for Ukraine, but also information on the president's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani and the ways in which Giuliani pressured Ukrainian officials to investigate Joe and Hunter Biden on behalf of President Trump.

CNN's Kaitlan Collins kicks off our coverage now from the White House.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): As House Democrats ramped up their Impeachment Inquiry today by issuing new subpoenas for the Pentagon and Budget Office, President Trump tried to turn the firestorm around on them, accusing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of treason, insisting she's the one who should be removed from office, not him, though members of Congress can't be impeached.

The president is shifting his defense, still insisting that call with the Ukrainian president was perfect, but now claiming it was Energy Secretary Rick Perry who urged him to call Volodymyr Zelensky.

RICK PERRY, U.S. SECRETARY OF ENERGY: Absolutely. I asked the president multiple times, Mr. President, we think it is in the United States and in Ukraine's best interest.

COLLINS: Perry says it's true he wanted Trump to call Zelensky, about energy, not the Bidens.

PERRY: Not once, not once, as God is my witness, not once was a Biden name, not the former vice president, not his son, ever mentioned.

COLLINS: The energy secretary wasn't on the July call at the center of the impeachment probe, but Democrats may still want to talk to him.

In addition to the new subpoenas for the Pentagon and Budget Office today about that hold on the Ukrainian military aid package, two more key witnesses are expected to testify this week.

The president spent the weekend firing off dozens of tweets, as Republicans struggle to defend his actions.

SEN. RON JOHNSON (R-WI): When I asked the president about that, he completely denied it. He adamantly denied it. He vehemently, angrily denied it. He said, I would never do that.

COLLINS: Not a single White House official went on television Sunday, leaving the task up to Republican lawmakers, who struggled with this shaky defense:

REP. JIM JORDAN (R-OH): You really think he was serious about thinking that China is going to investigate the Biden family?

COLLINS: Even the White House hasn't claimed Trump was kidding when he suggested China should investigate the Biden.

LARRY KUDLOW, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL ECONOMIC COUNCIL: I don't honestly know.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COLLINS: Now, Jake, CNN has also confirmed that, during a senior staff meeting last week, the chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, predicted, if President Trump does get impeached by the House, that he will win 45 states in the 2020 election.

It was a statement that surprised some officials in the room. And that is confirming Axios reporting, but also follows CNN reporting that President Trump had been sensitive to the ideas that they were forming some kind of an impeachment response inside the White House, conversations that we should note Mick Mulvaney was a part of. TAPPER: All right, Kaitlan Collins at the White House, thanks so

much.

Let's chew all over this with our experts.

Chairman Rogers, let me start with you.

You led the House Intelligence Committee. Part of the subpoena for the secretary of defense includes documents related to President Trump's call with the Ukrainian president and -- quote -- "the identity of all individuals who listened to, participated in, assisted in preparation for, transcribed, took notes during, reviewed the call record or transcript or received information" -- unquote.

So break that down for us. What are the Democrats looking for here?

MIKE ROGERS, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Well, they're going to try to substantiate what exactly happened on the call.

Remember, the part that was released was someone's interpretation of the call. It was not a transcript of the call. So they're going to look for the transcript. And they want to talk to people around the call.

[16:05:00]

Was that when you first had any suspicion that something was funny going on? Is that -- all of that is going to happen.

And my guess is that list was generated because of the conversations with the whistle-blower, candidly. So, that whistle-blower likely gave names of somebody that fits those descriptions, and that subpoena includes who the whistle-blower believed would have further and probably supported the whistle-blower's complaint, would be my guess.

TAPPER: And, Jen, we have a second whistle-blower now, according to Mark Zaid, who is the attorney for both the second and the first whistle-blower.

And he says, this whistle-blower also went to the intelligence community inspector general and has firsthand knowledge, did not file a separate complaint. He doesn't need to or she doesn't need to. It is part of the original complaint, but backs it up.

JEN PSAKI, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Right.

And I think, as Mike was saying, as much as they can make this about putting together the facts and the details of exactly what happened, it becomes less about the personality of the whistle-blower.

I think Democrats are assuming that the whistle-blower's name will become public. We certainly hope not. But that will likely happen. And it will become a character assassination effort against them.

But if there are multiple people, which there seem to be -- that seems to be building -- who are putting together all these details, who are firsthand witnesses, who have specific details of the relationships, the conversations with Giuliani, the call, it becomes less -- it becomes much more challenge challenging to make this a character assassination against the whistle-blower.

