Return to Transcripts main page

Don Lemon Tonight

BuzzFeed's Report Disputed by the Special Counsel; One Week of Explosive Russia Investigation News; Washington Braces for Mueller Findings; Who is the Russian Oligarch at Center of Mueller Probe?; The Atlantic Calls for Trump Impeachment in New Cover Story. Aired 11p-12a ET

Aired January 18, 2019 - 23:00   ET

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

[23:00:00] (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

DON LEMON, CNN HOST: This is "CNN Tonight." I'm Don Lemon. Here is the breaking news. A rare and stunning move from the Special Counsel tonight, Robert Mueller's team disputing an explosive BuzzFeed report alleging the president told Michael Cohen to lie to Congress.

The Special Counsel's office releasing a statement saying, "BuzzFeed's description of specific statements to the Special Counsel's Office, and characterization of documents and testimony obtained by this office regarding Michael Cohen's Congressional testimony is not accurate."

But BuzzFeed is standing by their reporting and urging the Special Counsel to make clear what he is disputing. It's one of many major developments in the Mueller investigation this week so we're devoting this entire hour to an in-depth look at all things Russia. Remember, this was the same week the president of the United States came out to publicly declare he is not an agent of Russia.

The same week, the president's new attorney general nominee testified that he is good friends with the Special Counsel. The same week the president's attorney said he couldn't say whether or not anyone on the Trump team colluded with Russia, only to have to walk it back. So there's a lot to get to. We're going to start with CNN's Sara Murray.

Sara, good evening to you from Washington. This is a big deal and a rare move for the Special Counsel's office as I said. So take us through this because it is highly unusual for the Special Counsel's office to provide a statement to the media in any way.

SARA MURRAY, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: It is a big deal. They're usually no comment on anything. They put out a handful of statements that, you know, don't relate to actual indictments they're announcing throughout the course of this investigation.

You know, to give you a little bit of comparison, at one point last year, "The New York Times" asked the Special Counsel to clarify what one of the prosecutors was having for lunch at one of Paul Manafort's hearings, and the Special Counsel refused to answer questions about that or provide any statement for that. So that's how rarely they comment. The fact that they have put out this statement now that essentially

says the evidence that's being described in this BuzzFeed story, that doesn't exist within our office. That kind of statement is unprecedented from the Special Counsel.

LEMON: BuzzFeed is standing by its reporters and their story tonight. What else are they saying?

MURRAY: They are standing by their reporters and their story and I think anyone can sympathize about how you would not want to be in this position as a reporter. Ben Smith, the editor-in-chief was on CNN earlier. He said he would really like to get more information from the Special Counsel's office about what exactly they take issue with. Here's how he described it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BEN SMITH, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, BUZZFEED (via telephone): They are clearly referring to something and we hope that they will tell us what they are referring to. I mean I think at this point too, we would hope that they would clarify that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MURRAY: And he said his reporters are still working on this story, Don, presumably going back to their sources trying to clarify some of this stuff. So we'll see if there are any additional updates from BuzzFeed on this.

LEMON: Are we hearing from the president's team tonight, Sara?

MURRAY: We are hearing from the president's team. It shouldn't surprise you, Don, that this is coming on twitter. Rudy Giuliani tweeted. He actually had some kind words for Bob Mueller if you can believe the twilight zone we are in right now.

Rudy Giuliani said, "I commend Bob Mueller's office for correcting the BuzzFeed false story that President Trump encouraged Cohen to lie. I asked the press to take heed that their hysterical desire to destroy this president has gone too far. They pursued this without critical analysis all day."

And Don, I think you know from when we were covering this last night and into today, that one of the difficult things about this story was that other news outlets including CNN were just not able to confirm the details of this and CNN never independently corroborated this.

And we saw, you know, Rudy Giuliani as well as others from the president's team come out today and say that was patently false, and now we have the Special Counsel's team out there saying look, this evidence as described in the BuzzFeed story doesn't exist in the Special Counsel's office.

LEMON: Sara Murray with the breaking news from D.C. tonight. Thank you very much Sara. I appreciate that. I want to bring in now Susan Glasser and Max Boot. Max is the author of "The Corrosion of Conservatism: Why I Left the Right. Good evening to both of you.

