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Democratic Presidential Race Heats Up; New Impeachment Evidence Emerges. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired January 02, 2020 - 15:00   ET

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

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ALEX TREBEK, HOST, "JEOPARDY": Darn. Blew that one, Trebek.

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BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN HOST: Trebek also said that he knows he might not have a lot of time left, but he added, prayers and support has helped him really feel so much better since his diagnosis.

We continue on, hour two with me. You're watching CNN. I'm Brooke Baldwin.

On the eve of the Senate's return to Congress, explosive new evidence in the impeachment case against President Donald Trump. According to Just Security, an unredacted e-mail now shows that, back on August 30 -- that's two days after the aid freeze had become public, right, the Ukrainian military aid -- the OMB, the Office of Budget and Management, staffer Mike Duffey e-mailed Pentagon employee Elaine McCusker -- quote -- "Clear direction from POTUS" -- that's president of the United States -- "to continue to hold."

Now, this is significant, because it is evidence that Republicans have argued Democrats did not have. And it could now play a crucial role in shaping how the impeachment trial in the Senate could go.

Sara Murray is leading our hour with this.

And so, Sara, what more did Just Security report out?

SARA MURRAY, CNN NATIONAL POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, they got unredacted versions of these e-mails. They reviewed them, e-mails that have previously been released by the Trump administration, but only in a heavily redacted form and only as part of a FOIA lawsuit with another outside group.

And so these new e-mails really shed more light on the divide between the Office of Management and Budget and the Pentagon about holding this money back. I mean, the Pentagon is raising concerns over and over again about continuing the hold. They're raising concerns about whether it's illegal. They're raising concerns about, if the hold continues, they may not be able to get the money out the door in time.

You pointed to that e-mail there where OMB basically says, look, this is coming from the president.

There's another interesting e-mail, though. This one is from Elaine McCusker at the Pentagon to Mark Esper's chief of staff.

And she writes: "Recognizing the importance of decision space, but this situation is really unworkable, made particularly difficult because OMB lawyers continue to consistently mischaracterize the process and the information we have provided. They keep repeating that this pause will not impact DOD's ability to execute on time."

So, she's basically saying, look, the Budget Office keeps misrepresenting what they're telling -- what we're telling them, which is, if you keep holding with money, we can't guarantee we're going to be able to get it out the door by the end of the fiscal year.

OMB is saying, we were all on the same page about this, there weren't any issues. Other sources are saying that they believe that McCusker may have been exaggerating these concerns to try to force the administration's hand. So there was this interagency fighting going on over this hold. And these e-mails help shed light on that, Brooke.

BALDWIN: Yes. No, reading the reporting, it seemed like through the weeks or months, it was really this escalating battle between OMB and DOD.

Sara, thank you very much.

Let's put it in just all the political perspective here. The Senate's top Democrat, Chuck Schumer, is now pouncing on this new reporting.

This is what he wrote -- quote -- "The newly revealed unredacted e- mails are a devastating blow to Senator McConnell's push to have a trial without the documents and witnesses we have requested."

So how will the Senate majority leader respond when he takes the floor tomorrow morning?

Let's go to CNN's Phil Mattingly. He is up and at 'em on Capitol Hill.

And so, Phil, this -- on the one hand, this is pretty significant. But how will Leader McConnell address this, if at all?

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, I think you can expect that Senator McConnell is going to pretty much stay in the same place he's been over the course of the last couple of weeks.

And, Brooke, I will fill you in on anything you missed regarding negotiations about what a Senate trial will look like during the past two weeks, if you were on vacation, if you were traveling, if you were in Nashville, by chance.

BALDWIN: Yes. MATTINGLY: You missed nothing. You missed nothing at all. The

leaders did not speak to one another. Speaker Pelosi did not speak to Leader McConnell, either saying Senator Schumer should kind of control that aspect of things.