TAPPER: And, Elliot, Democrats are also demanding documents from the Pentagon that have to do with the president's personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, and whether he pressed Ukrainian officials to investigate, among other things -- quote -- "matters related to Burisma Holdings" -- that is the gas company that Hunter Biden was an adviser -- "Paul Manafort, Hunter Biden, Joseph Biden, the Democratic National Committee ,Hillary Clinton and/or any U.S. persons or entities."

Democrats also warning they might subpoena three of Giuliani's associates if they don't cooperate. So they're really going after Rudy right now.

ELLIOT WILLIAMS, FORMER DEPUTY U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL: Right, because we have talked about this before.

We just don't know what Rudy Giuliani's role has been. Is he private citizen? Is he State Department envoy? Is he attorney to the president? And he's trying to hide behind his relationship as an attorney with the president to get out of having to submit documents.

But a lot of these are getting at the fact that, look, Rudy Giuliani is a core figure in this, that -- going back to a number of ties to Ukraine and so on. And so it is very much in their interests to see what they can find out.

And it is very narrowly tailored. What you read there is not a scattershot of requests of documents from Rudy Giuliani. They have iterated everything that they need from him. And they're just going to see what turns up.

TAPPER: And Rudy Giuliani has been out there with a lot of unsubstantiated allegations.

At the beginning, it seemed as though people like Secretary of State Pompeo and others, Attorney General Barr, were telling reporters off the record or having aides tell them off the record that they were really annoyed with what Rudy was doing.

But now it seems the administration officials are kind of following Rudy down this rabbit hole of conspiracy theories.

SARA MURRAY, CNN NATIONAL POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, it is interesting.

I certainly think that it is interesting to watch how Pompeo has reacted to this, because, yes, you didn't really get a sense up until this moment that Mike Pompeo and Rudy Giuliani were in lockstep on what was going on, and the idea that Rudy Giuliani was going to kind of be some State Department envoy.

But the way Pompeo has responded, the way he's gotten his back up, he's bristled at these requests, I think does kind of put him right in line with the president, right in line with Rudy Giuliani.

It is telling. That is not how everyone across this administration has responded. But it certainly tells you where Mike Pompeo is in all of this.

TAPPER: Elliot, because this centers around President Trump's phone call, can the White House make any sort of legal case against turning over any of the documents, executive privilege or whatever?

WILLIAMS: They are going to try.

Now, look, the president of the United States is entitled to some space of executive privilege around conversations that are core to the functions of the presidency or whatever.

But they have really expanded the definition of executive privilege, going back to the beginning of this administration, to the first days, that almost anything -- Rudy Giuliani has claimed executive privilege, even though he's not even a White House employee.

Now, the interesting thing here is that they are flirt -- the administration is flirting with another impeachment article for obstructing the inquiry if they don't -- if it's found that they -- that their claims of privilege are lawless or if they have gone too far, then Congress can just file another other article of impeachment for obstruction.

TAPPER: And, Congressman Rogers, what do you make of -- Axios reported and CNN has confirmed that acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney has said that, if impeachment goes forward, it will be good for him, he could end up winning 45 states in the 2020 election?

Do a lot of Republicans think that?

ROGERS: No, but I will say that outside the bubble of Washington, D.C., people are exhausted by all of this.

And if they're not tuned in, they think it's political. And I think you're seeing that. I saw a clip on CNN where a Democrat member went back and was getting guff from her constituents.

That's going to happen. The same way Republicans go out and say no, this is all political, help me get reelected to fight this cause, people rally to that.

[16:10:02]

So, I don't think this is as granular. It's granular for everyone at this table and a lot of people inside D.C., but people who are worried about getting their kids on the bus and trying to make sure they have a job, like a lot of people are in Michigan today, it doesn't have that same way. It's a partisan fight, not a substantive fight.

Until that changes, I think people -- it will have an impact on politics. I'm not sure it'll turn out the way Mick Mulvaney predicts. But I do think it's going to have a political impact before it even has a substantive impact.

WILLIAMS: If what you're referring to is the Elissa Slotkin point...

TAPPER: Another Michigander.

WILLIAMS: Yes, another Michigander, Elissa Slotkin did raise the point. She got some flak.

But when she said something about standing up for her oath of office, she got 25 seconds of applause from the audience. So people do -- yes, there's the partisan element of this. But people do also want to know that members of Congress who don't swear an oath to constituents -- they swear an oath to protect the Constitution.

(CROSSTALK)

ROGERS: Let me just say, town halls -- and I have been through lots and lots and lots of them -- are hardly indicators of where your...

(CROSSTALK)

ROGERS: People come there because they're angry. Very rarely do they come there because they're really happy.

TAPPER: All right, everyone, stick around.

We're going to talk more about it.

