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Trump Heads To NATO Summit As Impeachment Probe Heats Up; House Intelligence Committee Reviews Impeachment Report; Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) Pushes Debunked Ukraine Conspiracy Theory Again. Aired 10- 10:30a ET

Aired December 02, 2019 - 10:00   ET

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

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POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: -- there gathering this morning outside of the Supreme Court, where, for the first time in nearly a decade, the justices will consider a major Second Amendment case about gun rights.

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The hearing concerns a New York City law that limits where licensed gun owners can take their handguns.

The city actually changed that law earlier this year, so it's unclear of how that will affect the Supreme Court considering all of this.

New York lawmakers say the justices should dismiss the case. Gun rights advocates want the court's new conservative majority to weigh in on all of it.

All right, it is the top of the hour. Good morning, everyone. I'm Poppy Harlow. I hope you had a nice Thanksgiving.

The president set to depart the White House at any minute. He is headed to the NATO Summit in London. While he is there, the impeachment inquiry here is wrapping up. Today, House Intelligence members will get their first look at the committee's impeachment report. They will likely vote to approve it tomorrow, then this all shifts over to the Judiciary Committee on Wednesday.

Beginning on Wednesday morning, we will have a public hearing with a panel of experts testifying about constitutional grounds for an impeachment.

The president slamming all of it, here is what he writes this morning. Quote, the do-nothing Democrats get three constitutional lawyers for their impeachment hoax, they will need them. The Republicans get one. Oh, that sounds fair.

Just a side note here, this is par for the course. A minority typically only gets one or two witnesses. The majority gets more. That's just how it works.

Despite President Trump's complaints about fairness, the White House isn't participating or not sending any lawyers for the hearing on Wednesday.

That doesn't they won't show up in the future though. The White House has until Friday to decide if it will participate in future judiciary hearings.

Let's bring in our CNN Congressional Correspondent Manu Raju on Capitol Hill.

Manu, good morning to you. So what do we expect come Wednesday morning?

MANU RAJU, CNN SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, come Wednesday morning, we'll know precisely the details of this report. This report is going to detail about two months of these investigations that have been led by the House Intelligence Committee, laying out its findings of the report over the course of this probe.

And we have sense of what it's going to say. It's going to detail what the Democrats believe was a serious abuse of power by this president, misconduct by this president's handling of Ukraine policy, and the push by his allies and himself to investigate Joe Biden, as well as Joe Biden's son, as well as the look into potential Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election, something that the president sought, have looked into, but something that has been rejected by a number of experts who say that simply did not happen. At the same time, as aid to that country had been withheld and at the same, a key meeting for the Ukrainian government and President Trump had been delayed as the push for these probes was intensifying.

Now, expect that after today, the members are going behind closed doors. Tomorrow is when they will actually vote to adopt that. Wednesday is when the Judiciary Committee will begin these proceedings, probably two weeks of hearings and proceedings in that committee, Poppy, before it starts to move to the full House for when they expect to vote on articles of impeachment before Christmas.

So this is going to move pretty quickly in the next few weeks, a historic and momentous month here in the House. Poppy?

HARLOW: No question about that. Manu, thank you very, very much.

Now, to the White House's decision not to participate at least on Wednesday, Boris Sanchez is outside the White House.

What are they saying?

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Hey, Poppy. As you noted earlier, the president tweeted about this a few times this morning. He said they'll depart the White House any minute for this meeting of NATO leaders in London. The White House Counsel, Pat Cipollone, put out a letter responding to Chairman Nadler saying that the White House is not going to participate in Wednesday's hearing, effectively saying that the details coming from Nadler are vague and that the White House has not had any time to prepare.

Here is more from Cipollone. Quote, we cannot fairly be expected to participate in a hearing while the witnesses are yet to be named. More importantly, an invitation to an academic discussion with law professors does not begin to provide the president with a semblance of a fair process.