[23:04:59] Max, since I have you here with me, this is what, the first time you have been on CNN since this BuzzFeed story broke, 24 hours later, Mueller is disputing it, the story or at least disputing aspects or parts of the story. What are you thinking?

MAX BOOT, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: Well, first reaction is it's kind of ironic that President Trump after deriding Bob Mueller as the leader of a witch hunt and 12 angry Democrats is now citing what Bob Mueller says and I think that's a testament to the fact that Mueller does have credibility. He does have integrity and this is not a witch hunt.

He wants the facts out and if there are facts, even if they're averse to Trump, in this case corrected the record because he did not want people to assume that something had happened which in fact he does not have evidence of.

Now the question is what is the correction about, and it's interesting to read the actual sentencing statement that Michael Cohen made on November 30th where he said that the false statement allegation and the campaign finance false statement, in each case, the conduct was intended to benefit client one. And this was the key part in accordance with client one's directions -- directives.

So what Michael Cohen seemed to be saying there is that he did lie in accordance with Donald Trump's directives but he wasn't saying that Donald Trump personally told him to lie which was what the BuzzFeed article was saying.

And so my supposition is that that is what Mueller's office is disputing, that they don't actually have evidence that Donald Trump personally told Michael Cohen to lie, but it sounds like that there is -- that there was coordination of the lie between Michael Cohen and Donald Trump's team. So that's not quite as damming as what BuzzFeed was reporting.

But that is still fairly damming because it suggests that Donald Trump and his team were still complicit in this lie, and they could have certainly corrected the record when Michael Cohen lied to Congress but they deliberately chose not to do that because they wanted to deceive the public and Congress.

LEMON: Because as you're thinking that's why they say aspects -- let me see what the statement was -- it says, "BuzzFeed's description of specific statements to the Special Counsel's office in characterization of documents and testimony obtained by this office regarding Cohen's Congressional testimony are not accurate." And that's from Peter Carr there, the spokesperson for the Special Counsel.

So you think if the entire thing -- I'm just -- and we don't know here, if the entire thing and we just say this story is wrong, do you think that or this story is just completely inaccurate?

BOOT: We don't know. I mean, the denial is a little bit opaque, but that's my interpretation based on what I'm able to piece together.

LEMON: OK. I want to bring you in Susan because BuzzFeed, you know, as I said, they are standing by their reporting and their sources, give me your take away.

SUSAN GLASSER, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: Well, look, it is a very serious allegation to have made and now to have that called into question by the Special Counsel's office in this very unusual statement, you know, it's very serious and we're going to have to wait for the full results of the investigation to know.

I agree with Max's parsing of the statement, although the second part of the Special Counsel's statement also caught my eye because the BuzzFeed report does mention that there was corroboration of Cohen's basically accusation that the president directed him to lie.

And it does appear to me, at least, that the Special Counsel's office is questioning whether or what kind of corroboration other documentary evidence that they have of this which I think is significant because as we have seen all along, Trump would certainly prefer that it be his word against that of the rat, as he's called him who flipped against him rather than having other evidence in addition to Michael Cohen turning against him.

But you know, I think it's very important for everybody concerned that this be as factual as possible. It's not good for the credibility of journalism. It's not good -- it wouldn't be good for the credibility of the Special Counsel's office had they let something go unchallenged.

I think Max is right to point out the hypocrisy of President Trump and his lawyers to be praising a statement after doing an extraordinary public campaign over the last year and have the likes of which America has never seen to undermine the credibility of the Special Counsel's office. It's pretty rich to see the president and his lawyer touting the counsel's office tonight because it did something that they approved of.

LEMON: You know, I mentioned, Max, in the open that what an extraordinary week this is and we've had a lot of extraordinary weeks, but this one is, you know, just unbelievable. We started the week with the president having to say that he is not a Russian agent. We're ending with the Special Counsel speaking out about a report that they find parts of inaccurate or maybe as a whole.

I can't tell from this statement, but obviously it's unprecedented that the Special Counsel would release this. What does this all mean for Congress because they have been demanding answers for all of this?

BOOT: Well, I think it means they have to investigate and parse the evidence and of course, you know, Donald Trump is going to jump up and down and claim this means that he has been vindicated and that's not the case at all.

