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Second Whistleblower Comes Forward in Trump's Ukraine Saga; Trump to Demand House Vote Before Cooperating with Inquiry; Interview with Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) on Impeachment Inquiry. Aired 8-9p ET

Aired October 06, 2019 - 20:00   ET

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

[20:00:21]

ANA CABRERA, CNN ANCHOR: Top of the hour. You are live in the CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Ana Cabrera in New York.

The whistleblower whose report about President Trump and Ukraine triggered this history impeachment inquiry is no longer alone. Confirmation today there is another one. Lawyers for the second whistleblower say their information supports the original claim, that President Trump in a phone call with the president of Ukraine pressured that country to find something that would discredit Joe Biden and possibly affect next year's election.

Now people close to the president say they are not fazed at the news of another whistleblower and a short time ago the White House sent out an official response.

Let's bring in CNN's Jeremy Diamond. And Jeremy, the president tweeting a lot today. Anything about this second anonymous person?

JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Well, what we have heard from the president is continued criticism not only the first whistleblower but the second whistleblower, as well. Falsely alleging that this second whistleblower has only second-hand information when in fact the opposite is true. What we've learned is that this second whistleblower has firsthand information to corroborate the initial whistleblower's complaint.

As far as the White House, we are getting a statement from the White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham and essentially it says there is nothing to see here. Here is the statement. "It doesn't matter how many people decide to call themselves whistleblowers about the same telephone call. A call the president has already made public. It doesn't change the fact that he has done nothing wrong."

Now despite that statement, what we do know is that there is already several pieces of evidence that have emerged in the last several weeks to corroborate that initial whistleblower's complaint. We saw the transcript of that call between President Trump and the Ukrainian president where he clearly asks the president of Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden, his political rival. We've also seen these text messages of course from the three diplomats who discussed this effort to get the Ukrainians to carry out these investigations all while hanging the prospect of a meeting with the president over their heads.

CABRERA: Jeremy, a new name from the administration has also entered the timeline of this Ukraine scandal, a name that kind of comes out of left field.

DIAMOND: That's right. It appears that the president is beginning his efforts to potentially start throwing some members of his cabinet under the bus. The president during a call on Friday according to the "Washington Post" and Axios said that Rick Perry, the secretary of Energy, had urged him to carry out this call with the Ukrainian president in particular to discuss energy issues. Rick Perry's spokesperson has confirmed to us that Rick Perry supported and encouraged the president to have this conference call.

Of course, it wasn't the call itself that was problematic and so how you get from that to the fact that the president requested that the Ukrainian's investigate his political rival is another matter altogether -- Ana.

CABRERA: Jeremy Diamond at the White House for us, thank you.

Let's bring in the big guns now. With us former federal prosecutor and CNN chief legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin and former adviser to four U.S. presidents, both Democrat and Republican, CNN senior political analyst David Gergen.

David, two of the go-to defenses we've heard from Republicans so far have been if this call was really so concerning, more people would come forward and then of course this is all based on hearsay is what they were saying. They can't argue either of those points anymore.

DAVID GERGEN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, I think that the Democrats increasingly are knocking down the defenses that the Republicans are trying to erect. You know, first the big defense was, well, this is all -- it's all -- there is no quid pro quo here. And now we know there was a quid pro quo. We have text messages which make that claim very (INAUDIBLE). But then the next argument was that the first whistleblower was just providing secondhand information and now we have a new whistleblower coming forward who says he has firsthand information, he has eyewitness account.

I doubt he was in the room with the president but what I would suggest is he might well have been on the call and he can answer a big question that has been lingering out there since Angus King of Maine raised it and that is what happened to the other 20 minutes? We have a tape or we have an account that lasts about 10 minutes if you read it but it was a 30-minute call.

CABRERA: Jeffrey, we have the president going after the whistleblowers trying to vilify the whistleblowers, discredit them. But now we have not just one but two. Is there strength in numbers?

JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN CHIEF LEGAL ANALYST: Well, let's just see what they have to say. I mean, I -- you know, we always want to decide what -- you know, decide the impact of things before we know all the facts. I mean, we know that the first whistleblower was entirely correct about the content of the phone call between the president and the president of Ukraine.

[20:05:02]

The partial transcript completely corroborates what the whistleblower said and that's not hearsay evidence. That is the president's own words, which remain the key evidence in the case. As for the rest of what the first whistleblower said and what the second whistleblower may have said, let's see what it is. Let's see if it's corroborated.

The first whistleblower said there were half a dozen people in the White House who shared his concerns. Let's hear from them. Let's do a real investigation so that, you know, we can draw our conclusions based on a full set of evidence, not, you know, the day by day news developments.

CABRERA: I want to play for both of you what Democratic Congressman Jim Himes said earlier today. Let's listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. JIM HIMES (D-CT): What is happening, Margaret, is that people around the president, professionals who are in the Oval Office, who are in the situation room, are watching what is happening and are finally saying, my god, this cannot happen anymore and they are coming forward. Either as whistleblowers as apparently as many as two people are going to do officially but also leaking, which by the way is not a good thing but an awful lot of the story is coming out because people who are in the room are talking to the "Washington Post" and the "New York Times" and to others. So the --

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Just --

HIMES: -- president's real problem is that his behavior has finally gotten to a place where people are saying enough.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CABRERA: David, do you think that's what is happening? Are those close to the president fed up and leaking, becoming whistleblowers?

GERGEN: I think it's -- I think that's just a bridge too far in terms of what is going on here. What we do know about the two whistleblowers so far is that they were not White House staff. They were not -- and I see staff as such. They appear to be people who were assigned over as often happens in the executive branch, a lot of the people have come in to the NSC staff tend to come from intelligence or the State Department or the Defense Department and the like, and these people seem to be one circle out or two circles out from the inner circle, and there's not been no cracks in the inner circle that I'm aware of so far.

CABRERA: Well, we know that some of the inner circle was involved in the allegations that were, you know, put into this whistleblower complaint, and that first whistleblower actually named names. We know a couple of them will be testifying, Jeffrey, before Congress or maybe giving their depositions to members of the committee of Congress, including the E.U. ambassador, Gordon Sondland, as well as the ousted U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch. They are scheduled to go before Congress this week.

What key questions do you have for them?

TOOBIN: Well, they are somewhat different. Sondland is the political appointee, the hotel operator from Portland and Seattle, who's a very close supporter and fundraiser for the president. You know, he is on those text messages where he is saying call me. Like let's not talk about this on text messages anymore. Why was he so concerned about the apparent quid pro quo being memorialized in text messages?

Yovanovitch has a very different story. She was fired, she's a career foreign service officer who was fired, some people say, because she was not carrying out the president's wishes to get Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden. Will she corroborate that view? What's her view of why she was fired and perhaps most importantly, does she have any documentation, e-mails, texts that corroborate her point of view?

CABRERA: David, do you think any of these people who have been named in the first whistleblower complaint who we know are talking to Congress could become the John Dean of this saga?

GERGEN: It's possible. It's possible. Again, I think to go back to Jeffrey's point, there is still a lot of things we don't know here yet, but there may well be. It is clear that there are people who are not in the inner circle who were deeply disturbed, alarmed by what they know and have heard and want to speak out as whistleblowers or at least have some protection when they do that. And so we know that but I don't think -- so far there hasn't been anybody who has the inside track.

John Dean knew a heck of a lot, right, at the center? I mean, he was the ground central zero -- ground central for all the information going through the White House. He knew everything. So when he spilled, there was just a torrent that came out and eventually that's of course how we learned through Alex Butterfield how there was a taping system and that was the undoing.

CABRERA: Joe Biden wrote an op-ed this weekend in which he said the president was, quote, "frantically pushing flat-out lies, debunked conspiracy theories and smears against me and my family." At the same time, you know, his 2020 rivals are questioning the optics of a vice president having a son serving on a foreign board. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

[20:10:01]

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If you're elected president, would you allow this son or daughter of your vice president to serve on the board of an oil company outside this country?