The letter goes on to accuse Democrats of scheduling this hearing purposely when the president will be overseas in London, again, the big deadline, as you noted Poppy, on Friday when the White House has to answer for whether they are going to participate in any of these impeachment hearings. Poppy?

HARLOW: Boris, thank you very much. We appreciate it.

Let's talk about this. Let's debate it. Joining me now is former Deputy Attorney General under President Clinton, Harry Litman and former Trump lawyer Jim Schultz. Good morning, one and all.

Harry, let me begin with you. Republican Congressman Tom McClintock said over the weekend that it would be to the president's advantage to have his attorneys there on Wednesday. Is he right or is it a good idea for the White House not to play?

HARRY LITMAN, FORMER U.S. ATTORNEY: Look, it would be to the president's advantage and normally you would have expected him to come forward and present his point of view. But there is a broader strategy here of just avoiding, engaging on the merits in any way at all and try to just have a lot of the -- Cipollone's letter just dredged (ph) with kind of -- it's a screed just dredged (ph) with contempt and tries to do anything other than engage on the facts.

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So I think the general strategy, if you want to call it that, that they've fastened on is to try to stay in the back and take pot shots, and that's inconsistent with actually stepping forward and participating in the same way that they're not letting any of the most important witnesses come forward. They want to obstruct it and just keep from engaging in the very imposing set of facts that the Intelligence Committee put together.

HARLOW: Jim, does it hurt the White House's argument here, case, even just optically to not participate at all and then say this whole thing is not fair, we're not getting enough lawyers called on our side, what do you think? What would you do? You used to work there.

JIM SCHULTZ, CNN LEGAL COMMENTATOR: Well, here's what I think. I think that the strategy is the correct one of the outset here. Yes, sure, there might be some advantage to have a lawyer in there calling Adam Schiff and calling the Democrats. When they decide, no, no, we're don't want to -- we're not going to allow you call this witness, we're not going to call that witness, and that's likely what would happen.

But I think they're doing the right thing relying upon the House Republicans to do that at this point in time. Certainly, you talk about facts, Harry. I mean, you have a couple of law professors coming in and testify from the aspect of the ivory tower. There have been 30 hours with the testimony here. The American people have seen what's on the table, the polling number are going down on this.

And I think to call in a couple of folks that aren't going to focus on facts but are going and applying from the ivory tower, certainly liberal ivory towers, is not something that -- and people are going to get it and they're going to see right through it.

HARLOW: To be fair, we don't know who the witnesses are yet. You could assume some may be from ivy leagues. I hear you on that, Jim, but we don't have the list of witnesses yet. So we're all waiting for that, as is the White House.

But to your point about the polling, Harry, it is interesting. It hasn't gone down across the board. It's just staying put, but the fact that the public impeachment inquiry and hearings all over T.V. didn't move the needle. And I think what Jim is referring to is among independence when you look at the CNN polling, the support for impeaching and removing the president is actually down three points, right in line with the margin of error, even post-hearings. What does that indicate to you, Harry?

LITMAN: Yes. Look, I think that's right. I mean, Jim and the White House are seeing it an arch political term. But, of course, part of that has been the Republican strategy of trying to make a circus of the whole thing and demean it. There is a broader public need here to try to solemnize the process compared to what happened, say, in Watergate and the serious public debate that people were engaged in. There is something much bigger than the politics of independent Republicans here and really a very serious constitutional question.

The Democrats are taking a chance. You're right. It could be a little boring. It could be ivory tower-ish. But they need somehow to breakthrough this sort of circus atmosphere that Jim Jordan and Devin Nunes have imposed and try to bring home the gravity of the event. And you know what, it is grave.

HARLOW: So, Jim --

SCHULTZ: From day one -- I mean, we talk about -- let me respond to that real quick, Poppy.

HARLOW: Sure.

SCHULTZ: You know you are talking about a circus. Republicans haven't had to do anything to make this a circus. This is has been a circus from day one, from the moment Nadler started doing his first informal hearings. Then it went down n the basement in secret. Now, it's back out again.