At most, this is striking down one particular allegation and all these other allegations are out there un-refuted including what from Rudy Giuliani himself who was basically saying he wasn't going to deny that there was collusion on the part of the campaign or there was no denial of the fact that Donald Trump tried to cover up his meetings with Vladimir Putin from his own aides.

[23:10:10] There was no denial of the fact that Paul Manafort shared polling data with somebody who was linked to a Russian intelligence. I mean, all these stories that come out that are highly damning of the president suggesting that there was collusion and of course, we have also seen obstruction of justice occur in plain sight.

All that stuff is still out there. I mean, this one story may be and probably is wrong, but there's a lot of damming evidence out there which remains very valid and very un-refuted and, you know, I think what this also goes to show is, I mean, you do have to be careful about news reporting.

But I think that in a way this actually vindicates the mainstream media because CNN and "the New York Times" and "the Washington Post," the big outlets, nobody confirmed what BuzzFeed was saying, and they all made clear this was unconfirmed but there are other stories that have been confirmed by these major outlets and I think they have stood up very well. Certainly better than what Donald Trump says, which is an average of 15 falsehoods a day.

LEMON: Yes. But the president and the critics of us and his supporters will cherry pick the sound bites and not put in caveat. This is --

BOOT: Yes. I mean, there is no question this makes the media look bad, Don, I don't deny that. That's absolutely true and they will run away with this, but if you parse it more carefully, you see that the mainstream media, maybe not BuzzFeed but the major outlets are absolutely pretty careful about what they report.

LEMON: Thank you. Stick around because we have a lot more to talk about. Like I said, this has been one really crazy week in Russia news and what makes it even crazier, the shut down. We're going to talk about it next.

[23:15:00] (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: So, it has been a crazy week even by the Trump administration standards. It started with the president of the United States having to publicly declare that he never worked for Russia and don't forget, Rudy Giuliani's collusion confusion and subsequent walk back. Susan Glasser and Max Boot, both back with me.

So Susan, this is the headline from your latest "New Yorker" piece, OK. You say, "Are we really where we are? Trump, Putin and Washington's unbelievable new normal, regardless of whether Trump ends up making a speech on Capitol Hill on January 29th, the state of the union is not strong, and everyone knows it.

Two things here, I said so, if he does the state of the union, what does he start out saying? And this is an honest question. I don't mean to be snarky. Do you say the state of the union is shut down because that's really what it is? Are we really where we are, is what you say. It's what a lot of people are thinking every single day when they see the headlines.

GLASSER: Well, that's right, Don. I mean, actually, that is a quote from a conversation I had the other day with Nick Burns who was the U.S. ambassador to NATO under George W. Bush, a career foreign service guy. He was there after 9/11 when all of the member nations of NATO declared for the first and only time in NATO's history the Article V Self-Defense in order to stand there with the United States.

It's the reason that all these years later, nearly two decades later, NATO allies, along with the United States are still in Afghanistan. And so to have the president of the United States not only questioning American commitment to NATO, but openly musing to his aides, that was another big story this week. You didn't list that one off. I understand it why you didn't.

But, you know, this is a domestic political crisis, right. We are shut down. We're weeks into the shut down with no end in sight. Our government is paralyzed. It doesn't work anymore. And it is also a global crisis. And that often tends to get lost, but the U.S. is the world's leading power. The international order is constructed around the very premise of U.S. leadership, and that's been called into question, too.

When we can't pay our Border Patrol people, when we can't pay the FBI, I mean, you saw that picture today of George W. Bush going out there, bringing pizza to the Secret Service who are guarding him, who are guarding him without a paycheck. And even he, who has stayed out of the fray more or less since leaving office saying please, isn't it time to put people back to work.

I mean, it just, you know, we are all struggling with the thing that every single day for the last two years. Sunday it will be two years of the Trump presidency. There's been something unthinkable, and yet, that is our new normal. So that's what I was trying to capture in the piece this week.

LEMON: Max, often, you know, when you sit down here, I say what in the world is going on. You say that should be a segment or the name of your show, right. What in the world is going on?

BOOT: That's not every night.