SEN. KAMALA HARRIS (D-CA), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Probably not but I think the problem that we've got, again, with this issue is that it's a distraction from the fact, that, look, as far as I'm concerned, leave Joe Biden alone. Just leave him alone.

BETO O'ROURKE (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I would not allow a family member, anyone in my Cabinet to have a family member to work in a position like that.

SEN. AMY KLOBUCHAR (D-MN), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: No, I wouldn't, and I can promise you right now my own daughter who is only 24 does not sit on the board of a foreign company, but that is not the issue.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CABRERA: Fair critique, David?

GERGEN: Look, I really do think it's inappropriate for children and brothers and sisters and so forth of any sitting president to sort of take advantage of it and make money, but certainly Hunter Biden was not the first one. You just look at the -- you know, the couple, the Trump kids and they go back, there are many in the past who have done that. We'd be much better off if we had something, I think, in the law, but the larger issue right now, Ana, is for Joe Biden is, is he going to become more effective in taking on Donald Trump?

So far, he's been struggling. You know, he gave this speech and he wrote this op-ed and both of them have been -- gotten very, very little attention just because they seem to be a beat behind the news and it's one of the speeches that he gave this past week, they had it very late at night. It wasn't really picked up on the East Coast. So he's sort of -- you know, he needs to be much more forceful. He needs to show that in the debate he would take the argument to the president not that he would be struggling to figure out what to say.

CABRERA: It's interesting to see how Republicans have been, you know, responding to all of this, even as there is more and more information coming out. I want you to listen to Senator Lindsey Graham now defending the president even in light of a second whistleblower coming forward.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC): Remember Kavanaugh. Remember Kavanaugh that started with one complaint that wound up being unverifiable, a complaint against Judge Kavanaugh about a party that took place in high school 30 years ago without any notice of where it happened and when it happened, and everybody described to be there said it didn't happen and five more allegations came after that.

What did we learn in Kavanaugh? That they were coaching witnesses and they were piling on to try to create an impression that Judge Kavanaugh was a flawed human being.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.

GRAHAM: This is Kavanaugh all over again.

(END VIDEO CLIP) CABRERA: Jeffrey, your reaction?

TOOBIN: Very interesting how a lot of Republicans, the ones who are talking and most are not talking. They're talking about the process. They are talking about, you know, the whistleblowers. They are talking about, you know, hearsay evidence. What they are not talking about is the substance. You don't hear them saying, well, it's just fine to ask the government of Ukraine to investigate your political enemies. It's just fine to ask the government of China as the president said at the end of last week to investigate your enemies.

They are talking about, you know, Adam Schiff is not doing a good job. They're talking about hearsay evidence. They're talking about, you know, whistleblowers coming out late. They are not talking about the substance because they don't want to talk about the substance.

CABRERA: David, final thought?

GERGEN: I agree.

CABRERA: OK.

(LAUGHTER)

TOOBIN: Your eloquence is so admirable.

CABRERA: We could all be synced and articulate.

David Gergen, Jeffrey Toobin, gentlemen.

GERGEN: Thank you.

CABRERA: It was good to have you with us. Thank you.

Coming up, if you needed more evidence that this impeachment inquiry is getting more divisive, how about a Republican senator now declaring he doesn't trust the CIA or the FBI?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA): Donald, you used to own a casino. You know the house always wins.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CABRERA: That was House Speaker Nancy Pelosi reminding the president of a rule from his casino days as Democrats pursue an impeachment inquiry.

And joining us now CNN national security commentator and former Republican House Intelligence chairman, Mike Rogers.

Congressman, the White House has signaled no cooperation until Speaker Pelosi has the full House vote on actually opening an impeachment inquiry. She says there is no rule that requires her to do that. Does Pelosi need to hold this vote?

MIKE ROGERS, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY COMMENTATOR: Well, listen, this thing has turned into such, you know, a sharp-edged partisan political bickering fest. I think it's properly appropriate that they have the vote. And I'll tell you why. It would give the president the opportunity to have legal counsel at depositions and other things, and if they're going to -- if they're going to go through this and they truly mean that it's fair, normally it starts out with 30 seconds of he's guilty. We should hang him. Quick hearing. You know, speedy hanging. Oh, by the way, we want to be very judicious in the way we approach it.

