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Don Lemon Tonight

Rep. Madeleine Dean (D-PA) Interviewed About the Articles of Impeachment Against President Trump; Alan Dershowitz Now in Trump Defense Team; Judiciary Committee Will Vote on Articles of Impeachment as President Trump Stews Privately. Aired 11p-12a ET

Aired December 11, 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]

SCOTT JENNINGS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: -- you have no trouble making this case to the American people, I expect the Republicans to really lean on that argument, not about the last election, Elliot, but about the next one coming this November.

ELLIOT WILLIAMS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Quick point. But that rational, you lose the right to impeach a president in the final year of a president's term and that is not what the framers intended. It's not that, you know, presidents are subject to being impeached only for three years. That's just not what the framers had in mind.

DON LEMON, CNN HOST: And you force Republicans and you force the president to admit wrongdoing and that will never happen. Thank you, both, I appreciate it.

This is CNN Tonight. I'm Don Lemon.

As you can see, it is the top of the hour, and tonight, you have been watching history in the making. For the fourth time since this country's founding, a president is facing impeachment. And you heard 40 members of the House judiciary committee in a marathon late-night session ahead of all but certain approval tomorrow of two articles of impeachment against President Donald J. Trump, charging that he should be removed from office for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.

The full House voting next week. All of this exactly 21 years to the day after articles of impeachment against President Bill Clinton were approved.

Let's discuss now. Joining me now is a member of the committee and that is Congresswoman Madeleine Dean. You heard her. She was one of the last congresspeople to speak there. Congresswoman, I appreciate you joining us. Thank you so much.

REP. MADELEINE DEAN (D-PA): Good evening, Don.

LEMON: Well, tonight, Democrats and Republicans made their case for and against impeachment. What should people take away, what should Americans take away from tonight?

DEAN: I think you saw a stark contrast between what the Democrats put forward and what the Republicans failed to speak about. There's damning overwhelming evidence of abuse of power by this president seeking foreign interference in our elections.

He started that in 2016, continued it just recently with the grave July 25th phone call pressuring the Ukrainian president to open an investigation against his what he perceived was his top political rival.

And, when I think about it, think about as a private citizen, he asked a foreign country to open an investigation about. Think what the American people know is right from wrong. They know that the president abused his office for his own personal political gain and the Republicans could not address any of the damning facts that have been established by patriots, by civil servants, by diplomats, by career officials. It was stunning the omission on the other side of the aisle.

LEMON: Are you confident that the House is proceeding with impeachment the right way? Do people have a chance to absorb the gravity of all of this?

DEAN: I do think they do. I think they get the gravity because in some simple ways, it's about just self-dealing and cheating. If I were running for -- if I were sitting in office and had my finger on the purse of some desperately needed relief for someone in my community, federal funds for someone in my community, and I said, yes, I'll release those funds to you, but you'll have to do me a favor, though, you'll have to get dirt on my next political opponent, do you think I would be in office? Of course not.

No one is above the law. The American people get that this is cheating and the seriousness of the fact that it's not just something of the past, it's a pattern of behavior, of criminal corruption by this president, that is ongoing.

The day after the Mueller hearings here, he picked up the phone, learned nothing from the Mueller investigation, picked up the phone and asked Ukraine to interfere in our elections. And then publicly said China, if you're listening, you should interfere.

This president is just simply in plain sight, in plain view abusing his oath of office for his own personal gain.

The other thing that I think America understands is the strange connection to Russia. Our national security is at risk when the president holds up funds to a democracy desperately in need because who's to benefit? Our foe, Putin. Americans get that that is not the right way for a president to behave.

LEMON: I have the articles right here and, I mean, they're very short. Right? They're very thin. Tell me why it was the right move to keep these articles so narrow because Republicans attack what they see as the vagueness of the abuse of power article. You had the Ranking Member Collins asking, you know, where are the dates of abuse, you know, people are asking why didn't you put bribe -- bribery in here? DEAN: Well, Don, I don't know if you know this about me, but I used

to be a professor of writing. So, as I read these articles, I thought they were concise and yet thorough. I thought they were wise in their directedness, wise in the approach, and the word bribery is in there because as you know, the Constitution says he shall be held account accountable for treason, bribery and other high crimes and misdemeanors.