LEMON: Every night, I sit here and I go what, like what is this.

BOOT: Right.

LEMON: So I have been doing this in this business since 1991, 1992, in this business, but then sitting here in this seat for five years and at CNN since 2006, and I just covered international news of all sorts, all kinds of breaking news. Osama bin Laden being killed and on and on. I have never seen anything like this.

This particular week, though, has been crazy. What makes it crazier is that 28 days into this, the president say, OK, I'm going to make an announcement tomorrow, an official announcement tomorrow, right. We don't know if this announcement is going to be a stunt or it's going to be something that is substantive. But do you think that this president can actually get Democrats and Republicans to sit down together from this announcement, get leaders at the table?

BOOT: Well, I hope so, but his track record does not inspire a lot of confidence. I mean, what's striking to me, Don, is I think back on the last two years, and as Susan rightly said, Sunday is going to be the two-year mark of the Trump administration. And remember how the Trump administration began in chaos. It was born in chaos. The travel ban chaos at the airports. People didn't know who was allowed into the U.S., who wasn't, what the rules were. Remember, it was incredibly chaotic.

[23:20:00] And if anything now, looking back from two years vantage point, that seems like the good old days by now. That seems like things were actually relatively calm because right now, the government or at least most of it is literally shut down and there are legitimate questions being raised with the FBI having investigated whether the president owes his primary loyalty to the United States or to Russia.

I mean, these are -- the level of dysfunction and chaos is just off the charts, and you know, I agree with what Susan was saying that this really affects American standing in the world because people look at us and they say what the hell is wrong with the united States.

LEMON: But do you think though honestly, the odds are do you think it's a stunt because every time he says I got to make a major announcement, you do this, and then it's like, you know, one was to talk about his hotels property, the other one was to talk about something else, to give some false information about the made up crisis at the border and then you're like, what gives? What are the odds this is a stunt?

BOOT: I mean, remember his famous prime time address where he had nothing whatsoever to say and convinced about two percent of the public. So, I think the odds are heavy it's a stunt. But who knows. I mean, he could declare a state of national emergency. I mean, Trump is so unpredictable, you never know.

LEMON: Let's hope it is something substantive. Everyone is hoping for that. What's your take away, Susan, what do you think? What are you expecting?

GLSSER: Well, don't hold your breath, you know, is what I would say tomorrow. Look, 3:00 p.m. on a Saturday is a very unusual time to make a major announcement. Let's be honest, there's been basically no substantive negotiations for the entire course of this. You know, this has not been a good faith effort to resolve this kind of impasse that we have seen.

It seems like an unbridgeable divide. It's not like the president has been negotiating furiously. By all accounts he triggered the crisis. We remember the footage in December. It bears reminding, too, that he had a deal including with his own party that he broke, and that's part of the reason why you don't see serious negotiations because no one on Capitol Hill, including Republican senators who were embarrassed and left holding the bag, is willing to vouch for what it is the president exactly is willing to go for.

You have seen Vice President Pence and Jared Kushner, his son-in-law go up to Capitol Hill repeatedly but to no apparent end and the part of the reason is that President Trump has a habit of undercutting all those who should and ought to be able to speak for him and in previous administrations, that's how it worked.

And so you have a situation where nobody, whether it's an internal, domestic political dispute or an international dispute, nobody can speak for the president except for the president because that's the system that he has designed.

LEMON: All right.

GLASSER: That's made us headed into something that resembles a dictatorship, much more than the United States of America.

LEMNON: And nearly a month with the government shut down, thank you both, I appreciate your time.

BOOT: Thank you.

LEMON: Is it more important than ever that the American people get to see Robert Mueller's report? Two lawyers that have been at the center of two impeachments weigh in, next.

[23:25:00] (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: It has been a week of explosive developments in the Russia investigation. Democrats are now discussing new areas to investigate the president but there is still no indication when the Special Counsel Robert Mueller will finish his report and there are major questions about what the public will actually see.

Let's discuss now. John Dean is here. He is a former Nixon White House counsel and Glen Doughnut is -- he was outside counsel for President Clinton during his impeachment hearings. Love having both of you on. Perfect to talk about this particular subject. Good evening, gentlemen. John, do the happenings of the last 24 hours make it clear that the public needs to see the Special Counsel's report more than ever?