All of that doesn't give people faith and I don't think it's appropriate, candidly. We're talking about undoing an election of the United States of America. They better take it serious. So, I would go ahead and have the vote, give everybody their due process. I think two process is important in this. Remember, the president, like him or not, is going to get his own spirited defense and I think that's what you see happening. So I think it would do the vote, and then it makes it really hard for the president not to provide the documents that the House is looking for.

CABRERA: You know, earlier this week Republican Senator Ron Johnson told the "Wall Street Journal" that a State Department official actually told him there was a quid pro quo with Ukraine. Now Johnsons gave an interview just this morning. He was immediately on the defensive. He began repeating a conspiracy theory that the president was being sabotaged and then he said this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. RON JOHNSON (R-WI): Chuck, I just want the truth. The American people want the truth.

CHUCK TODD, "MEET THE PRESS" HOST: So do you not trust the --

(CROSSTALK)

JOHNSON: President Trump --

TODD: Do you not trust the FBI? You don't trust the CIA? I am just very confused here.

JOHNSON: No. No, I don't. Absolutely not.

TODD: You don't trust either of those agencies?

JOHNSON: Peter Strzok and Lisa Page?

TODD: OK.

JOHNSON: After James Comey --

TODD: You believe the FBI and the CIA, these government agencies --

JOHNSON: Peter Strzok, John Brennan, no, I don't trust any of these guys in the Obama administration.

TODD: OK.

JOHNSON: I don't trust any of them.

TODD: You don't trust them now. You trust them now?

JOHNSON: No, I didn't trust them back then.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CABRERA: He says he does not trust the FBI or the CIA. That is absolutely jaw-dropping coming from a sitting U.S. senator, is it not?

ROGERS: Yes, I mean, obviously, boy, that's concerning to me. It's -- listen, this is collateral damage in what is turning into this very partisan divide that I just don't think is helpful.

[20:20:08]

And both sides are guilty, Ana. I -- honestly they are and I think you can see that. I mean, just even the talk of impeachment like watching a baby with a crowbar, you know something bad is going to happen here pretty soon. And so all of this, as it unfolds is, you know, a bit concerning. People are making charges. I'm going to bet in six months they wish they hadn't made, on -- from every angle of this. And so again, my argument is everybody needs to calm down. So the second whistleblower is likely part of the six folks that were mentioned in the initial whistleblower's complaint and then the pressure, by the way, when the president gets out there and condemns whistleblowers and attacks the whistleblower, what he's doing is forcing these folks to run to the IG to get whistleblower protection.

I mean, no one is actually thinking through the problem set here. If everybody would calm down, do an investigation and afford all parties due process, you could actually get to a conclusion, I think the American public could go I can live with that. Whatever it is. Right now I'm just concerned because of this we're not going to get to that conclusion.

CABRERA: I hear you. I want to play you what we heard from former Secretary of State Colin Powell about the Republican Party. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEN. COLIN POWELL (RET), FORMER SECRETARY OF STATE (1987-1989): The Republican Party has got to get a grip on itself right now. Republican leaders and members of the Congress, both Senate and the House, are holding back because they are terrified of what will happen to any one of them if they speak up. Will they lose a primary?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CABRERA: If you were in Congress right now, how would you like to think you'd be responding? ROGERS: Listen, I would be for due process and what happens happens.

And so as we would work through trying to do the fact-finding on this and again, I've been pretty vocal about all of these things when he came out and said the things he did about Russia, I condemned it. When he talked about China, you know, a country that has a strong adversarial intelligence relationship toward the United States, and asked them to do an investigation, I condemned it.

I don't think I would change if I were in Congress. What we do have to do, though, is try to take a step back and get people to cool off a little bit because of the severity of what we're talking about. You know, what happens now is we get into this tribal warfare that you're seeing happen in Washington, D.C. Most people on the outside of this Washington, D.C. bubble are starting to say, I don't know, I'm exhausted by this whole thing.

