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Impeachment Trial Opens as Battle Over Evidence and Witnesses Heats Up; Pompeo Silent About Possible Surveillance of Ex-U.S. Ambassador; Pressure Grows on GOP Senators Over Calling of Witnesses for Impeachment Trial; Source: Intel Officials Ask Congress Not to Hold Public Hearings After Threat Assessment Angered Trump Last Year. Aired 9-9:30a ET

Aired January 17, 2020 - 09:00   ET

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

[09:00:36]

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: A very good Friday morning to you. I'm Jim Sciutto. Poppy Harlow is off today.

The U.S. Senate is ready to try the president of the United States. Right now, lawmakers are back home where they will face constituents days before the official start of the impeachment trial. And while the capitol may be quiet, the pressure is building over witnesses. Will the Senate call them? And if so, who? Over new evidence, will the senators consider it? And if so, which new evidence?

And from the Oval Office, President Trump is denying that he knows Lev Parnas, a close associate of his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, after Parnas implicated him in the Ukraine scheme.

Joining me now on Capitol Hill with the latest on impeachment, next step, CNN national correspondent Athena Jones.

Where do we go from here?

ATHENA JONES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, as you mentioned, Jim, the next fight is about the rules. That is what we'll see on Tuesday when the Senate comes back in, Tuesday, 11:00 p.m. after the Martin Luther King holiday, to begin this trial in earnest. And that's one of the first things they'll be doing is voting on a resolution, laying out the rules of this trial, whether or not and when new evidence and witnesses will be discussed.

And, you know, but hearing from a lot of Republicans, folks like Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee who said, look, it was the House's job to spell out this case. It's not the Senate's job to allow this new evidence and witnesses and to help the House do the job that they should have done comprehensively and completely.

So that's the argument we're hearing from folks like Graham and Blackburn and really the majority of the Republican caucus in the Senate. But there are a handful of Republican senators to watch. These are moderates. Folks like Susan Collins. And Susan Collins, interestingly, tweeted out this just in the last couple of days clarifying where she stands on the issue of witnesses.

Now you'll remember, in recent days, she said look, I'm open to witnesses. I just think it should be done later. In a later stage of the process. So there you have that tweet, her spelling out step-by- step to make it very clear where she stands, that she believes in having the Clinton model of impeachment in which case both sides make their case, Senators get to ask questions, and then the issue of evidence and witnesses is decided.

Now there had been some question that arose because she had raised some questions about Lev Parnas' evidence that he is now presenting and whether it was necessary to hear from that. She's strongly suggesting that she would be one of the folks to back the idea of witnesses and new evidence. We'll have to see if a total of four senators do end up siding with Democrats on that issue so that they can get to 51 votes and force it -- Jim.

SCIUTTO: Yes. Well, forgive me for being cynical, but there may be comfort with the Clinton model, at least parts of the Clinton model they like and parts of the Clinton model they don't like.

Athena Jones, on the hill, thanks very much.

The pressure growing on Republican senators to allow new evidence and witnesses as the indicted associate of Rudy Giuliani, Lev Parnas, of course Giuliani is the president's personal attorney, makes new claims against the president. Here he is with Anderson Cooper.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LEV PARNAS, INDICTED ASSOCIATE OF RUDY GIULIANI: To my knowledge, the president fired her at least four times. Maybe five times. I mean, once in my presence at a private dinner for a super PAC in Washington, D.C., at the Trump Hotel. And the conversation, the subject of Ukraine was brought up, and I told the president that our opinion that she is bad mouthing him and that she said that he's going to get impeached, something like that. I don't know if that's word for word. But that she was --

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST, "AC 360": You said that at the table.

PARNAS: Correct.

COOPER: Where the president was?

PARNAS: Correct. Correct. And his reaction was, he looked at me like he got very angry and basically turned around to John DeStefano and said fire her. Get rid of her.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCIUTTO: We should remember, in the president's call with the Ukrainian president, he did say Yovanovitch was going to go through some things. The president's words. Yovanovitch removed from her post in April of last year, in the end, a year after the dinner that Parnas described.

He also challenged one of President Trump's key talking points that he did nothing wrong and that there was no pressure when he asked the Ukrainian president to investigate the Bidens.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: Zelensky himself has come forward and said I didn't feel any pressure. There was no quid pro quo.

PARNAS: That's a total lie. They are still -- I mean, they're still rocked to this day. They've still not recovered and I don't know when they will.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[09:05:05]

SCIUTTO: The president has repeatedly denied knowing Parnas at all, though a number of pictures have come up with two of them together. Some video as well. Parnas has said he is willing to testify if he is subpoenaed during the Senate impeachment trial. Not clear if either Democrats or Republicans want that.