JOHN DEAN, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Well, I certainly need some explanation and I think eventually they'll get it. I don't think it will be in the form of the independent counsel law, which went into the sunset, is expired. That's what Ken Starr filed.

It's likely to be more in the form of something like Archibald Cox and Leon Jaworsky's material ended up being in the Watergate where they sent a road map to help the committee find its way and to give them some grand jury testimony.

LEMON: Glenn you worked in the Clinton White House when independent counsel Kenneth Starr released his report. Unlike Starr, now Mueller is required to hand his report over to the attorney general. Is that a problem in such a partisan environment?

GLEN DONATH, OUTSIDE COUNSEL FOR PRESIDENT CLINTON: I think it could be a significant problem, Don. Good to be with you tonight. It's very different regime, right, as you indicated, as John indicated too, under the ethics and government act. Ken Starr was not an employee of the Department of Justice.

He was independent and there was a mechanism for him to send any grounds for impeachment directly to Congress, to the House. In contrast here, the Special Counsel can submit a confidential report to the attorney general. Presumably, the White House is going to interpose objections under executive privilege and potentially 6(e) confident grand jury secrecy objections.

And so, it is quite likely, I think, that the president's team might get an advanced preview of the report and an opportunity to object and potentially raise legal challenges in court all before the public would ever see any substance of the Mueller report. So I think there is that danger that you signaled, Don.

LEMON: Glen, I want to play Rudy Giuliani, the president's attorney. This is what he said to Chris on Wednesday night.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN HOST: Whatever does not compromise national security and that should be a very tight definition, should be made public, all the findings that the people can see from Mueller, do you agree?

[23:30:03] RUDY GIULIANI, PRESIDENT TRUMP'S ATTORNEY: I agree.

CUOMO: You have been quoted as saying you should get to go through it first. Is that a fair assessment of your position?

GIULIANI: Of course, I should. I should be allowed to respond. You want to respond to the report. What about you? And don't you think it's fair that we get an opportunity to do that?

CUOMO: Absolutely.

GIULIANI: I have no control over what Mueller is going to say. Let him say whatever he wants. I have no control over what's national security, what isn't, the government has to decide that. As his lawyer, I honestly would like you to see the whole report.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

DON LEMON, CNN HOST: Glen, he's demanding to see Mueller's findings. Did you ever have that kind of access to the Starr report?

GLEN DONATH, OUTSIDE COUNSEL FOR PRESIDENT CLINTON DURING IMPEACHMENT HEARINGS: No. We would have loved to have that kind of access, Don. No. We -- what happened was the independent counsel, Ken Starr, submitted his report to, I believe, the House Judiciary Committee. They then released it immediately to the public. And so we saw it the same time everybody saw it. We had -- the president's team had drafted a prebuttal that we had released. We have done a lot of work anticipating what the findings would be and then we stayed up the entire night to do a rebuttal when the report issued but by no means that we can advance copy. We would have loved to have seen one.

LEMON: Perfect segue to my next question then, because, John, this is what sources are telling CNN, that the White House is going to beef up its legal and comms team to prepare for this Mueller report. If the findings -- if, right, if they turn out to be devastating to the president, do you think they'll be able to contain the fallout?

JOHN DEAN, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Well, it depends on what the charges are. And, Don, I'm not so sure there will be a sort of formal report other than what he has -- what he's required under the regs (ph) to report to the attorney general, are any prosecutions he has undertaken and those he has declined to undertake. That can be done in very summary form.

They specifically excluded material based on the old independent counsel law from the regulations. They also -- and I recently read the testimony of Dick Thornburgh, when they were presenting this to the Congress and explaining it, and they said this didn't preclude Congress from getting the information from the special counsel.

But what I think is happening is that Mueller is well aware of this. And what he's doing is filing a report as he goes along and it's in the form of his speaking indictments. And I think there will be more of that before the shop is closed.

LEMON: Speaking of Mueller, Trump attacks Mueller. You know that. All the time. The special counsel never responds. Does the fact that Mueller's office so rarely speaks, right, they did tonight, and everyone was like, wow, they spoke out, given the fact that they rarely speak out about anything, does that give them more credibility when they do?