CABRERA: Yes.

ROGERS: I'm not exactly sure what the truth is. It sounds very political to me and by the way, when that happens, no one will win. Especially the United States of America. And that's why I'm hoping people stop. You know, every time there is a new detail, they run to the microphones and say this is it. This is the smoking gun. We'll be fair in the hearing but this is the smoking gun. All of that I argue needs to stop. If you really believe this is that sober moment, then treat it like a sober moment and the president candidly needs to stop talking about this and start doing other things that a president should be engaged in, and it's not tweeting about a whistleblower candidly.

CABRERA: All right, Congressman -- former congressman Mike Rogers, thank you. You'll be back with us shortly of course to talk about your series "DECLASSIFIED" and the new episode tonight.

Also here on CNN NEWSROOM, Senator Cory Booker, he has a message for President Trump after his attacks on Joe Biden. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[20:27:29]

CABRERA: As Democrats ramp up their impeachment efforts against President Trump, and a second whistleblower is coming forward, the 2020 Democrat presidential candidates are weighing in as well.

A short time ago, I spoke with Senator Cory Booker who shared his reaction to the news of this second whistleblower.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CABRERA: Senator, good to have you with us.

SEN. CORY BOOKER (D-NJ), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Thanks for having me, Ana.

CABRERA: First, your reaction to this news of a second whistleblower? BOOKER: I don't find it surprising. I think that there are a lot of

people that witnessed this kind of behavior and we're only at the beginning of knowing the depth and the breath of it. Remember, this is now an allegation that has not only implicated the president by his own language but we now know it's also the State Department and the secretary of State. It's also the Department of Justice and the attorney general.

There are dozens of people that witnessed this behavior and I imagine more people will be coming forward with more aspects of the truth, which is what the public deserves.

CABRERA: A few Republican senators, Susan Collins, Mitt Romney and Ben Sasse have now come out and criticized the president specifically over what he said about China, calling on China to investigate Joe Biden, but do you have any reason to believe that if it came time to actually vote, they would side with Democrats to remove a Republican president from office?

BOOKER: Look, I'm going to remain a prisoner of hope that we will see people when the time comes who will choose patriotism over partisanship, who will choose what's in the long-term best interest of this country over what's in their short-term political interest. We saw that in the Nixon impeachment efforts that eventually Republicans seeing what the evidence was broke with him. That's why I think this process that Nancy Pelosi and House leadership is going through right now to get all the evidence out there because I think all Americans have a line, they have a line, that they know that if a president does certain things, enough is enough. No matter what their partisan views are, that's too far.

This to me is going to be a period in which a lot of stuff is going to expose this president for what he's done. And I think people are going to see more and more that he chooses to pursue his own petty personal ambitions and interests over what is the national security and I'm hopeful that we will see profiles in courage as this evidence gets laid out plainly before the American people that more Republicans will do the right thing.

CABRERA: Senator, the president has continued to throw out more baseless allegations against Joe Biden this weekend on Twitter.

[20:30:00]

The former vice president has now taken the president -- taken on the president directly in a new Washington Post op-ed, and he writes this, Trump is frantically pushing flat-out lies, debunked conspiracy theories and smears against me and my family, no doubt hoping to undermine my candidacy for the presidency, but it won't work, because the American people know me, and they know him.

To be clear, there is no evidence of wrongdoing by the former vice president or his son, Hunter Biden, even the Ukrainian prosecutor has said as much. Senator, if the overwhelming issue for Democrats is, President Trump must be defeated, do you feel that you and other Democrats should be doing more to speak in one voice that Joe Biden's family is off-limits?

SEN. CORY BOOKER (D-NJ), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: No, I've said time and time again, that this is unacceptable, that if you come after Joe Biden, you're going to have to deal with me in this case. There is no -- as you said, these are baseless, unfounded, scurrilous lies, plain and simple, trying to undermine the character of one of the statesmen of our country, not our party, but our country.

