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Rep. John Garamendi (D-CA) is Interviewed on Ukraine Call Testimony; Baghdadi's Number Two Killed; Winds Threaten to Feed California Fires. Aired 9:30-10a ET
Aired October 29, 2019 - 09:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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[09:33:22]
JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: He is the National Security Council's top Ukraine expert. A member -- serving member of the military. Could he also be the witness Democrats have been hoping for? Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman just arrived on Capitol Hill. These are pictures just moments ago. His testimony gets underway any moment now. He is the first person who was actually on that now infamous July 25th call between Trump and the Ukrainian president that is the focus of the House impeachment inquiry.
Joining us now to discuss, Congressman John Garamendi. He's a Democrat from California, member of the Armed Services Committee.
Congressman, we appreciate you taking the time this morning.
REP. JOHN GARAMENDI (D-CA): Good to be with you.
SCIUTTO: For weeks now, since the whistleblower's complaint first came to light, the principal Trump complaint about it, or criticism, as well from his allies, has been that it's all based on hearsay. Now we have someone who was on that call and says he heard the same thing and expressed concerns. Does this put the hearsay argument to bed in your view?
GARAMENDI: Well, it's one more step in that process and certainly a very big and important step. Others have come forward with direct information, not so much on the phone call, but the issue surrounding it. I'm thinking of Ambassador Taylor specifically here.
And we also do not know the exact testimony given in many of the depositions, but this is a very, very important moment. This is a person that was there.
There are others that will be asked to testify. And when we do, we will have a first-person account of what actually took place. And, really, we ought to get the tape itself that's hidden in that super computer or super safe computer somewhere in the bowels of the White House.
SCIUTTO: You're right, where many of these conversations were moved to -- GARAMENDI: Exactly.
SCIUTTO: To protect them from eyes, even within the administration.
I want to quote from Vindman's opening statement here because it gives us a vision into his sworn testimony.
[09:35:04]
He says the following, and this gets to whether Ambassador Sondland, Trump appointee, U.N. ambassador, lied in his testimony. So Vindman says that Ambassador Sondland emphasized the importance that Ukraine deliver the investigation into the 2016 election, the Bidens, Burisma. I stated to Ambassador Sondland that his statements were inappropriate, that the request to investigate Biden and his son had nothing to do with national security and that such investigations were not something the NSC was going to get involved in or push. So he expressed his misgiving.
He also says that Dr. Hill, Fiona Hill --
GARAMENDI: Right.
SCIUTTO: The now former Russia expert in the NSC, then entered the room, asserted to Ambassador Sondland that his statements were inappropriate. OK, so you have those two folks who voiced their misgivings.
GARAMENDI: Correct.
SCIUTTO: Sondland testified if Ambassador Bolton, Dr. Hill or others harbored any misgivings about the propriety of what we were doing, they never shared those misgivings with me then or later.
Has this testimony now made a liar of Ambassador Sondland?
GARAMENDI: Well, it certainly raises questions, doesn't it, about the voracity of his statements. The fact of the matter is that the president's allies have been doing their very best to first stonewall, then to do character assassinations and misdirect or flat out lie. We'll see what comes of Sondland. It doesn't look good for him. And, yes, that would be something you can go to jail for if, in fact, you lied under oath.
SCIUTTO: Should he be called back to testify, to reconcile that contradictory testimony?
GARAMENDI: Well, I think he'll probably have a chance to do that, perhaps in open hearing. But the facts are coming out one by one, testimony by testimony. And the reality is that the president did try to extort a political favor from the Ukrainian president, from the Ukrainian government. All of which is clearly a -- his oath of office, national security, all of those questions have been raised and, quite probably, would be a campaign finance violation.
SCIUTTO: Let me ask you this. And I should give you credit here, note that you were one of the first Democrats, and you did so on this broadcast with my colleague Poppy Harlow, calling for a House wide vote on the impeachment inquiry. Now, after resisting for some number of weeks, Speaker Pelosi has called for just that. It's going to happen on Thursday.