DONATH: I think so. Absolutely. I think as prior guests have noted, it was very important, apparently, for the special counsel's to put out that they were not the source of the leaks, the law enforcement sources in the BuzzFeed report. And also to signal that there's probably something wrong with that article, that they disagree with it.

So I think, absolutely, it's a fair-minded sort of objective measure that they're striking, and I think it was the right thing to do. I think it will pay dividends when they have harsher things to say.

LEMON: Do you agree, John?

DEAN: I do agree with Glen. I think he's nailed it right on. And I think it will get cleared up as time passes, though.

LEMON: Yeah. All right. John, Glen, thank you very much. Appreciate your time. Have a good weekend. DONATH: Pleasure.

DEAN: You as well.

LEMON: While the country is scrambling to learn exactly what Russia was doing during the 2016 election, is one of their oligarchs having his best week ever?

[23:35:00] (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: Is one Russian oligarch who is a central figure in the Russia investigation having his best week ever? It sure seems that way for Oleg Deripaska. Who is he? He is Russian businessman worth billions.

Like other oligarchs, he has close ties to the Kremlin. He's the former owner of the world's second largest aluminum producer, and he has a business history with Paul Manafort. That's according to The Washington Post.

Manafort allegedly offered to brief the oligarch two weeks before Trump accepted the Republican nomination to be president. There's no evidence, anything, came of this.

So how did things get so good for Deripaska? OK, well, Senate Republicans blocked a Democratic effort to keep sanctions on companies' tie to him. The Trump administration as they wanted will now be able to ease sanctions on those companies, allowing them the opportunity to use the U.S. dollar and do business with U.S. citizens. That is a win for Deripaska.

And it gets better. A self-proclaimed sex coach, who claims to have had an affair with the oligarch, something he denies, tells CNN that she was detained by the Kremlin as soon as she landed in Moscow after being deported from a jail in Thailand. Why is this good for the oligarch?

Well, Anastasia Vashukevich claims to have inside knowledge of Russia's attempts to meddle in America's elections, and she says that she previously witnessed meetings between Deripaska and three Americans. Why are her claims being taken seriously? Well, she has pictures with Deripaska on his yacht, and she has a video of Deripaska talking to Russia's deputy prime minister about the state of U.S.- Russian relations.

She hasn't produced a smoking gun, but she once claimed that she had proof of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election in the form of more than an hour of audio recordings and photographs of one of the Americans.

[23:40:02] Now, she's detained by Russia. So sanctions relaxed, check. Alleged mistress with potentially damaging information on election interference, detained, yep. It sure seems like things are going Deripaska's way.

Lots to talk about with Steve Hall. Steve, good evening to you. Let's get into this. So, it strikes me that while things are in a real mess back here at home, right, and Russia, the oligarchs and Putin, laughing all the way to the bank, literally.

STEVE HALL, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Oleg Deripaska, what a story. I mean, he's a young guy. He's an oligarch. You know, he has got access to Putin on a regular basis if he wants. The only thing he has to do as all oligarchs have to do is when, you know, when Putin comes calling, picks up the phone and says, hey, Oleg, I need something from you. He's got to do it, whether it's provide a stadium for the Sochi Olympics or whether it's, you know, whatever else Putin could want.

I think the sanctions that you mentioned earlier which have now been softened, dropped against Deripaska and his company, you can make economic arguments as to why in the world of aluminum and world economics that's an important thing.

But it sends a terrible message, I think, to Putin and Deripaska which is that hey, you can meddle with American elections, you can do all sorts of great things against the United States, and really all you're going to get is a wrist slap. So, yeah, I think it has been a pretty good week for Mr. Deripaska.

LEMON: Let's talk about Anastasia Vashukevich, right? The video of her being put in a wheelchair at an airport. It's really disturbing. She appears sedated. What do you think will happen to her now?

HALL: She will be sent to some other former KGB prison to basically disappear, if not actually, just, you know, removed from the conversation. That's the way it works in Russia. There is no rule of law. You know, somebody threatens an oligarch, and these types of things happen.