LITMAN: It wasn't secret.

HARLOW: Let me just jump in. It wasn't secret. There were Republicans --

SCHULTZ: Oh, sure, so after the fact they released the transcript. I get it. But they did do it in the basement. They wouldn't allow certain people to be called. Come on, we know what it was. HARLOW: But all the Republican members in those three committees could be in the room. And some of them went, and even Mark Meadows said he had ample time to ask as many questions as he wanted. A number of Republicans just didn't show up. Then there was sort of that parade. And we're going to talk about a circus, Jim. I would just there was sort of that parade of people going into the room, forcing to enter the room, some of whom could have been in there. But digress.

Let me ask you about what's going to happen this week and then subsequently until Christmas, Jim. You've got Doug Collins, ranking Republican on House Judiciary, saying the first witness that he would call is Adam Schiff, even though Schiff has said he's not going to talk. It's not apples to apples at all. But David Kendall, President Clinton's lawyer, got to examine Ken Starr.

I just wonder if you think that Adam Schiff, Jim, is the most important fact witness. The Republicans could call so much so that the ranking Republican on Judiciary wants him to be the first one.

SCHULTZ: Well, they're going to want to know when he talked to the whistleblower.

HARLOW: He didn't talk to the whistleblower.

SCHULTZ: If his staff talked to the whistleblower. What did he know about this before it all became public, all of those questions.

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And he hasn't said that under oath, Poppy, so I wouldn't take that at face value.

So they want to have him under oath asking all of these questions so that they can glean information about how this whole thing began and start really getting down to the nitty-gritty on Adam Schiff's activities there.

HARLOW: So it's the most important, Jim?

SCHULTZ: I think it is because it calls into question the -- I think it's most important because it calls into question the whole process from the beginning if this thing was all baked before it even got into Adam Schiff.

HARLOW: I don't know, Harry. What do thank you think, because like if you just take the whistleblower report totally out of it, you have the questions raised by the White House released transcript of the July 25th call of Zelensky.

LITMAN: Completely. The whistleblower's account has been substantiated. That's what the whistleblower needed to do. They are a one-trick pony. What they do again and again is try to insinuate something sinister happened at the start but not even the slightest attempt to identify any fact that's been proven overwhelmingly in the last couple of weeks that is somehow flawed. Just this vague sense of, well, maybe something was wrong at the inception. We have a set of facts now for the Congress to deal with and it's the last thing the Republicans want to confront.

SCHULTZ: You just said you have a set of facts and you are basing it on a transcript. We've had that for a pretty long time now. Then why all of sudden --

LITMAN: We have fact witnesses all said, Jim.

SCHULTZ: We didn't need it. And the fact witnesses added nothing --

LITMAN: Fiona Hill.

SCHULTZ: -- in terms of real evidence, real evidence that had anything -- that brought out facts that are -- it would be admissible if the rules of evidence apply. You know that.

LITMAN: Fiona Hill, Marie Yovanovitch.

HARLOW: I hear what you are saying, Jim, and that's what Lindsey Graham is calling for, to change the rules in the Senate, to be similar to a criminal trial. That's not what this is. But, I mean, I would just name Gordon Sondland's phone call with the president and his testimony. That would be admissible, Jim.

LITMAN: Marie Yovanovitch, Fiona Hill, all of these would be admissible.

HARLOW: Hold on, I'm asking Jim. Jim?

SCHULTZ: You keep on repeating names.

I mean, look, the bottom line here is Lindsey Graham has it right. And the American people have -- there is a reason why we have the rules we have in the court system, because it provides a fair trial. Here, we're not getting that. And I think Lindsey Graham is on to something there.

HARLOW: All right, this isn't the court system. This is political process. Gentlemen, you will be back.

LITMAN: Thank you, Poppy. Thanks, Jim.

HARLOW: I'm dying on time here. Thank you very much, Jim Schultz, Harry Litman. I appreciate it.