[23:05:08]

I thought these were well crafted, specific, very concrete in terms of the wrongdoing that is utterly established by the president, himself, and by so much corroborating and direct testimony. Also, within them reveals the pattern of behavior, so what I liked is that while these two articles are quite concise, they also show room to put in the wrong behaviors of this president.

LEMON: Are you troubled that Republicans are just outright avoiding the evidence before them? They continue to just argue about process, not really talking about the substance, or the evidence?

DEAN: It is troubling. It's baffling. As I sit there. I think about it and I think what Professor Gerhardt said, if these actions by a president of the United States are not impeachable, then nothing is impeachable.

I cannot imagine when asked directly, my Republican colleagues on this committee, do you think it is proper for a president to ask a foreign country to interfere in our elections? I can't imagine that their answer would be yes.

So why they're deflecting, while they're talking process, while they're talking about other investigations, why they are mouthing the false narrative that we know it was established, it was Putin's, that Ukraine was somehow involved in the interference of the 2016 election, I can't imagine an elected official wanting to put forward the narrative that benefits Putin and that is utterly untrue.

LEMON: Congresswoman Dean, you had a long day today. You got a long day ahead of you.

DEAN: We do.

LEMON: Get some sleep. We appreciate you joining us. Thank you so much.

DEAN: Thank you for having me.

LEMON: Let's bring in now Phil Mattingly. He's on Capitol Hill. Phil, same to you. Long day today. Long day ahead of you. How you doing?

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: You know, every day is a holiday on Capitol Hill, Don.

LEMON: Explain the process we just saw tonight. Does it advance the articles of impeachment? MATTINGLY: So, I think it's important to frame what was actually

happening tonight, right? You see 41 opening statements, five minutes each, over three and a half hours, and you think, all right, some of this is dry, we've seen a lot of this during the hearings but it's important to recognize what the members were actually doing. You were essentially seeing none of these were the opening statements from all 41 of these members.

These were the closing statements. What you're going to see tomorrow is pure legislative action back and forth. This was the last opportunity that all 41 of these members had to really put their final stamp on what they thought of this process.

And, yes, we saw the partisan barbs back and forth, but I actually found it a lot more interesting to see kind of the individual processes the members were explaining as they -- how they came to their solutions, how they came to their positions on this.

And yes, we've seen a lot of the arguments in the past, particularly from Republicans who are opposed to this, some of the Democrats on how they feel about this. But getting into the personal nature of why members are where they are, why they believe either the president clearly has to be impeached or either that -- or that there's no case at all, I think is actually kind of intellectually interesting as we go through this process, particularly, Don, I would say, for some of the front-line members.

There are two front-line members on the Democratic side from the committee, those are the members everybody has had an eye on. Lucy McBath, Veronica Escobar, kind of explaining their rationale for how they got to yes on this. I think is informative and gives you the path forward for Democrats.

How they're going have the votes for this, which they absolutely think they have, but also how they got to this point when so many of those members were wary of getting there in the first place. I think that's what tonight actually was and I think that's why it's important going forward.

LEMON: Tomorrow there's a judiciary committee vote. You mentioned tomorrow. What happens?

MATTINGLY: Yes, so, it's going to be long, it's going to be divisive. It will be a little bit arduous. It will be very much inside the legislative weeds. We might have second-degree amendments; we might have substitute amendments.

Here's what matter. And I think Democrats are not going to change the articles of impeachment. Those nine pages that you pulled up when you were talking to Congresswoman Dean about were very deeply thought out. They are tight in scope for a reason. And they're not going to change, they're not going to amend them for the Democratic side.

Republicans will be able to offer any amendment they want. They don't have the majority of the votes so they will lose every amendment that they put up. So everything is essentially going to stay the same in terms of the language, but what this means more than anything else is the step in the process.

This is it before the House vote. Right? Tomorrow is it. There's nothing else after that before it gets onto the House floor. Which means after tomorrow, the next step is for Democrats to vote to impeach the President of the United States. It's obviously a pretty monumental thing. It's a pretty huge step. Given the process we've gone through over the course of the last eight or ten weeks. So that's what's to pay attention to tomorrow.

The fact that once tomorrow ends, once Chairman Nadler bangs the gavel and those two articles of impeachment are approved and they will be with Democratic votes, that the next stop is the House floor. And the next stop after that is Democrats voting in large part in unison to impeach President Trump.