And so, yes, you got a problem with me. I can't speak for this in a political context. This is just me as an American, to see this kind of attacks and whether the lies the president tells about Joe Biden or lies that he tells about other American citizens to demean and degrade them.

CABRERA: Senator Cory Booker, I really appreciate the time tonight. Good luck on the campaign trail. Thank you for joining us.

BOOKER: Thank you very much.

CABRERA: Coming up, we're answering viewers questions on impeachment, including could Trump be removed from office and still run again in 2020. Our legal analyst, Elie Honig, is standing by. Stay right there.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[20:35:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CABRERA: We are entering yet another week of the impeachment inquiry into President Trump and all the developments. This ever-changing story really are coming fast and furious, and CNN legal analyst Elie Honig is back with us to help break it all down because you have sent in so many questions to him, and this is where we are bringing you, your answers.

OK, we have a lot of documents, obviously, already at Congress' disposal, when it comes to this impeachment inquiry, Elie, so one viewer asks, can the House impeach Trump just on written documents or do they need to call witnesses and do any other investigations?

ELIE HONIG, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: So, the short answer is yes, the constitution, very broadly, gives the House sole power of impeachment. So, whatever the House really decides is good enough, is good enough.

Now, in 1998, when Bill Clinton was impeached, the House impeached him based solely on the Ken Starr report. There was no additional witness. There was no additional investigation. But I think we're looking at a different situation here with the Ukraine, because there are still so many unanswered questions and I think the House really does need to continue doing an investigation.

We're already seeing new information come forward, the texts last week, now a second whistleblower. So, at a certain point, though the House will decide, now we've got enough to vote, and then they will. CABRERA: No president has ever been impeached and removed from office. So, one viewer asks, could Trump be impeached and removed and still run again in 2020?

HONIG: A lot of people ask this question. I think it's because Trump has defied expectations so many times. The short answer is probably not. The constitution says that if the Senate, convicts, then the person, the officer will be removed from office and disqualified to hold and enjoy any office in the future.

So, on its face, it seems he could not run again. However, there is some, again, little history lesson in the early 1900s, at least three different times, federal judges were impeached, and then the Senate separately voted OK, he's out, but do we also disqualify him? And, at least, with one of them, the answer was no, so he's removed, but he's not disqualified.

That said, is a practical matter. If the president is impeached, even if he's not disqualified, it's going to be very difficult, politically, to run and win again in 2020. But then, again, don't put anything past Donald Trump. He has defied expectations before.

CABRERA: No kidding. OK. Another viewer asked, if Trump is impeached and removed from office, which means Mike Pence becomes president, how is a new vice president picked?

HONIG: So, the answer is in the 25th Amendment. The answer is, the president or new president chooses a vice president, and then that person has to be approved by a simple majority of both the House and the Senate.

Now, the 25th Amendment was passed in 1967, it turned out just in time, because a couple years later, we had this wild sequence where first, Spiro Agnew, who was vice president to Richard Nixon, resigned under corruption investigation, actually not related to Watergate, but he resigned.

Richard Nixon then chose Gerald Ford, who was approved by Congress. Of course, Richard Nixon then resigned, Gerald Ford became president, and Gerald Ford selected Nelson Rockefeller, who was confirmed by both houses of Congress.

So, of course, it's historically very rare to see this kind of game of musical chairs, but then again, we are in historical times right now.

CABRERA: And what are your top questions for this week?

HONIG: I have about a million, but I'll choose three. First of all, how will the White House respond to the new subpoena that Congress served? That is a huge battle. We could end up in the Supreme Court in a Nixon-like decision.

Second of all, will more career public officials come forward with more information? We know there's a second whistleblower, but courage tends to be contagious in this kind of situation. And third, will more Republicans start to show cracks, start to show some support for an impeachment inquiry? We've seen Mitt Romney potentially leaning that way, Susan Collins, others, giving indicators, and I think, this, more than anything else, will determine ultimately the fate of this presidency.

CABRERA: Elie Honig, thank you and thanks for --

HONIG: Thank you.