I wonder why -- what changed. Have Democrats, have you been hearing from constituents, from voters that you need a House vote to legitimize the inquiry?
GARAMENDI: No, absolutely not. The inquiry is fully legitimate. Federal court said so just last week that it is the right and proper and legal thing for the House to do. So it's not a question of legitimacy, it's a question of arming ourselves to be fully prepared for what is going to be a very difficult fight.
I know that if I'm going into a football game, I want to be fully prepared for that encounter. And so, too, now that we move from the -- what amounts to a grand jury investigation, the depositions, to lay out the facts, to get the information, now we move into the public phase. And it's appropriate that at this point we lay out how that's going to be done, what the role is of the various committees and also making it very, very clear that the Republicans and the president have an opportunity to present their case in these open hearings. All of that is going to be in the resolution that would be voting on Thursday.
So, yes, it's all been proper all along. The judge said so. Pelosi was quite correct and now to take this additional step to lay it all out.
SCIUTTO: But the fact is this will put some Democratic House members, particularly in the swing districts, in some political danger here. I just wonder, in your view, did the Democratic leadership yield to Republican complaints here?
GARAMENDI: No, I don't think so. I think that it's the right thing to do. To lay it out in the public, to put a resolution on the floor that this is how things will be conducted.
With regard to those few Democrats that are uncomfortable with this vote, they can always vote present and I think legitimately say that they're not prepared, given the information at this point, to vote for this resolution.
Now, they may change their mind voting one way or another later, but right now clearly the votes are available to push this resolution forward. If nothing else, Pelosi knows how to count votes.
SCIUTTO: Just very quickly before we go, have any Republican colleagues of yours told you that they are willing to vote for this inquiry to go forward?
GARAMENDI: Well, two things here. First, are they willing to vote for it? No. Do they think that the inquiry should go forward? Yes.
SCIUTTO: OK. That's a difference.
GARAMENDI: Yes, it's a difference.
SCIUTTO: Sticking your neck out or not. We see a lot of that.
GARAMENDI: You got it.
SCIUTTO: Congressman John Garamendi, thanks very much for coming on.
GARAMENDI: Thank you, Jim. Bye-bye.
POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: All right, we do have some breaking news. The president has just written this on Twitter. Let me read it to you.
Just confirmed that Abu Bakr al Baghdadi's number one replacement has been terminated by American troops. Most likely would have taken the top spot. Now he is also dead.
[09:40:06]
There's a lot we don't know, including when he was killed. Was it in the same raid? We'll bring you more as soon as we get it.
Stay right here.
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[09:45:03]
SCIUTTO: Breaking news just in the last few moments. The president saying that the man set to replace ISIS leader al-Baghdadi has also been killed.
HARLOW: Here's what the president wrote just confirming that Abu Bakr al Baghdadi's number one replacement has been terminated by American troops. Most likely would have taken the top spot. Now he is also dead.
SCIUTTO: CNN's Barbara Starr is at the Pentagon this morning.
Barbara, do we know who specifically the president is referring to here and in what operation this took place?
BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, what we do know is there was a different raid, and it is believed that a top ISIS operative was, in fact, killed in that raid. Whether that is what the president is referring to or not, I think we need to still figure out. It's not always clear what he means in his tweets.
But the thing is, the person that was killed is portrayed in some circles as a potential number two to Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, or a replacement, rather. And I think the president is sort of caveating it that way because some people also refer to the operative that was killed as a top spokesman for the organization. So we will see.
Important to remember, ISIS is a very diffuse organization with cells all over the world.
HARLOW: Barbara, before you go, I understand you have some new details about just how crucial of a role the Kurds played in all of this.
STARR: Well, the Syrian Kurds now say that they had an operative deep inside Baghdadi's inner circle and quite a tale it is. They say that this person was able to take possession of a piece of Baghdadi's underwear. They were able then to get a DNA sample from it. And that provided a baseline DNA sample for U.S. troops to use when Baghdadi is dead. They can verify his identity with a DNA sample that had already been established.