LEMON: Phil Mattingly, Capitol Hill. Thank you, sir. I appreciate it.

[23:10:02]

A lot more to come on our breaking news. The House judiciary committee making history tonight debating articles of impeachment against President Trump ahead of tomorrow's vote.

And Frank Bruni, Kirsten Powers, Timothy Naftali all here to talk about all of it next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: Here's our breaking news tonight. The House judiciary committee making history tonight debating articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump ahead of tomorrow's committee vote.

Here to discuss what we heard tonight, Frank Bruni, Kirsten Powers, and Timothy Naftali. We heard a lot tonight.

FRANK BRUNI, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Yes.

LEMON: Welcome back, Kirsten. Hello, gentlemen. Thanks for joining us. So, Frank, Republicans and Democrats making two very different arguments tonight. What do you make of these competing narratives?

BRUNI: Well, what I make of it is they're not really making two different arguments. They're living in two entirely different worlds.

LEMON: Amen.

BRUNI: You know. And that's what we've actually seen for many years now certainly since the start of the Trump administration.

[23:14:58]

The last couple of days in Washington I think have been the starkest portrait of that yet because you not only have what we just saw in the House judiciary committee but you had over in the Senate, you know, the different reactions to the inspector general of the Justice Department inspector general's report. And between those two different settings in all of those remarks, I

think we've gotten one of the starkest illustrations to date of just how far apart Democrats and Republicans are, in my view, at this juncture in time, just how determined Republicans are to live in a world of fiction.

To follow Donald Trump into that world of fiction and to dwell there so that they can continue to believe in him, so that they can never politically cross him and suffer the consequences. And it's distressing to see as you were talking about in your last segment with your last guest.

LEMON: Hold on, you guys, are they really that far apart? Maybe it doesn't matter.

BRUNI: Republicans and Democrats?

LEMON: Are they really that far apart? Because your last part was like they were choosing to do it, right? Do they really believe it?

BRUNI: Do the Republicans really believe Donald Trump did no wrong? No. No.

LEMON: That's --

BRUNI: Because, and I think you guys can back me up on this, when you talk to a lot of these very Republicans away from the television cameras, they roll their eyes about the president, some of them voice, you know, great disgust with the president then the cameras roll then they sit down in hearings and they're worried about the political consequences of being that candid in public and their song changes. So, no, they --

LEMON: How could you?

BRUNI: We live in a hyper partisan environment, but even in that environment, you cannot look at what happened here in terms of Ukraine, in terms of the rough transcript of that phone call and say it was perfect and say that nothing wrong happened. You just can't.

LEMON: The fourth president, Tim, to face impeachment, right?

TIMOTHY NAFTALI, CNN PRESIDENTIAL HISTORIAN: Right.

LEMON: Nixon resigned, right? So, he'll be the third one to be impeached if it happens. Nixon resigned before this happened. Put this into perspective.

NAFTALI: Tonight?

LEMON: No, just the impeachment --

NAFTALI: The impeachment, I just wanted to stay about tonight, I mean, my God. No, I mean, this is a solemn or supposed to be a really solemn moment in our history and there was really no debate. And as Frank mentioned, the Republicans were making an argument that

in large measure this whole process is part of a three-year attempt to remove a president. They didn't contend with any of the arguments, and what argument they made for the most part was that Democrats hate 63 million Americans. I couldn't believe this.

I mean, now having studied other impeachments, I'm accustomed to a certain level of constitutional discussion. I'm not talking about our abstract constitutional discussion. I'm just talking about contending with the real gravity of the moment.

The idea, and it wasn't just one, I mean, it was, I believe Congressman Jim Jordan made this argument, Congressman Kelly Armstrong made this argument, they said that Democrats hate 63 million Americans. That shows a contempt, a contempt for the Constitution, for the nature of this issue. And I think it's just appalling.

Now, how do we put this into context? What we're seeing today, I'm afraid, is in part a consequence of the decline in American respect and trust in institutions. I think there was a time when Republicans and Democrats, the members of a party whose president was not in office, who understood they had responsibilities of the Constitution and members of a party whose president was in office, they also understood it. And at least they had to show respect for the Constitution.

We're in an era now where we have a group of people who don't believe they have a political reason to show respect.