Joining me now to discuss, Michael Gerhardt, law professor at the University of North Carolina, and Susan Hennessy, she's a former national security attorney.

Michael, if I begin -- could begin with you, GOP senators, Marsha Blackburn among them, are blaming the House in effect saying, well, the House didn't call these witnesses. The House didn't have these documents. So that was their responsibility. Of course, that belied by the fact that the White House deliberately blocked witnesses and documents.

I wonder if you could make clear to folks given your knowledge the difference with the Clinton impeachment trial because going into the trial, those witnesses and documents were already considered at the time, were already available to the House.

MICHAEL GERHARDT, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: That's correct. So let's take a step back initially and remember that what Senator Blackburn said is completely wrong. In the law, we have a word for it. It's called BS. It has nothing to do with actual history. In the history of the House's impeachment, the House has never taken the position it has to do the Senate's work for it. Put together a trial.

Now with the Clinton situation where Ken Starr came in and talked about a lot of evidence that he had taken behind closed doors, interviewing, deposing, asking questions of people under oath and that evidence, that referral that he put together was sent to the Senate and then the Senate had witnesses.

In the history of the United States Senate, no completed impeachment trial has ever happened that lacked witnesses. Witnesses have always been called. That's the Senate's job, and that's the problem I think facing Republicans. If they take the position of no witnesses, they have done something historic, and it's not good.

SCIUTTO: Yes. Well, most Republicans at this point seem comfortable with that. At the same time, you have this possibility of how the trial is going to play out. Right? You know, the two parts in effect saying, OK, listen. We'll leave that question of witnesses to a later date. Let's first consider the arguments here. That seems to be where many Republicans are settling right now.

Do you see that as being somewhat, I guess, misleading or a signal that what's going to happen is they're going to listen and say, oh, we listened, and there's no reason to call witnesses?

SUSAN HENNESSEY, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY AND LEGAL ANALYST: Certainly there's a reason to suspect this is just about kind of trying to kick the can down the road. Not that you're not going to call witnesses and then sort of bury it later. That said, keep in mind sort of the optics of yesterday. The chief justice swearing in the senators, then signing this oath book in which they pledge to do impartial justice.

They're now going to have to sit there quietly and listen to this evidence. And so I do think we have to ask ourselves whether or not that might change the minds of a few key senators who have already indicated some willingness to hear witnesses. Now that doesn't mean you're going to have 67 votes for removal, but I do think that there is a real possibility that the end of that really overwhelming presentation of evidence, Republican senators, three or four that will join with the Democrats to say, look, we at least need to hear from some additional witnesses in this case.

SCIUTTO: Yes. Listen, we often will talk about Romney, et cetera. But I spoke to John Barrasso yesterday on this program and he said he's at least open to the question of witnesses.

Michael, given your experience here and covering this closely, lay out what you think the president's defense is likely to be.

GERHARDT: I think the president's defense is likely sort of take two different paths. The first path is that he just did nothing wrong. You've heard this already. And he's going to argue that whatever happened can put -- frankly, can say some things that may be hard to prove but the defense will basically be, look, there's nothing bad that happened here. And so the president does this all the time. You might hear that a lot.

The second, I think they're going to argue is the money was released. And therefore the harm, whatever harm was produced against it was minimal. So in other words, no harm, no foul, and, therefore, this is a lot about nothing.

SCIUTTO: Yes. And you might hear multiple arguments, right, even contradictory ones, right, saying it didn't happen, but even if it did happen, it's not impeachable.

In the midst of this, Susan Hennessey, the GAO comes in and says it was illegal to hold that aid. Now, you have many Republicans, Congressman (INAUDIBLE) among them, saying, this is a partisan organization. It's led by someone who was appointed by Obama. But the fact is, if you look at the GAO's history, I mean, it's a nonpartisan organization. And the argument they're making here is not an outlandish one because I know for a fact there were folks in the Pentagon concerned that listen, Congress passed this money, appropriated this money. That's Congress' job. And it's a problem if we're not spending money as Congress appropriated.

[09:10:03]

HENNESSEY: Right. The GAO is certainly not a partisan organization. It is a nonpartisan organization. I think that they are plainly right as a matter of law that the administration was not allowed to do this. That they were violating the law. We saw administration attorneys being concerned with that. And the reason why it might be significant, GAO isn't a judge. It's not a court. Nobody is going to go to jail over this.

But by saying that the president has broken the law and the administration has broken the law, that does make the impeachment case a little bit cleaner and clearer for the American public. You don't have to have a statutory offense or a violation of law in order to impeach the president. But the idea that the president didn't just do something that was wrong or unpatriotic, he actually violated the law.