WILLIAMS: Yes.

TAPPER: Then there were four. A fourth Senate Republican just spoke out about President Trump asking China and Ukraine to investigate the Bidens. Is this the beginning of something?

Then, President Trump making a major move halfway around the world that has even some of his strongest supporters in the Senate calling for him to reverse course.

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:15:58]

TAPPER: And we're back with the politics lead.

This afternoon, a fourth Senate Republican called out to a degree President Trump for pushing China and Ukraine to domestic his political rival Joe Biden. Senator Rob Portman of Ohio told "The Columbus Dispatch", quote: The president should not have raised the Biden issue on that call, period.

Mild, sure. But most Republicans remain unwilling to say anything at all. When Utah Republican Senator Mitt Romney criticized the president's request, President Trump attacked him repeatedly.

And as CNN's Dana Bash now reports, that attack is now serving as an example to others in the GOP.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST (voice-over): Most Republicans are so unsure about how to play this, they're in virtual hiding. And the few who are speaking out, well, listen to House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy this morning.

REP. KEVIN MCCARTHY (R-CA): You watch what the president said. He's not saying China --

BASH: Actually, he did.

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: China should start an investigation into the Bidens.

BASH: Some Republicans tried to explain that away with a different tactic, deflect, claiming Trump was just kidding.

SEN. ROY BLUNT (R-MO): Well, I doubt tat the China comment was serious to tell you the truth.

BASH: CNN contacted more than 80 GOP congressional offices about the president inviting China to investigate his political rival. Barely a handful responded.

Most notably, Mitt Romney who said: the president's brazen and unprecedented appeal to China and to Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden is wrong and appalling.

In response, the president went after Romney calling him pompous and a fool, clearly intended as a warning to other Republicans weighing whether to speak out.

It didn't stop Maine's Susan Collins who did criticize the president, which plays well with Democrats she needs to win re-election in her blue state. She said: The president made a big mistake by asking China to get involved in investigating a political opponent.

But she also echoed Trump's loyalist pummeling the House Democrat leading the impeachment probe.

SEN. SUSAN COLLINS (R-ME): The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee misrepresented and misled people about what was in the transcript.

BASH: Mitch McConnell also on the ballot in 2020 is raising money for his Kentucky race with the promise to protect the president.

SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL (R-KY): All of you know your Constitution. The way that impeachment stops is a Senate majority with me as majority leader.

BASH: McConnell's campaign aides argue that impeachment is galvanizing the GOP base as much as the 2018 Kavanaugh nomination fight which contributed to several Democratic Senate defeats. Collin Powell, never a Trump fan, all but called Republicans cowardly.

GEN. COLIN POWELL, FORMER SECRETARY OF STATE: They need to get a grip and when they see things that are not right, they need to say something about it.

BASH: Some Republicans like Rob Portman of Ohio are now starting to follow a road map laid out by Fox's Tucker Carlson, who penned an op- ed admitting the president should not have encouraged a foreign pleader to investigate his political opponent but said that is not an impeachable offense.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BASH: Now, one GOP lawmaker told me today that like Rob Portman, he thinks the president's call to Ukraine's leader and comments about China were, quote, totally inappropriate. But he also told me he isn't ready to say that publicly yet, Jake, because he knows that he's not sure, he said if there is, quote, another jack in the box out there. So, he's reluctant to go too far in defending the president and told me his colleagues tell him they agree.

TAPPER: All right. Dana Bash, thank you so much.

Jen Psaki, let me -- let me go to the quote that we heard in that piece from a campaign consultant for Majority Leader Mitch McConnell who's on the ballot next November. Quote: No issue has motivated Republican donors like this since Kavanaugh -- the Supreme Court battle over Brett Kavanaugh.

Are you afraid of that? I mean, I know you support impeaching the president -- or the investigation at least. Are you afraid on behalf of Democrats that this actually might galvanize the Republican base?

PSAKI: I'm certain it will galvanize a portion of the base.

[16:20:01]

But it's important to remember that McConnell is running in Kentucky. He is up for re-election as you mentioned in 2020. That's a state where Donald Trump is incredibly popular.

I'm not saying it's going to be an easy hurdle for Democrats to defeat him. But Democrats have a pretty good candidate. And they're raising a lot of money on things like selling Moscow Mitch material. So, you know, he's feeling some heat on the ground.

What was interesting to me about the story and some of the reporting on this is that they are spending money online which is smart, digitally. It is not the same message that Mitch McConnell is delivering about how he will approach the process here, right? He's saying I'll stop impeachment online, appealing to the base to try to raise money. But here he's saying aisle abide by the Senate process. That's probably smart politically, I don't know if he'll get caught in that. But long story short, I'm not scared, Mitch McConnell is running in a

very red state. He has to keep that in mind, if he wants to keep the majority -- be the majority leaders, he needs to keep his seat as well.