Scott Jennings was talking about what they're hearing from back home. I think what they're afraid of is not so much their base back home, they're afraid of Donald J. Trump. And to think that we have a Congress now that is more afraid of the president than of losing their institutional authority --

(CROSSTALK)

BRUNI: But those are the same -- those are anagrams. Those are the same things. Donald Trump and their base back home. There's a huge overlap in them.

NAFTALI: There's a Venn diagram there.

LEMON: There was a lot of, you know, painting liberals or Democrats as scary and --

(CROSSTALK)

KIRSTEN POWERS, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Right. They hate you.

LEMON: Yes, they're scary and threatening.

POWERS: Yes.

LEMON: What was that? POWERS: Well that is basically what Republicans have had to do rather

than defend Trump, they have to paint liberals as so scary and dangerous and America-hating and family-hating and all these other things because they can't actually focus on the substance of Donald Trump.

You know, I think that the accusations that they're making, the other big accusation they're making is that Democrats want to do this from the minute he got in office, and they want to do it for electoral reasons but the truth is this is not without risk for Democrats electorally.

[23:20:03]

So, if the idea that somehow impeaching Donald Trump is necessarily going to help them in the elections, I don't think we know that. Right? And I think when they talk about, you know, hating him from the minute he got in office, wanted to get rid of him, I mean what it reminds me of this, frankly, Bill Clinton, that's how they behaved with Bill Clinton from the minute he came into office. He hadn't done anything.

And Donald Trump you had the Russia situation. Right? Bill Clinton didn't do anything except win the election. And from day one they were trying to get rid of him. And they did the --

(CROSSTALK)

LEMON: Barack Obama. We're going to --

POWERS: Yes, Barack Obama. But I mean, they started this, you know, crazy investigation that got completely out of control. And they were determined to impeach him. So, actually, they're just projecting exactly what they did to Bill Clinton, but that's not what happened with the situation with Donald Trump.

LEMON: Yes. Yes. Stick around, everybody. We've got news on what the president is saying behind closed doors with impeachment looming.

Plus, the controversial lawyer he is reportedly thinking about adding to his impeachment team.

[23:25:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: The judiciary committee set to vote tomorrow on articles of impeachment against the president. That as sources tell CNN the president is stewing privately, even as he shrugs off impeachment publicly.

I want to bring in now CNN's Jeremy Diamond with more. Jeremy, good evening to you. Thank you so much. We are -- what are you hearing from the White House tonight?

JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, there's no reaction from the White House yet to that debate that we saw from the House judiciary committee, but as you were mentioning, Don, what we do know is that publicly we heard the president downplaying this impeachment.

At the rally last night in Pennsylvania, the president was saying that this is impeachment-lite, he called those articles of impeachment pathetic and flimsy, downplaying it essentially, almost mocking Democrats for not coming up with something stronger.

But privately, Don, we're told that the president has been griping about the fact that he is all but certain to become the third president in history to be impeached. This is not a stain on his legacy that he wants. It's something, in fact, that he's been dreading for quite some time.

And so even as the president is publicly downplaying all of this, privately, he's unhappy about it. Even when some of his political advisers have tried to tell him, look, you may not like being impeached, but this could be beneficial to you politically, despite all that, president still unhappy. Don?

LEMON: Jeremy, the New York Times confirming that attorney and staunch Trump defender Alan Dershowitz may be joining Trump's impeachment legal team. What can you tell us about that?

DIAMOND: That's right. Well, Alan Dershowitz has declined to comment to us. I reached out to him a few hours ago to ask him about this story, but what we do know from these reports is that Dershowitz is being considered to join the legal team.

Now, Alan Dershowitz, of course, is a former Harvard law professor. He's an, you know, well-known defense attorney, but he's also someone who's controversial. He's been accused of sexual abuse by a woman in connection with the Jeffrey Epstein situation. Claims that Alan Dershowitz has, of course, himself, denied.

But he is also somebody who has been an ardent defender of the president and as it relates to all the legal matters that he has faced. He spoke out publicly when the president was under investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller and that certainly has earned him praise from the president and some of his advisers.

In fact, earlier today Dershowitz was actually at the White House for a Hanukkah party where he praised the president for an executive order that he signed earlier today on anti-Semitism.

LEMON: Jeremy, sources signaling that the White House could be open to a shorter trial in the Senate. What are we learning about that?