I think that's something that's going to be easier for the public to understand why the House took this extraordinary step of impeaching him.

SCIUTTO: And, Michael, the law is quite clear on it, is it not? That if Congress appropriates the money, that that money has got to be spent. The president -- there are laws that were passed, you know, after Nixon that specifically prohibited a president from saying, you know what? Congress may have appropriated it, but I disagree.

GERHARDT: That's completely correct. So let's just remember basic constitutional law. It's the president's job to enforce the policy that Congress makes. The policy here was to appropriate money for Ukraine's national security. That's the policy. It's not up to the president to modify that, to change it, particularly to suit his personal interests. There was no grand objective, no objective or anything for changing congressional policy. It was all done for the personal benefit of the president.

SCIUTTO: Michael Gerhardt, Susan Hennessy, thanks very much for your expertise on this.

Any moment now, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, he'll be making an appearance at the State Department. We should note that so far he's not responded at all to reports that an ambassador of the United States, Marie Yovanovitch, was under illegal surveillance in Ukraine. Why isn't he saying anything about her?

Also, we're now learning U.S. troops were injured in that Iranian missile attack. The Pentagon initially saying there were no casualties. Why did it take so long? They are saying now that they suffered symptoms of traumatic brain injury from those attacks. And a CNN exclusive. The wife of Andrew Yang has broken her silence.

She says that she was sexually assaulted by a doctor and having to watch her accused attacker walk away with what she says was just a slap on the wrist. We're going to have more.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:15:00]

SCIUTTO: The Secretary of State Mike Pompeo set to appear at a public event at the State Department at any moment as he meets with the Foreign Minister of Pakistan. So far, he has not said a word following the release of stunning messages that suggest former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch may have been illegally surveilled before she was forced out of her post. And involved in that, a close associate of the president's personal attorney.

CNN's national security reporter Kylie Atwood is here with me now. Kylie, you've been asking about this, I know, repeatedly in the State Department.

KYLIE ATWOOD, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY REPORTER: Yes --

SCIUTTO: Ukraine, the thing they're investigating is the surveillance of the U.S. ambassador. Not all the other stuff the president has wanted them to investigate. Why has Pompeo stayed silent? It would be a very simple statement to say, of course, we're concerned about the safety of our ambassador.

ATWOOD: Yes, and we've gotten some kind of drips of information from lawmakers on the Hill. So house lawmakers have said that they have been assured by diplomatic security at the State Department that they are going to be investigating this. But as you say, the State Department and the Secretary himself have not come out and said anything about the matter.

And there are a few things that are really important here. The first of which is that the Ukrainians have already announced that they are going to be --

SCIUTTO: They're taking it seriously --

ATWOOD: Investigating this, right? And then the other thing to consider is that, it's not as if the State Department stays quiet when it comes to the security of U.S. embassies and U.S. ambassadors writ large. Over the weekend, I asked them about the security of the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, they gave me some lines on that front.

They don't get into the details, but they talk about it --

SCIUTTO: Right --

ATWOOD: In broad strokes. They are making a choice not to do that here. It has been more than 48 hours since these developments that Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch was apparently being surveilled by these Giuliani associates.

SCIUTTO: It's not like have they ever given you an explanation as to why the secretary himself has not stated --

ATWOOD: No, they haven't said anything. And we should note that the secretary has never publicly defended Ambassador --

SCIUTTO: Yes --

ATWOOD: Yovanovitch at all. And he has done that for other ambassadors. And then the other thing as you know, Secretary Pompeo, a big part of who he is, are the Benghazi hearings.

SCIUTTO: Yes --

ATWOOD: So he was grilling then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the State Department for answers about what they did for the security --

SCIUTTO: Yes --

ATWOOD: Of U.S. diplomats around the Benghazi attack. Now, obviously, this is an apples to apples. Ambassador Stevens, obviously, was killed in that attack. Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch is safely back in the United States. But, still, he is someone who has pressed the State Department --

SCIUTTO: Yes --

ATWOOD: For answers, and he's not providing any answers or any commitment to an investigation just yet.

SCIUTTO: Yes, and accuses State Department at the time of sort of dereliction of duty, right? Not --

ATWOOD: Right --

SCIUTTO: From the ambassador. Kylie Atwood, thanks very much. With me now is Democratic Congressman Mike Quigley; he's a member of the Intelligence and Appropriations Committee. Congressman, thanks so much for taking the time this morning.

REP. MIKE QUIGLEY (D-IL): Thank you. Good morning.