Jim. Poppy.
HARLOW: Yes.
SCIUTTO: And you're not able to do that without close proximity. I mean that's a remarkable source for the Syrian Kurds to have.
Barbara Starr, thanks very much.
STARR: Sure.
SCIUTTO: A growing danger now in southern California. Hurricane-force winds fueling wildfires burning there. A CNN crew is on the ground. A live report. I mean the pictures are just amazing and frightful, frankly.
HARLOW: Wow.
SCIUTTO: We'll be back soon.
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[09:51:59]
HARLOW: Powerful winds, high temperatures putting more than 25 million people under red flag warnings in California. This as crews battle at least ten wildfires across the state. The Kincade fire in California's wine country is the biggest by far, scorching more than 74,000 acres. I mean just look at those images in Sonoma County, California, from yesterday. It's twice the size of San Francisco. Nearly 200,000 people are under evacuation orders there. Millions more without power.
SCIUTTO: It's amazing how routine these fires seem to have become in California.
HARLOW: Have become, yes.
SCIUTTO: In southern California, near Los Angeles, the Getty Fire continues to smolder. The fire has burned some 600 acres of what happens to be some of the most expensive real estate in the U.S. The fire has threatened also the 405 freeway since it sparked yesterday morning and is just 5 percent contained this morning. They've got a long way to go there. That's a view from the freeway.
CNN's Omar Jimenez is live in Los Angeles.
So, Omar, big concern in that area. Stronger winds tonight. Winds are like rocket fuel for these kinds of fires. What do we know?
OMAR JIMENEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right, Jim and Poppy. One of the biggest concerns they have is trying to get as much done as they can in the daytime hours, before we expect these wind gusts to pick back up in the evening hours. And they're going to continue to be that way until midday Thursday. And the reason this complicates the firefighting efforts is many times it takes these embers within containment zones that these crews have worked very hard to create and sometimes spreads these even miles away and starts up fires in places there were not fires to begin with.
Now, all of that said, one of the things that they have focused on, on this point is that while fires like the Kincade Fire, for example, are much bigger than what we have seen here in Los Angeles, the real concern here is the proximity to homes. It's why the priority at this point has been trying to preserve many of these structures and evacuation zones like the one we are in right now, in Brentwood, Los Angeles. So that is going to be a major point of concern.
And, of course, just trying to get as much done before those winds gust up again, expected this evening.
HARLOW: Well, given that, Omar, because we're hearing some reporting that things are getting better in some parts. A friend of mine who lives in Brentwood told me last night they're, you know, going to be able to go back home. Do you have a sense of when that could be true for more people there?
JIMENEZ: That is what is going to likely come out today.
Now, the good news on the evacuation front is that we have seen mandatory evacuation orders lifted in some portions and just downgraded to evacuation warnings. But I can tell you, when we were leaving this area yesterday, there were many anxious people at the bottom of the hill here wondering when they would be able to get back in. And, of course, crews are just trying to make sure it's safe before they finally let people back to their homes.
HARLOW: Of course. Omar, thank you. Great reporting out there. We appreciate it very much.
We do have a whole list of ways that you can help all of these people who have had to evacuate their homes in the wildfires. Just go to cnn.com/impact. Lots of ways listed there.
Still ahead, moments ago, a top White House Ukraine expert arrived on Capitol Hill as a key witness in the impeachment inquiry.
[09:55:03]
Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman expected to testify that he twice reported concerns about the president's pressure on Ukraine to his boss. I'll have a lot more on that ahead.
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HARLOW: Top of the hour. Good morning, everyone. I'm Poppy Harlow.
[10:00:01]
SCIUTTO: And I'm Jim Sciutto.
A member of the U.S. Army, for more than two decades, wounded in combat, a volunteer to serve in this White House, testifying now under oath on Capitol Hill.