DIAMOND: Well, essentially this is the president and the Senate -- you know, the president really colliding with reality here. The reality that senate Republicans by and large do not want that long extended show trial that President Trump was hoping to get out of the Senate.

For some time now the president has been signaling that he would like to use this Senate trial as an opportunity, essentially, to exact political points out of his opponents. Bringing forward Hunter Biden, bringing forward the whistleblower and using this trial in the Senate as an opportunity to turn the table on Democrats ignoring the allegations that he is facing and, instead, focusing on all of these other conspiracy theories and other issues that the president has wanted to focus on with regards to Ukraine.

Now we're told that the president is essentially acknowledging the reality that Senate Republicans do not want this long show trial and that he is beginning to accept the notion that this will likely be something much shorter with the Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell really trying to move swiftly here and then ultimately acquit the president.

LEMON: And Jeremy, there's news tonight from the Office of Management and Budget. What do you know?

DIAMOND: Yes, well, the Office of Management and Budget's top attorney, the general counsel, Mark Paoletta, has written a legal memo to the Government Accountability Office essentially defending once again this decision over the summer to freeze that security aid, nearly $400 million of security aid to Ukraine, saying that this was essentially a routine policy review of this aid.

Of course, despite all that, we do know that there was no real policy review being conducted of this aid, at least in terms of these questions of corruption and whether or not Ukraine should receive the aid.

We know that the Department of Defense had concluded in the spring that Ukraine should, indeed, receive that security aid. Nonetheless, what's significant here, Don, is that we are seeing this administration continue to defend this, insisting that this was a routine matter of policy and also tying the president very directly once again to this freeze of security aid.

This top attorney for the Office of Management and Budget saying that all this was done essentially at the president's direction. Don?

[23:30:03]

LEMON: Jeremy Diamond, thank you very much. Back with me now, Frank Bruni, Kirsten Powers, and Timothy Naftali. Frank, we got to start with our reporting about Alan Dershowitz who may be joining the president's impeachment legal team. Give me your reaction to that.

FRANK BRUNI, CNN CONTRIBUTOR, COLUMNIST FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES: Actually, as soon as it was announced, I felt this is sort of inevitable given Dershowitz's role over the course of the presidency and given how much he, like the president, loves to to sort of embrace controversial causes and be in the spotlight.

I mean, it shows a certain degree of seriousness with which the White House is taking this. You know, I -- it's interesting, though, because we're also being told that this is going to be a short really quick trial. So what are all these people going to do? What exactly is Dershowitz going to contribute?

Trump wants to turn this, as you were saying before, into a three-ring circus and Mitch McConnell is saying, no, we're not going to even have a clown. No, not even that much. This is Mitch McConnell's house. So --

LEMON: No jugglers, nothing.

BRUNI: Right. I'm a little bit confused by the -- by, you know, the accretion of lawyers because I'm not sure how much work there is for them to do if the trial is going it be a short and sweet as Mitch McConnell seems to want it to be and as the Democrats want it to be because they want to get their candidates back out on the campaign trail.

LEMON: It's interesting, as you said, why hire so many lawyers if the Senate is just going to acquit him, anyway? Why would you --

TIMOTHY NAFTALI, CNN PRESIDENTIAL HISTORIAN: Yeah, there's even talk now about not even going through with much of the process and having a vote right at the beginning to acquit him.

LEMON: Right.

NAFTALI: But here's -- here's the real question, which is, are we going to get at the substance of the issue in the Senate? Are senators willing to talk about the question of the foreign policy decisions the president made and how they represented an abuse of power?

Many Republican senators are uncomfortable. There's no question. They are uncomfortable with the way in which the Trump administration conducted the policy towards Ukraine. How do we know that? Because we know that Senator Johnson and others were putting pressures on the administration to lift the hold.

So we know that senators actually were probably really unhappy in the summer when they discovered that there was a hold on this money. My question is do they really want to talk about this? Now, most of the trial, as you know, or probably with the senators say nothing, they just listen.

LEMON: Those guys are up -- a number of them are up for elections.

NAFTALI: But the thing is do they really want to engage in the issues? I think they don't because they are unhappy with the way in which the president managed this, but they don't want to say so. None of them wants to commit to that. Maybe one or two, maybe Mitt Romney will vote against the president.