CABRERA: Staying with us for all four hours and please keep your questions coming in. Viewers at home, you can submit them to Elie at cnn.com/opinion. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[20:40:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CABRERA: President Trump, so far, has not gotten his wish to meet either whistleblower, the original one, or this new second one. Right now, their names are being kept secretly, need to know. Some of the most famous whistleblowers in U.S. history did eventually make themselves known, sometimes long after the scandal they set in motion. Here's CNN's Randi Kaye.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MARK FELT, FORMER ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR, FBI: You tell me what you know, and I'll confirm. I'll keep you in the right direction if I can, but that's all. Just follow the money.

RANDI KAYE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: He is perhaps the most famous whistleblower in history, known simply as Deep Throat. In the 1970s, he helped take down President Richard Nixon by divulging critical information about the Watergate break-in to Washington Post reporters, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Woodward, Bernstein, you're both on the story. Now don't [BLEEP] it up.

KAYE: Deep Throat would set up secret meetings with Woodward by drawing a clock with a specific time, usually late at night, on page 20 of Woodward's copy of the New York Times. They would then meet at that time, inside an underground parking garage.

FELT: No, no, I'm not Deep Throat.

KAYE: In fact, he was. The mystery ended in 2005 when Mark Felt, the number two in command at the FBI in the early 70s, revealed he was Deep Throat. Also, in the 1970s, military analyst Daniel Ellsberg earned a reputation as the most dangerous man in America, for leaking a top-secret government study about the Vietnam War, known as the Pentagon Papers.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The name has now come out as the possible source of the time, as Pentagon documents, that is out of Daniel Ellsberg.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

[20:45:06] KAYE: The Pentagon Paper showed the government had mismanaged the Vietnam War and lied about it. Ellsberg was charged under the Espionage Act of 1917, with theft and conspiracy. But the charges were later dropped due to government misconduct. Ellsberg's disclosures as a whistleblower are credited with helping end the war.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

RICHARD NIXON, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I couldn't care less about the punk. I wanted to discredit that kind of activity.

KAYE: Decades later in 2013, former U.S. Army soldier Chelsea Manning was convicted, after sharing nearly 750,000 military and diplomatic documents with WikiLeaks, related to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

CHELSEA MANNING, FORMER SOLDIER, U.S. ARMY: I stopped seeing just statistics and information and I started seeing people.

KAYE: Included in the leaked material, a video of Iraqi civilians and journalists being killed by a U.S. helicopter in 2007. She was convicted and sentenced to 35 years for the leak, but President Barack Obama commuted her sentence in 2017.

The same year Manning was convicted, whistleblower Edward Snowden began leaking classified government material to the media in a documentary film maker.

EDWARD SNOWDEN, WHISTLEBLOWER, NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY: The more you're ignored, the more you're told it's not a problem, until eventually you realize that these things need to be determined by the public.

KAYE: Snowden, a former CIA employee and NSA contractor, shared documents from the National Security Agency about far-reaching surveillance programs.

JAMES CLAPPER, FORMER DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE: People's lives are at risk here because of data that Mr. Snowden provided.

KAYE: Among other things, Snowden was charged with giving National Defense information to someone without a security clearance and revealing classified information. He's living in exile in Russia. Randi Kaye, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CABRERA: Coming up, a super-secret strategy that was right on the money, the untold story of how DEA agents took down a vicious Colombian cartel, next.

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[20:50:00] (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CABRERA: On tonight's brand-new episode of the CNN Series, "DECLASSIFIED," it is the untold story of how DEA agents followed the money all the way to a vicious Columbian drug cartel.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If you want to capture and indict a top cartel leader, you don't follow the dope. They distance themselves from that. You go after the money.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Our end game was not arrest one and seize 50 kilos. Our end game was not shut down this store and seize a million dollars. Our end game was to dismantle an entire cartel by following a money trail, from a street level money laundering investigation.