You were alluding earlier to whatever is happening here in the United States. I actually think that if you compare what happened to this woman when she returned after challenging essentially Oleg Deripaska and his connections to the Kremlin, to some of the stuff that happened just today in the United States, you know, you see a big difference.

The Russians look at what happened here today with, you know, all of the press stuff and the BuzzFeed reporting, they see that as chaotic. We see that, I think, we should see that as the very basis of our democracy. It's trying to get to the bottom of things. It's sometimes an ugly path to the truth.

None of that exists in Russia, because if you say something against the wrong people when you show up at the airport, they drug you and drag you off to jail. So, I think today is actually a good day in the United States and yet another bad day for Russia, specifically for this poor woman.

LEMON: But is there anything we could do, anything the international community can do for this woman who, again, as we say, appears to be sedated, trying to fight back, nothing?

HALL: You know, it's really tough. You know, we can make a lot of noise about it. We can use some of the human rights, you know, United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees, you know, we can try to use some of these mechanisms that exist. But at the end of the day, you have to remember that despite this thin veneer of sort of pseudo democracy that you see in Russia, they have a doomed (ph) parliament, they have a president, they have judges, it's really more like North Korea than it is like any place in the world.

LEMON: Wow.

HALL: So to try to try penetrate that and get in and help somebody like this, it's going to be really, really difficult. There might be a power play somehow. That would be the only thing that Putin would understand. I don't see where it is. So, she's in for some very tough times.

LEMON: I have a very short time left and I don't think this is fair to you, but I have to ask you, anyway. Deripaska is also connected to Paul Manafort and central to the Mueller investigation. What exactly is he suspected of doing?

HALL: You know, I think the best way to answer that is perhaps with another question. Under what conditions would it be OK for anybody in the United States working for a politician like Manafort to send information or to engage in any way, shape or form with a guy like Deripaska who's essentially a Putin lieutenant? Why? Why would you do that if it weren't to send a strong message about how they need to shape up or something.

But that clearly was not what was happening. There was sharing of information and offer to brief on what was going in the campaign. How could that possibly be right? That's, I think, the question that you just need to ask to understand what's going on there.

LEMON: Steve Hall, thank you. I appreciate your time.

HALL: Sure.

LEMON: Absolutely. Democrats are careful when talking about impeachment, but my next guest says President Trump has already met the bar for that, and he says the House has a responsibility to move forward.

[23:45:00] (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: No one knows for sure when Mueller's investigation will end, but the Atlantic argues that doesn't matter. They make the case that Congress should impeach Trump immediately regardless of Mueller's report.

Here to discuss is Yoni Appelbaum. He is a senior editor for The Atlantic and the author of the new cover story, "Impeach Trump." You wrote this cover story arguing that Trump's actions already meet the threshold for impeachment. How is that?

YONI APPELBAUM, POLITICS EDITOR AND WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF, THE ATLANTIC: We have had evidence for some time implicating the president in a variety of alleged criminal acts, including Michael Cohen's guilty plea before the southern district of New York. And we have a variety of other charges that House Democrats have lodged against the president in impeachment resolutions.

What the House hasn't done is triggered the process that the constitution intended for resolving and adjudicating those sorts of claims.

[23:49:58] LEMON: Yeah. You write, and this is a quote, you say, "impeachment, in fact, is a vital protection against the dangers a president like Trump poses. And, crucially, many of its benefits to the political health of the country, to the stability of the constitutional system, accrue irrespective of its ultimate result. Impeachment is a process, not an outcome, a rule-bound procedure for investigating a president, considering evidence, formulating charges, and deciding whether to continue on to trial."

But there are still so many unanswered questions about this. Why not wait until we know more and the public is on board here?

APPELBAUM: Well, the process itself gives us a lot of protections and it is a way of actually bringing the public on board and figuring out whether or not to move ahead. What you want is Congress to be looking at the whole picture, not with a bunch of independent inquiries launched by different committees into different allegations.

You want Congress to tackle the key question. Is the president fit for the office that he holds or has he committed acts that disqualify him? Until Congress does that, launches those hearings, brings the witnesses and the evidence to the public and debates that --

LEMON: And not debate it with knowledge of actually what is in, you know, what's in the information in the investigation, it is all mostly through sources or people are telling, or at least maybe leaking in some sense, but it is not any concrete evidence.