Still to come, the president heads to the NATO Summit. He's leaving the White House this hour as Democrats ramp up their impeachment inquiry.

Meantime, Republicans already mounting their aggressive campaign to de-legitimatize the entire process.

Also, the former FBI lawyer whose text messages fueled the president's claims of an anti-Trump bias at the bureau is now speaking out for the first time. Lisa Page calls President Trump's attack against her sickening. Ahead, hear why she chose now to make her voice heard.

And he built himself as the moderate voice needed to beat the president in 2020. Now, Governor Steve Bullock says he is officially out of the race for the White House. We'll talk about that ahead.

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HARLOW: All right. So sit back for a minute and consider something. First, a sitting U.S. lawmaker pushed a conspiracy theory to support the president's defense against impeachment. But then he admitted he was wrong, right? Everyone gets things wrong. But then he pushed that same conspiracy theory again. I'm talking about Republican Senator John Kennedy and his back and forth and back again use of a debunked claim that Ukraine meddled in the 2016 election. Listen to what Senator Kennedy said on Meet the Press just yesterday.

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SEN. JOHN KENNEDY (R-LA): I think both Russia and Ukraine meddled into the 2016 election.

Russia was very aggressive and they are much more sophisticated. But the fact that Russia was so aggressive does not exclude the fact that President Poroshenko actively worked for Secretary Clinton.

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HARLOW: The U.S. Intelligence Community, the Senate Intel Committee, private investigators all unequivocally agreed Ukraine did not meddle into U.S. election. It was Russia that did that.

And, again, what makes this all the more perplexing is that it was just last week that Senator Kennedy walked back that same claim on CNN. Here he is originally making the false claim and then that night admitting he was wrong.

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CHRIS WALLACE, FOX NEWS HOST: Who do you believe was responsible for hacking the DNC and Clinton campaign computers, their emails? Was it Russia or Ukraine?

KENNEDY: I don't know, nor do you, nor do any of us.

WALLACE: The entire Intelligence Community says it was Russia.

KENNEDY: Right. But it could also be Ukraine.

Chris is right. I was wrong. The only evidence I have, and I think it's overwhelming, is that it was Russia who tried to hack the DNC computers.

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HARLOW: All right. With me now, Edwin McMullin, you'll remember his independent run for president in 2016.

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He is also the former Chief Policy Director for the House Republican Conference, and a former CIA officer. And with me again, former RNC Communications Director Doug Heye.

Good morning, gentlemen. Happy Thanksgiving. Thank you for being here very much.

I just want to give you both a moment. Let me start with you, Doug, to respond to that. I mean, Senator Kennedy is a smart man. Why is he doing this?

DOUG HEYE, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: It's really not clear, and you and I have talked about this before, Poppy. I thought it was very good of him to when he had gotten it wrong, and so clearly wrong to say, you know what, to say to Chris Cuomo, I was wrong, here is the fact, let's move on. That happens very rarely in politics these days where people even admit a mistake. So I thought that was a good positive step.

Why taking this next step to go back to the wrong policy made no sense to me. And we had talked about earlier is when you are a staffer and you get all these interview requests, sometimes it is a good thing to just kind of delete them, don't let the boss see them so they don't go on T.V. You protect your member. You protect your senator from making those kinds of mistakes.

HARLOW: Doug, stop saying that. We are asking all of them to come on this show every single.

HEYE: You should. Of course, you should.

HARLOW: Evan, what do you make of what Senator Kennedy is doing and, frankly, the danger of that?

EVAN MCMULLIN, FORMER CIA OFFICER: Yes. Well, look, I see it a little bit differently and that I think it's deliberate. And it's shocking to see U.S. senator of either party essentially performing as a Russian-style disinformation practitioner spewing these ridiculous lies about -- conspiracy theories about what happened in 2016.