And so what does that mean actually going forward? Look, what we expect to hear from Senator McConnell on the Senate floor tomorrow, where he is going to lay out, at least the expectations are, what he's laid out in the past, that he believes a trial at least in its initial stages should be the House managers present their case, the president's defense team presents their case.

Senators would then have an opportunity to have -- to ask questions. And then if there are the votes to have witnesses, to compel witnesses, to compel documents via subpoenas, then that could happen, or they could vote to essentially acquit the president, which is the expectation of the endgame here that everybody's been waiting for.

Look, here's what you need to care about as we head into the Senate trial. There's obviously a lot of unanswered questions right now, starting with, when are they actually going to send the articles of impeachment to the United States Senate and kick this process off?

But it's a numbers game. And the number is 51. In an impeachment trial, if you have 51 votes, you can essentially get whatever you want. You can get any witnesses subpoenaed that you want, you can get any documents subpoenaed that you want.

So the issue isn't so much that Chuck Schumer is pushing McConnell to do something. He's trying to reach out to moderate Republicans or Republicans who maybe want a more fulsome process and bring them along. And every drip that he sees related to this issue, including the reports today filed by Just Security, serves to bolster that case.

Now, will he win on that? I think we're going to have to wait and see. We don't any answers yet.

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But one thing we do know is, Senator McConnell has laid out the path he sees for what the trial should look like, at least in its initial stages. And he's not going to move off that any time soon -- Brooke.

BALDWIN: OK, we will look from McConnell tomorrow morning.

And for the record, I may have been on vacation, but I didn't miss a certain congressional correspondent in a certain "Men's Health" magazine.

MATTINGLY: Oh, come -- oh.

(LAUGHTER)

MATTINGLY: I'm just -- I'm trying to...

BALDWIN: It's still the holiday. I'm allowed to have a little fun. Phil Mattingly, you're the best. Thank you very much.

MATTINGLY: Thank you, Brooke.

(LAUGHTER)

BALDWIN: With me now, Elliot Williams, CNN legal analyst and former deputy assistant attorney general.

Elliot, a pleasure to have you on. Happy new year to you.

ELLIOT WILLIAMS, FORMER DEPUTY U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL: Happy new year.

And I'm also not in "Men's Health" magazine.

BALDWIN: You're not in "Men's Health" magazine, unlike Phil Mattingly.

WILLIAMS: Unlike some of us, yes.

(LAUGHTER)

BALDWIN: What -- this Just Security reporting, this back and forth between OMB and DOD, what's your reaction to this, and especially just how significant is this when it comes to this pending Senate trial and the requests for witnesses?

WILLIAMS: Yes.

So here's the thing. It's damning, because it explicitly links the president the president's conduct. The problem, it doesn't change the president's defense, because what the president and the White House have been saying for quite some time is that the call and the president's conduct was totally above-board, and very legal, and very cool.

So it doesn't really change anything. Now, Phil made a really good point, which is talking about moderate Republicans who are going to be at play sort of in the structure of this Senate trial. And that's who Senator Schumer is speaking to, but also who's going to be at the negotiating table?

BALDWIN: Yes.

WILLIAMS: Back in 1999, the Senators Lott and Daschle, the leaders, they negotiated, worked out a deal, which is sort of how the Senate kind of works when it's functioning well.

And that's likely to happen here. Regardless of the saber-rattling you're seeing between Senator Schumer, full disclosure, my former boss, Senator Schumer, and Senator McConnell, they're still going to try to work something out. It's just the fate of those five or six Senate Republicans is too much in the balance for that not to be the case.

BALDWIN: To that point, on the math, Democrats need four Republican senators to successfully call witnesses, request documents.

Two Republican senators, you have Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins. They have both now shared public discomfort with Senator McConnell forcing and prejudging a witness-free trial.

Former prosecutor Joyce White Vance argues this -- quoting -- "If Bolton and other witnesses with information relevant to Trump's conduct in Ukraine don't testify, the Senate trial will be nothing more than a fancy cover-up."

What do you say?