TAPPER: And, Chairman Rogers, let me just ask you, it doesn't really seem to be all that difficult to say that no politician should be able to lean on a foreign country for an investigation into their political rival. This is not some crazy revelation. I mean, that would just be complete chaos and the end of free and fair elections in the United States and yet we only have four Republican senators out of 53 is it that are even willing to acknowledge that that's wrong.

ROGERS: Well, I think they are probably internally acknowledging --

TAPPER: Publicly, though. Publicly, yes.

ROGERS: And they are trying to figure out a way to communicate. And I think it would be wise to come out and talk about hey, listen, this -- we think this behavior is inappropriate and we're going to talk to the president about it. We think he ought to go in a different way and then go off on to the positive message of all of the good things that are happening.

I think there is a way to do this. I don't think being silent for much longer is probably a good path for them. They will get questions back home. They're going to get questions here.

You might as well take it on -- head on. And again you don't have to throw the president under the bus if you're one of those Republicans. You just have just have to say, hey, this particular activity and this particular -- his expression to do these things, which by the way I think are terrible and completely inappropriate --

TAPPER: Yes.

ROGERS: -- they ought to be able to have some version of that, so people understand, listen, we don't think this is appropriate. It shouldn't be the norm. It is not something that we're going to say is OK in the future and we'll take up those discussions with the president and try to steer him in a different direction.

TAPPER: And you see another thing, another phenomenon, as Dana noted in the piece, you see Republicans either just outright denying that President Trump said things that he's on camera saying, Kevin McCarthy saying, well, he didn't call for China to investigate the Bidens, that's almost a word-for-word quote.

MURRAY: Right.

TAPPER: And then you have these other people saying, oh, I think he was just joking. There's no evidence that he was joking.

MURRAY: Yes. I mean, I tend to believe that treating people like they're morons is not the best strategy, just in general as Republicans are crafting their messaging. Its' a little alarming when like Tucker Carlson is out there with the best messaging yet for Republicans, which is to say that this is -- the president should not have done this. We need to have free and fair elections and you need to behave like we have free and fair elections, but this isn't worthy of impeachment.

That's a Tucker Carlson line. It is the best one that anyone has come up with so far but I think this gives you an insight into how terrified members of Congress are from the president's party of the president. I mean, Mitt Romney came out there and said this behavior was appalling and the president lost his mind and spent the weekend tweeting at Mitt Romney while Mitt was at a pumpkin patch with his grandkids like living his dream.

So I think there are Republicans who are legitimately afraid of that tweet. They're afraid of what it's going to do to their funding raising. They're afraid of what it's going to do to the base, and that's part of the reason that we've seen the silence so far.

TAPPER: So Republicans who dismissed the president's request to China as a joke like Marco Rubio have now been tweeting this. This is what Rubio tweeted earlier today. POTUS asking China to investigate Biden is wrong but it isn't going to happen.

How can he assert that? Why? I don't understand. Where does he get that -- where does he get that from?

WILLIAMS: So, that's now the fourth approach they've said. First was he was joking, second was the Democrats are partisan. Third was, well, it's OK, and now, it's just not going to happen.

I think what you're seeing is the fact that they simply just don't have a strategy here, a coherent strategy that -- so compare this to the Democrats right now, right? You have Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff doing press conferences alone with a very targeted and very narrow message for where they're going. And the Republicans are just sort of all over the place because again as Sara said, they are just afraid of the president. He has a stranglehold on the party.

And I think, frankly, what you're seeing is the death of the Northeastern moderate and sort of the voice within the Republican Party that would have challenged the president 20 years ago. It's not there any more.

TAPPER: All right. Everyone, stick around. More to talk about.

I guess none of President Trump's advisers told him a member of Congress can't be impeached. We're fact-checking some of the president's claims on Twitter.

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TAPPER: And also in our politics lead today, President Trump on yet another Twitter terror, slamming everyone and everything surrounding the impeachment inquiry, the Bidens, the whistle-blower and Chairman Adam Schiff and adding to his long list of lies and false claims about all of these subjects.

CNN's Daniel Dale fact-checks President Trump for a living. That's his actual job, and he joins me now.

Daniel, President Trump tweeted, quote, the first so-called secondhand information whistleblower got my phone conversation almost completely wrong, so now word is they're going to the bench and another, quote, whistleblower is coming in from the deep state, also with secondhand --

[16:30;00]