But this is the thing about disinformation. You don't have to be consistent with it. You can say a crazy, wild conspiracy in one moment, walk it back the next moment, step it up even beyond the first point and the next moment. And you can do that because all you're really trying to do is kick up enough doubt about whatever it is that you're trying to protect, whatever wrongdoing you're trying to conceal or protect or distract from, and that's enough to keep those who are aligned with you for partisan reasons with you.

And so I think that's the deliberate game here. It's just so shocking to see a U.S. senator perform it.

HARLOW: And Chuck Todd rightly pushed him on that but also asked him, Doug, did you go to the briefing. Because after Marie Yovanovitch's testimony, the Intel Community briefed sitting senators, sitting lawmakers about Russia's efforts to make it look as though it was Ukraine. He said he did not attend that.

But to Evan's point about him believing, look, this is completely deliberate, et cetera, I want to ask you about the president's strategy here, because you are RNC Communications Director and the president's team clearly believes there is new reporting about it this morning that all this does is help him on the campaign trail. All this impeachment inquiry does is help him. Is there merit in that?

HEYE: I think so. Look at how Donald Trump reacted to the Mueller report. He essentially, for several days, defined it as an exoneration. It wasn't a complete exoneration. But that's how with the assist from the Justice Department how he defined that. And so if this goes to trial and Donald Trump is acquitted, it's not going to be just a mere acquittal. It will be a big, beautiful most massive declaration of innocence that we've ever seen in our nation's history or the world's history. That will be a huge benefit to Donald Trump.

I think Democrats -- we hear so often that this is a legal process, this is a political one. Democrats should want to consider the politics of this as well and see if there's a better path forward.

HARLOW: So, Evan, to that point, just building on what I asked Doug, Lisa Lerer and The New York Times, it was her reporting that pointed this out that I thought was really interesting in the last month's gubernatorial races in Kentucky and Louisiana races that Democrats actually won.

She writes, quote, in races where Democrats did well, internal polling from Democratic committees showed that impeachment was a drag. They felt they won those races by smaller margins than they would have had the impeachment hearing had not been going on.

If it is a political weight on Democrats, should that matter, or is their constitutional duty above all?

MCMULLIN: Well, of course, it's their constitutional duty above all. They should remain aware of the political dynamics of these actions of impeachment, of course. But they need to do their jobs first and foremost.

I mean, look, we have a president here who has now an established pattern of pursuing foreign backing, illegal foreign backing to help his elections. He accepted Russian help in 2016. Now as president, he's pursuing it again using U.S. taxpayer dollars in his office to help obtain it. He was almost successful in this case.

It's now a pattern. This isn't a one-time incident. We have a president who wants to do an end run around our democratic process, which is a direct threat to our freedom. And we, through our representatives in Congress, have to do what we can to hold them accountable.

Now, imagine this. Imagine if the House, for example, didn't impeach the president and it didn't get to the Senate, imagine what the president would say in that case and imagine what his argument would be is, look, even the Democrats didn't hold me accountable for this.

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The so-called do-nothing Democrats who just wanted to impeach me from day one, even they didn't impeach me, so I have done nothing wrong. That opens the doors for him to do even more of what he's already done in the past, again, this pursuit of foreign backing.

And so I think we've got to do what we can. Our representatives in Congress have got to do what they can to hold him accountable because we have a real problem on our hand with a president who continues in this abusive -- abuse of his office in pursuing foreign backing.

HEYE: If I can say real quick, Democratic members are coming back too. So these are Democrats who are from swing districts that Donald Trump won. When they come back to Washington, they're going to tell their leadership, a lot of them, I am getting killed back home. That's a very important political dynamic that Democrats have to pay attention to.

HARLOW: I hear you. I was talking to Dan Kildee form Michigan about that on Friday night. But he said Republicans are saying things in the elevator and behind closed doors that they're not talking about when they walk on the floor.

Thank you, gentlemen. We've got to jump because the president just spoke on his way to the NATO Summit. We'll have that for you on the other side of the break. Stay right there.

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