WILLIAMS: I think that's accurate, given the nature -- look, look at the e-mails from today, and sort of the highest levels of government with Bolton and Mulvaney knowing information

So, absolutely. So, again, this all comes down to these negotiations around those people who are up for reelection, yes.

BALDWIN: OK.

And the House can still issue its subpoena to all senior officials involved in the events documented in these new e-mails and "The New York Times" story out this week. Should they?

WILLIAMS: Yes.

And, remember, it's easy to forget that I think six congressional committees still have open inquiries into the president with respect to impeachment. But also, even if they're not, open oversight inquiries.

And certainly impeachment is on the table. You have heard reporting that they're thinking about additional impeachment charges. Look, there might be political costs to that, and they may not want to go down that road, but they certainly have the ability to subpoena, call more witnesses, call more documents to strengthen and bolster the case, or even just make a new one altogether.

BALDWIN: How concerning are these new e-mails that Just Security got their hands on if you are Trump's defense team?

WILLIAMS: Again, given that their whole defense is to go after the deep state and the media and say that the president -- and, look, this is an argument, which is that the president has the authority under Article 2 of the Constitution to guide foreign policy and foreign affairs and so on, that, to some extent, all this does is say that what the president was doing was carrying out his affairs as president.

Now, look, Congress has already found that was an impeachable offense. A majority of Americans already find that that was improper. Common sense and the law and the Constitution dictate that the president's conduct was improper.

So, yes, that's their defense. They're going to keep making it, but it's unlawful. It just -- and it's plainly unconstitutional, as we have seen after weeks of testimony on this.

BALDWIN: Yes. Yes. Again, we will watch for the senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, on the floor tomorrow morning.

In the meantime, Elliot Williams, nice to see you. Thank you very much.

WILLIAMS: Good to see you. Happy new year.

BALDWIN: Happy new year.

Just in the last hour, the Biden campaign just released its highest fund-raising numbers yet, but it's still well behind the haul that Bernie Sanders raked in. So what does all this mean just a month before the Iowa caucuses? We will analyze that.

And ahead, a heartbreaking update from the family of an elderly man stabbed during that Hanukkah celebration. We will play the emotional message for you about the rise in anti-Semitic attacks.

And frightening video from the raging wildfires in Australia, as people are desperately trying to escape. We will take you there live, as a state of emergency for days has been declared.

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BALDWIN: We're back. I'm Brooke Baldwin. You're watching CNN.

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The end of 2019 gave a big financial boost to the 2020 hopes of several Democratic presidential contenders, Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden both saying that the quarter was their best of the campaign thus far.

Senator Sanders hauled in a whopping $34.5 dollars, while the former vice president snagged just under $23 million. Sanders is now leading Democratic field, with Pete Buttigieg in second place with nearly $25 million, then Joe Biden, followed by Andrew Yang and Tulsi Gabbard.

But President Trump outpaced all of them, topping $46 million. And while Elizabeth Warren has yet to release her totals, she is getting a lot of questions about it.

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SEN. ELIZABETH WARREN (D-MA), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: They will be out soon. And I'm deeply grateful to every single person who contributed to my campaign.

QUESTION: Are you worried about keeping up with him?

WARREN: Look, I am very, very grateful to all of the people who've contributed to my campaign. So, I am very, very happy for every single person who contributed to

my campaign.

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BALDWIN: Another big piece of news today, Julian Castro announced his campaign would come to an end.

In a video, the former HUD secretary said in part -- quote -- "It simply isn't our time."

Kaitlan Collins is our White House correspondent. Arlette Saenz is a CNN political reporter.

And so, Arlette, let me start with you, because you are on the trail with team Biden in Iowa. All right, their best quarter of their campaign in terms of dollars. What's driving their momentum?

ARLETTE SAENZ, CNN POLITICAL REPORTER: Well, this is certainly good news for the Biden campaign, Brooke, as he's posting his highest figure yet, $22.7 million, he raised during the last three months of the year.