LEMON: You think they don't want to be on the record?

NAFTALI: I think they don't want to be on the record. They don't, obviously, want a cloud show, but they also don't want to be on the record. I think that's what they're trying to do. They are trying to find a way to have -- to do their constitutional duty by having a trial but make sure that it's not with substance and there are no clowns.

LEMON: Why -- wait --

BRUNI: Put clowns in courage.

LEMON: Why don't they want to be on the record? You don't think it helps them to be with this guy because, you know, he's drawing thousands of people at rallies and doesn't hurt them, right?

NAFTALI: Well --

LEMON: You think it hurts them?

NAFTALI: The fact of the matter is, politically, it might hurt Cory Gardner. We -- there are a number of people who could be actually hurt by this.

LEMON: I feel -- I see what you're saying.

NAFTALI: But also, the more -- frankly, right now, the more serious House, if you will, of Congress is the Senate.

LEMON: Right.

NAFTALI: And what the president did in foreign policy is outrageous.

BRUNI: I think there's something else, too. There's what they'd have to say today and then there's what they would want history to record.

LEMON: Yeah, go ahead, Kirsten.

KIRSTEN POWERS, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST, COLUMNIST FOR THE USA TODAY: I just want to say quickly, I just realize, I think when I was talking to Scott (ph), I said that that Democrats controlled the Senate with Clinton. It was the Republicans but they couldn't get to a super majority. I just want to clarify that.

LEMON: Got it.

POWERS: And I think the chances of very many Republicans turning against Trump are very low, even for a Cory Gardner. I think there's such a risk of, first of all, getting a primary opponent, right? So even for, like, a Susan Collins or somebody like that who might theoretically think about doing it, they're going to have to think twice when they've seen what Donald Trump does to people.

I mean, it's just -- the base is so loyal to him and he comes after them so strongly. It's one thing to make criticisms of him, it's another thing to vote to impeach him.

BRUNI: Mitt Romney would be the likeliest candidate to do it because he's not up for election.

POWERS: Yeah, he's not up for a while.

LEMON: You think the president is taking this seriously because -- here's our reporting, Kirsten, that the president has been preparing for this impeachment for some time now, according to an adviser, but here's the quote here. "He's a little surprised that it's a Ukraine thing that's done it."

POWERS: I know. Kind of makes you think, like, what is it that he thinks should have done it?

(LAUGHTER)

BRUNI: He was waiting.

POWERS: Like, is there something else we don't know?

LEMON: Yeah. Right.

(LAUGHTER)

LEMON: All righty. Thank you.

BRUNI: Thank you.

LEMON: Thanks, Kirsten. Frank and Tim, you guys have to stick around.

[23:35:00]

LEMON: So, Democrats and Republicans going head-to-head tonight for and against the articles of impeachment, but who has the better case? We'll talk about that, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: The House Judiciary Committee is set to vote tomorrow on two articles of impeachment against President Trump. If they pass, which is all but certain, the full House will vote on them likely next week.

[23:40:03]

LEMON: I want to bring in Laura Coates, Michael Moore. Good evening to both of you. Laura, we heard it again and again from Republicans, the argument that there is no crime here. Does that matter?

LAURA COATES, CNN LEGAL ANALYST, FORMER FEDERAL PROSECUTOR: Well, no, there's actually not a requirement in the Constitution you have to actually commit a crime and that would make sense, right, because the phrase, "high crimes and misdemeanors" exist, much of the book, the codes on the books right now did not exist.

You wouldn't very well want to impeach a president over, say, a speeding violation or some other crime that would be on the books in a really odd way, but you do want to have a focus being on the fact that the president of the United States has abused some aspect of his power and the separation of powers. That's why you have that second article of impeachment about obstruction of Congress.

I think that's the focus that Congress needs to be on. The notion that if they are the lawmaking body and somebody ignores them and they get away with it, aren't they above the law? Isn't that exactly what you don't want in a democracy?

LEMON: Michael, Republicans argue that the two articles of impeachment brought against President Trump are the thinnest and weakest they have seen. Is that true?

MICHAEL MOORE, FORMER FEDERAL PROSECUTOR: No, it's just not true at all. Let me -- usually what you do when you don't have the facts is you argue about process or you argue about these formalities. I really think it was a pretty crafty move by the Democrats to put them out this way.