APPELBAUM: Yeah. Impeachment is a great way -- it is a process that gives us the chance for discovery of new evidence but also for discernment.

Two different sitting vice presidents of the United States have asked the House of Representatives to start impeachment proceedings against them because they understood that the process can sift good claims, claims that are well substantiated and backed by solid evidence from scurrilous claims, from the kinds of wild charges that often get flung at politicians.

LEMON: You are saying even regardless of the outcome, because, listen, it doesn't mean that the president will be removed from office, even if impeachment proceedings start and end. It doesn't mean he is going to be removed.

APPELBAUM: No. You would have to get two-thirds of the Senate --

LEMON: How is that beneficial? You just think that people will know more and rather than being left in the dark?

APPELBAUM: Well, when they started the process against Richard Nixon, there was no chance that the United States Senate was going to vote to remove him. By the time those hearings had forced new evidence into the public light and they proceeded in tandem with the special prosecutor's investigation, they didn't wait for that report to be gift wrapped and delivered to Congress.

Congress took its own responsibilities quite seriously and the two investigations moving together forced the evidence into the public and eventually forced the president's resignation. Maybe that would happen here. But even if it doesn't, you want to have this debate in a process that can adjudicate the claims.

If you do it in public through rumor and innuendo, it is a recipe for further partisan division and rather than taking a president who has destabilized norms and rules and conventions, what you are doing is you're responding in kind and further destabilizing rules and norms and conventions. There is a process here and we should use it.

LEMON: So, you say that waiting to impeach Trump presents dangers. What do you mean by that?

APPELBAUM: Well, I think there is a bunch. At one level, I think, they are procedural. What we got right now are lots of people around Trump who leave office and tell us, don't blame us for what the president has done, actually thank us for everything we stopped him from doing.

It is really corrosive in a democracy to have a bunch of people whose authority comes from the president of the United States, asking us to thank them from stopping the president from doing the things he wants. That's not how it supposed to work. If they think he is not fit, then Congress ought to intervene.

The other thing that we are seeing here is courts stepping in and slapping (ph) down the president's orders (ph) being unconstitutional. That, too, is problematic. Often what they are aiming at really there is his malice and his intentions rather than his acts. This president will bind future presidents of the United States, but there is last set of (ph) damage which I think really is the one we ought to focus on here.

President Trump has assaulted the idea of America. He has inflamed America's racial divisions. He has disparaged the freedom of the press. He has pledged and then done his best to bar people from this country on the basis of their faith and religion. These are profound acts, and if you leave somebody there without challenging his efforts to destabilize America's institutions and its values, then you allow that damage to compound over time.

LEMON: Are there risks, Yoni, to starting impeachment hearings before Mueller's investigation is finished? Couldn't lawmakers get in his way? What if they reveal information before he's ready?

APPELBAUM: There are a variety of other things that Congress can move forward with even while it is waiting on the special prosecutor's report. We also don't know what that report will say and we don't know how much of it the new attorney general will release to the public. LEMON: A lot of Democrats have been really hesitant to talk about impeachment hearings. Some of them have but most of them are really hesitant. You said this comes down to Bill Clinton. Is this because at the end of the day, it made Bill Clinton stronger politically?

[23:55:00] APPELBAUM: Yeah. I think that -- certainly the House leadership lived through those hearings and took lessons from them. I think that is where most Americans have their current conception of impeachment.

It is a problem because if you actually think that Bill Clinton and Donald Trump are equivalent, then the experience of impeaching Bill Clinton where they took the special prosecutor's report, held no hearings other than listening to Ken Starr, reviewed no evidence, and presented charges in a lame duck session in a baldly partisan fashion, if that's your president, then impeachment looks like a bad idea.

If you look back to guy like Andrew Johnson, who is maybe almost Trump-like president and you look at the process that failed to remove the president but frustrated his effort as Johnson put at the time to make America a white man's government, well, then impeachment looks different. It looks like a very effective process for curtailing an executive who has run amok (ph).

LEMON: Yoni Appelbaum, thank you so much. Appreciate your time.

APPELBAUM: Pleasure to be with you.

LEMON: Thanks for watching. Our coverage continues.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)