That is an increase from his previous quarter, when he had raised $15.7 million. There had been some concerns about his fund-raising during that time. Now, Biden has relied primarily on those big-dollar private fund-raisers. He does allow press into them, but his campaign is also saying that he saw an uptick in online contributions.

His online contributions doubled from last quarter is what his campaign has said. Now, we are here in Iowa right now, where he is starting a five-day tour. He's actually at the National Motorcycle Museum.

And he's trying to make his case to Iowans. And, today, he picked up a pretty high-profile endorsement in the state from Congresswoman Abby Finkenauer. She's 31 years old, a rising star in the Democratic Party, and she is actually in a district which she won back in 2018 that President Trump had won in 2016.

Now, Biden's going to be making his case over these next five days here in the Hawkeye State, as we're now 32 days out from the caucuses. But this fund-raising figure, though it's behind Pete Buttigieg and Bernie Sanders, it does show that the former vice president has the finances, the resources to stay in this race for a potentially long primary fight -- Brooke.

BALDWIN: As for President Trump, Kaitlan, he's had a pretty impressive haul of his own. He's essentially running unopposed.

Are there any changes planned for his fund-raising strategy once the Democrats and all their fund-raising dollars settle on one nominee?

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, it depends on exactly who the nominee is going to be. We have seen them at times go from where they're targeting certain

potential Democrats, where the president said that's not something he wants to do just yet. But, at times, they have gone back to that.

Now, the fact that they have got this $46 million that they raised in the final three months of 2019, and now they have got about $130 million dollars on hand, is putting them in a really good place to start this election year.

That's a lot of money. And, of course, as you said, the president is running unopposed. He's an incumbent president. Those are givens that he's made. He's raising that much money.

Barack Obama, for context, raised about $42 million when he was at a similar point and about to run for reelection. So it's putting him in a really good place. But as you're talking about how they're targeting people that they want, these potential donor, it's been really interesting to see how that's played out in the last three months, because, of course, one big factor that has been different than every other quarter where we have seen the president's campaign's fund-raising numbers is, of course, impeachment.

And they have been using this, Brooke, time and time again to fund- raise, sending out pitches portraying the president as a victim, saying that these congressional Democrats are just out to get them and essentially nullify their vote.

And that has been a really successful strategy for them. So we have had a lot of reporting coming out of the White House from our team about how the president hasn't necessarily picked a strategy yet for what that Senate trial is going to look like. Still a lot of questions about who it is that is going to be representing him.

But, Brooke, one thing we do know is that, financially, they have been able to capitalize on impeachment, and you're seeing that in these numbers from the fourth quarter.

BALDWIN: Got it.

Kaitlan and Arlette, ladies, thank you.

SAENZ: One thing also to note...

BALDWIN: Yes, yes, yes, jump in. Jump in.

SAENZ: Yes.

No, one other thing, as Kaitlan was talking about, the Biden campaign actually thinks that they are doing better because of this impeachment fight, as Joe Biden has been...

BALDWIN: Interesting.

SAENZ: ... at the center of these attacks from President Trump.

They believe that that's part of the reason that they're starting to see an uptick in their contributions.

BALDWIN: Makes sense.

Arlette, Kaitlan, thank you very much.

And we're now getting those new fund-raising numbers, as the Iowa caucuses are now just a little over a month away. Several Democrats are set to crisscross the state in the coming weeks as a last-minute push to woo those voters.

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Joe Biden likely hoping that his first endorsement from, as Arlette mentioned, Iowa's congressional delegation, this freshman Democrat who turned a Trump district blue in the midterms, will help him get across the finish line.

CNN national political reporter Maeve Reston is with me now. She is fantastic to follow on Instagram, not just because of her precious daughter, but because of all of her posts from Iowa, where you basically have an address there, I'm sure.

MAEVE RESTON, CNN NATIONAL POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes.

BALDWIN: "The Des Moines Register" reports that many caucus-goers are still undecided.

And you can see Biden and Sanders both speaking here. There they are in Iowa right now. Maeve, who are the top candidates that voters are talking most to, and are there micro-battles shaping up among them?