Some of what Laura said is right, may not agree with what she said. In addition to that, you know, really what you got here is they've taken away the argument about technical defenses or technical terms from laws that would be not in effect in the 1700s and now we got them.

So what the Democrats have done is said, look, we got these two things, we got the obstruction, we got the abuse of power. Here's how he abused the power. We don't have to say bribery. We don't have to say quid pro quo. We can just talk about abuses that would have been common back to the founders back then.

So I think it was a pretty clever move. Probably the smartest thing they did is they kept the impeachment articles forward-looking. We aren't talking about 2016. We aren't talking about the Mueller report. We are talking about how we keep America safe moving forward. That's a hard question when you put it to the other side.

LEMON: Got you. Over at The New York Times, Laura, Maggie Haberman confirming that Trump is considering adding controversial lawyer Alan Dershowitz to his impeachment legal team. What do you think, a good idea?

COATES: I'm surprised he hasn't already given his track record of support for the president's policies over the past three years. I find it surprising that he hasn't taken the time to build up a bigger and perhaps better defense team for impeachment largely because I think it came as a shock to him as he said in the earlier segment that this would be the straw that broke the camel's back on impeachment given the pattern of behavior up until now.

And while Michael is correct about being forward-thinking, remember, the context is going to matter the most in the Senate trial. In order to actually prove a case, you will have to establish what Jerry Nadler has spoken about as a pattern of behavior and some of that will come from the conduct that Alan Dershowitz was talking about over the course of the Mueller report being investigated and, of course, written.

So, I think with that in mind, he is thinking about how am I going to defend against, if necessary, a pattern of behavior and for that, I have people who supported me in the beginning.

LEMON: So, Michael, listen, Alan Dershowitz just wrote an op-ed for The Hill yesterday saying that -- saying this about the articles, the two articles. "Both are so vague and open-ended that they could be applied in partisan fashion by a majority of the House against almost any president from the opposing party." What do you think? Is he right?

MOORE: I think if any president contacts a foreign power and asks them to investigate an American citizen, interfere in an election, they should be put against any president no matter what party they are in. I think he's wrong about it. I read his piece. I think essentially what I agree with is that he's right, the House essentially acts like a grand jury, the Senate acts like a trial.

So the articles are the indictment. There's some evidence comes forward. The Senate then will conduct the trial, look deeper into the evidence. I really think when you look at how they spelled out the articles against the president, it is pretty clear what the conduct is, and I think that, again, you can debate the constitutionality of it.

I didn't hear much of that tonight in the Judiciary Committee. I mean, frankly, on one side of the building I thought was a little bit of an intellectual black hole without a whole lot of substance to the argument that was being made there. It was a process argument. It was arguments about we ought to have these other witnesses.

Remember, when we talk about the case, we talk about proving the case. This is what Dershowitz, I think, is ultimately getting at. We can have evidence of the case. Let's start with witnesses. But let's really talk about witnesses that we want to bring in and witnesses that are being blocked.

It's hard to complain about that, talk about the weakness of a case when you're the one standing in the way. It's like, you know, complaining that you didn't get asked to the dance when you won't answer the phone.

[23:45:00]

(LAUGHTER)

COATES: That sounds personal. I don't know.

LEMON: I got a question for you, Michael, but let me ask Laura this first.

COATES: About the dance? Please don't.

LEMON: No, no, no, this is not about the dance.

COATES: Fine, off the hook.

LEMON: Laura, will you go to prom with me? Listen, Laura --

COATES: Yeah, sure.

(LAUGHTER)

LEMON: Let's turn to the Senate now. COATES: Uh-huh.

LEMON: The president wants drama. He wants to call the whistleblower and he wants to call Hunter Biden, Leader McConnell wants a short trial with no witnesses. If there are no witnesses, what will the American people get to see? I mean, you know, he just said, like, complaining about that and then, you know, not answering the phone. Will it just be lawmakers and staffers going back and forth?

COATES: Well, I think what people will actually see is what is not there in the sense of why would the Senate who apparently seems to be hell bent on not having the president either removed or convicted or maybe even acquitted, why would they not call a witness who might help to exculpate the president?

Why not call somebody who could further their narrative or their case or prove the point that they believe all of this is either unsubstantiated or completely wrong? If they don't call a single witness, that is quite telling about who they think cannot support their argument, and that is what the American people will actually see.