What was unique about Tele Austin, was that the stores were owned by the Norte del Valle cartel itself. There had been banks in Miami that had been co-opted by traffickers, but the Norte del Valle cartel didn't need to rely on others. It could handle the money itself.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CABRERA: Former House Intelligence chairman and host of "DECLASSIFIED," Mike Rogers, is back with us now. So, this investigation didn't start out as an effort to take down a big drug cartel, right? It started as a relatively small money laundering investigation. When did investigators realize they had hit on something much bigger?

MIKE ROGERS, CNN EXECUTIVE PRODUCER: Well, once you started pulling that thread, you could see how big and how connected it was to the Norte del Valle cartel. And why this is important, Ana, is because most people don't realize this, but the DEA is a part of the intelligence community. It's part of our 17 agencies that are in charge with intelligence, number one.

And this cartel was so important, not only did they catch it through the money, but that money was being spread around pretty liberally, including a terrorist organization who got money from that, something called the AUC, which was a Columbian state-recognized terror organization.

So, what -- the great way for these folks is remember how much money they were doing, about half of all the cocaine entering the United States.

CABRERA: Wow.

ROGERS: And the sheer volume of cash was getting harder and harder to hide. And that's really how the DEA and the IRS, with FBI and local law enforcement were able to pull that thread and work it right back until their ultimate indictment and conviction.

CABRERA: That's right. Follow the money, not the drugs, became the guiding principle during this investigation.

ROGERSS: Yes, absolutely.

CABRERA: How did that strategy pay off and help lead investigators to the top members of this cartel?

ROGERS: Well, again, once they started going after this investigation, they started to understand the complexity of how they were hiding, moving and dispersing money. All of that became critically important to track it back to the leadership of the cartel.

And they were able to get a few key flips along the way, including some wire taps along the way, that were enabled them to actually pin it on the senior leaders of the cartel. So, it's pretty exciting. I don't want to give away everything --

CABRERA: I know.

ROGERS: Because you're going to have to watch the show and find out. But I think people are going to find it, A, exciting, and B, to understand just the volume and scope of this and why it did impact our national security. And again, this was cash that ultimately was supporting a known terrorist group, as well.

CABRERA: Former Congressman Mike Rogers, we look forward to the show tonight. "DECLASSIFIED," a brand-new episode, "UNTOLD STORIES OF AMERICAN SPIES," airs at 9:00 p.m. right here on CNN. Thanks again. We'll be right back.

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[20:55:00]

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CABRERA: Former President Jimmy Carter speaking at an event tonight, just hours after he suffered a fall at his home in Plains, Georgia. Carter had to get a few stitches above his brow. He turned 95 years old just last week, telling a crowd tonight, well, first of all, I want to explain my black eye, a bit of humor there. Carter surviving a dire cancer diagnosis back in 2015, and he currently holds the record for longest living U.S. president.

It was all laughs on deck for Saturday Night Live's take on President Trump's response to the fallout from his call with Ukraine. Take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

COLIN JOST, ACTOR AND WRITER, SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE: As impeachment gains momentum, President Trump said he may stop referring to the media as fake news, and start calling them corrupt news. And the media says, they may stop referring to him as President Trump, and start calling him former President Trump.

And this week, we started seeing evidence of the White House covering up the Ukraine scandal like one, not all suspicious texts that said, there were no quid pro quos of any kind. Unfortunately, the next text was the wink emoji, cash emoji, crazy wink emoji, and then the Giuliani emoji.

MICHAEL CHE, ACTOR, SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE: Trump keeps saying there was no quid pro quo, which can only mean there was mad quid pro quo. Whenever a guy with like a 30-word vocabulary starts quoting the law in Latin, because he breaks that law all the time.

JOST: Twitter removed an anti-Joe Biden Nickelback meme that was posted by the president.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: See? He's strong.

JOST: Which is a sense, that if you had said it at any other time in history, would have meant that you were in the middle of a stroke.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CABRERA: And that's going to do it for me tonight. The CNN Original Series, "DECLASSIFIED: UNTOLD STORIES OF AMERICAN SPIES" starts next. Have a great night. Thanks for being here. Enjoy the show.