RESTON: There are, Brooke.

I just was out in Iowa actually with all four of them over the last couple of weeks. And it's fascinating, because it just kind of feels like deadlock there. You have got so many voters saying that they are deciding still between two or three or four candidates.

BALDWIN: So interesting.

RESTON: And then there are these micro-battles kind of brewing.

The biggest one, of course, is this question within the Democratic Party between should they go for big structural change or do they want a middle-of-the-road candidate like a Biden or a Buttigieg?

So you see voters deciding between those two things and the candidates making their cases. Then between Biden and Buttigieg, this kind of really erupted over the weekend, with Buttigieg questioning Biden's judgment as he's facing all of these questions about whether he has enough experience as a 37-year-old mayor to run the country, basically.

And then the third one that I would mention is just the Buttigieg vs. Warren battle. This is over fund-raising and money and transparency, Warren trying to make the case that she is beholden to no one, as she's losing some of those college-educated voters to Pete Buttigieg, who's been surging in Iowa, according to the polling that we had before the holidays.

And there hasn't been a lot out there since men, Brooke.

BALDWIN: want to get you to tell me an anecdote in just a second. But are you surprised that so many Iowans are undecided still?

RESTON: I mean, I'm not just because Iowans sometimes are quite fickle, and there is energy for each of these candidates in the room, but so many voters are trying to figure out these trade-offs, as they think about the bigger question of who is really the best nominee to take on Donald Trump.

I talked to one grain farmer, retired grain farmer, who said he thinks that Warren actually would be tougher up against Trump than Pete Buttigieg, but he's going to go for Pete Buttigieg because he wants like the young thing.

BALDWIN: The young thing.

RESTON: And it's just -- it's really fascinating to see the way that voters are playing -- are looking at these different traits and trying to make their calculations.

And they have -- they feel like they have a lot of good candidates. So I think it's been hard for a lot of them to make a decision, Brooke.

BALDWIN: You mentioned the grain farmer. Do you have another anecdote that just sort of encapsulates -- from a voter encapsulating where things stand in Iowa a month out?

RESTON: Yes, I think that actually it was at another Buttigieg event where a woman told me the moment that she finally made her decision.

This was one of the rare decided voters, actually, who said that she was listening to Pete Buttigieg during a debate talking about the lack of diversity in the police force. And she had the debate on in the background, and she heard him say about not making the force more diverse. I just couldn't get it done.

And she said, I wheeled around in my living room, I went back to listen to this guy who just sounded really different and refreshing. And she still hadn't made up her mind, but then, later on, when Bernie Sanders had a heart attack, she said, I just decided I wanted to go with a young person and that made the decision for me.

And for her, that's the way it's going to go. But I think this is going to be incredibly close and deadlocked really until the end, Brooke.

BALDWIN: We will be looking for all of your reporting.

Maeve Reston, thank you very much.

RESTON: Thank you.

BALDWIN: Thank you.

The 2016 Democratic presidential nominee has a new job. Queens University in Belfast, Ireland, just announced that Hillary Clinton will be its first female chancellor. The former secretary of state received an honorary doctorate from the university in 2018. She first visited the Northern Ireland area as first lady in 1995, was involved in the peace-building process there for years and years.

Secretary Clinton's role as chancellor is largely ceremonial, presiding over graduations, and acting as ambassador for the university abroad.

In a statement, she called the five-year appointment -- quote -- "a great privilege."

Right now in Australia, a state of emergency has been declared, as people desperately flee these wildfires that show no signs of slowing down.

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The prime minister even confronted the anger and resentment as he visited one of the areas hardest-hit.

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SCOTT MORRISON, AUSTRALIAN PRIME MINISTER: How are you?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm only shaking your hand if you give more funding to RFS. So many people here have lost their homes.

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We need more help.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

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BALDWIN: The next 24 hours are critical for parts of fire-ravaged Australia.

Ferocious winds, extremely hot and dry weather conditions

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