That may also indicate a really big rift among the GOP. Up until now, we talked about kind of a unified front of Democrats and Republicans, but keep in mind how odd that would be, Don, if the Senate Republicans refuse to call any witnesses and pound the table about the unnecessity of it.

While the House GOP members were saying, I don't have enough witnesses to go on, I need more people, all the while not talking about who the president was stonewalling them on, that would indicate there is not really a strategy other than to make sure that this is not talking about the substance, and that's what the American people should concern themselves with.

LEMON: Hmm. We missed our accent, Michael, because you hadn't been on in a while. Why can't they have your accent there? I hear a lot of accents. They're not as cool as yours.

MOORE: I don't know. You'll have to ask the people. I hope I'd give a better Georgia accent than maybe some of my representatives that are up there now.

(LAUGHTER)

MOORE: So, it was a long night and a lot of silliness as they were putting forth in their argument. We'll see as we go forward if we want to really dig into this thing and if the Senate has the guts to take a deep look at the claims. It's baffling to me sometimes that we would have some of the discussions.

LEMON: Thank you, both.

MOORE: Good to see you, Don.

LEMON: I appreciate it. COATES: I want a corsage. Thanks.

(LAUGHTER)

LEMON: All right. A wrist or you want on the lapel?

COATES: Wrist, please. Thank you. My outfit won't work with anything else. Thank you.

(LAUGHTER)

LEMON: Thank you. See you. The Judiciary Committee debating late into the night and they are just hours away from voting on the articles of impeachment against the president. We'll bring you the big picture, next.

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[23:50:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: We're just hours away from the Judiciary Committee's vote on the articles of impeachment against the president. Back with me now are Frank Bruni and Timothy Naftali.

Frank, there's a lot of emotion from members of Congress, especially when they talked about what it all means for our democracy, and it's not just about politics. Let me just read this. This quote is from -- did you see Lucy McBath? You know, her son died. They nicknamed it the "loud music" trial --

BRUNI: Yeah.

LEMON: in Florida at a gas station.

BRUNI: Yes.

LEMON: Her son was shot, 17 years old, Jordan McBath. She said it was -- she's doing this with a heavy heart and a grieving soul. What did you think?

BRUNI: Well, I mean, she's referring obviously to the personal circumstances you're talking about, but I think that was also a really eloquent way of saying that nobody relishes our country coming to this juncture, right?

LEMON: Mm-hmm.

BRUNI: There's this notion put forward by Republicans, the Democrats are in some sense enjoying this because they're getting to go after a president they've always hated. I don't think many politicians actually like seeing America where we are right now because it's not good for the country.

Nancy Pelosi has said that many, many times. I think she is perhaps the most eloquent on it. I think that while, yes, there's partisan warfare going in both directions, I don't think Democrats relish that they've brought America to this moment because they know how much it tears the country apart, and they know that in a sense there are no winners here. There just aren't any winners.

LEMON: Yeah. So many of the lawmakers, the congressmen and women, they quoted history and the founders of the Constitution. Is this impeachment different than any others in history in that way?

NAFTALI: Well, the most partisan impeachment we've ever had was the impeachment of Andrew Johnson, where the radical Republicans actually set up a trap for Johnson. This is different, and this is the same in a few ways. The partisan environment is more partisan than 1998, but it's not completely different from 1998. 1998 was a partisan environment.

LEMON: Yeah.

NAFTALI: You had Republicans who did badly in a midterm election. Many people, including the president of the United States, Bill Clinton, thought they would drop the whole impeachment matter. They decided to double down.

LEMON: Mm-hmm.

NAFTALI: You had Republicans in the Senate who were not sure that the House was right, but they stuck with the decisions made by House Republicans to go ahead with an impeachment that, by the way, on the standards established in the Nixon impeachment, wasn't an impeachment.

[23:55:00]

NAFTALI: The impeachable offense was not an impeachable offense. So I think what you have today is you have a question of abuse of power which takes you to Nixon, which is as important as Nixon, but we're in a climate that makes it seem much less serious.

LEMON: Yeah.

NAFTALI: It's dismaying.

LEMON: Yeah. Thank you, gentlemen.

NAFTALI: Thank you.

LEMON: I appreciate it. And thank you for watching. Our live coverage continues with Chris Cuomo.

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