SCIUTTO: So, you heard the conversation there. Ukraine has launched an investigation of Yovanovitch and announced so publicly. Should the State Department announce an investigation of this, and should we hear from the Secretary of State defending a U.S. Ambassador?

QUIGLEY: We should have already. We have -- we heard from the ambassador's testimony just how dangerous their jobs can be. She was literally in the line of fire. He detailed how we have lost ambassadors in the past. It's a dangerous job and a critical job. They face enough dangers on their own. We can't be in any way hesitant to do everything possible to keep them safe and to make sure the other ambassadors know that we will do just that. [09:20:00]

And that those who would threaten them will be halted. So I would like to think we've already heard -- would have heard about this or that we'll hear about it very shortly.

SCIUTTO: Let me ask you about the ongoing impeachment trial now in the Senate. You've heard a number of Republican senators, David Purdue among them just yesterday saying that the Senate should not consider new witnesses and new evidence, that, that was the job of the house.

Looking back, should Democrats in the house have waited for courts to order witnesses to testify there, waited longer in effect before impeaching the president?

QUIGLEY: You know, I was torn on that myself because I was so interested in hearing from people like Mr. Bolton and others. But I think in the final analysis, we're probably talking about the possibility of a year, right? The possibility that this takes place after the November election. And clearly, this president needs to be held accountable before that.

We've seen how long these courts have taken, even if they had ruled that for example, John Bolton had to testify and he showed up and started taking the absolute immunity defense that others have, that courts have ruled against, that puts it off for three or four more months, and the appeals that go with it. So in the final analysis, you had to move forward to again, hold the president accountable and educate and inform the American people.

SCIUTTO: You're seeing the partisan lines form in the Senate here with some exceptions because there have been Republican senators who say they're willing to hear from -- to hear from witnesses. But I wonder, as you look at this process going forward, do you believe that this would be a meaningful trial in the Senate? A meaningful consideration of the witnesses and testimony or are you concerned that most of the Republicans and even most of the Democrats for that matter have already made up their minds?

QUIGLEY: Look, they take a sworn oath to impartial justice. The American people have asked for that, over 72 percent want witnesses. They want the documentation. And they know what it looks like, right? They appreciate the fact that in trials, that people don't come there, the jury doesn't say he's guilty, but go ahead, they wait until they hear all the testimony and they see all the documents.

I'd like to think that, that pressure will give at least four Republican senators the intestinal fortitude necessary to demand just that, so the American people can be educated and informed. We'll take it a day at a time. You know, I said we should -- I've heard people say, well, don't do this unless you're sure you can win. That's not how the constitution reads. We did our constitutional duty moving forward. It's the Senate's turn.

SCIUTTO: I want to talk about another issue. You of course sit on the Intelligence Committee. What you hear from senior intelligence officials, both in public and private setting is important to you. A source is telling CNN that top intelligence officials have asked Congress to hold worldwide threats briefings.

This is something that is done regularly and in public by senior intelligence officials that they'd be held behind closed doors. And the reason, of course, is this request coming after last year's testimony when chiefs -- intelligence chiefs testified and drew the ire of the president for frankly, disagreeing with him. Let me just put one of those tweets up on the screen here now because you get a sense "Intelligence people seem to be extremely passive and naive when it comes to the dangers of Iran. They are wrong."

And it goes on there. You know, what is your response to this effort to now hold these in private? It seems to avoid the ire of the president.

QUIGLEY: Yes, it's a horrible idea. In a democracy, it's tough enough that the intelligence community has to operate in secret, then otherwise open government or at least that's what we strive for. So, at least once a year, the core of the intelligence community comes forward and explains in front of the public in an unclassified version, exactly what the threats are and what they're doing about it.

This is what transparency is all about. It's what the oversight role of the House and Senate committees -- select committees on intelligence is all about. To say that they want to move that to a classified --

SCIUTTO: Yes --

QUIGLEY: Session takes away that opportunity. To let the public know what those threats are and certainly now, they ought to know what they are, and exactly what they're doing to address those threats. The fact that the president didn't like their views shows even more the president doesn't understand and value what the intelligence community does.

SCIUTTO: Yes --

QUIGLEY: And he wants them to be his lap dog. That's extremely dangerous. They need to operate independently to keep us safe.

[09:25:00]

SCIUTTO: Final question. We've now learned Iran's missile strike on a U.S. base in Iraq did cause U.S. casualties that discovered days later, specifically traumatic brain injury, concussions from the effect of those blasts here. I wonder, immediately following, the president, the administration said Iran missed. There were some reporting, speculation that Iran deliberately missed. But it looks that those were very near misses.

And our reporter on the ground there spoke to witnesses who said that these bombs dropped just yards from where they were. Does this raise questions about what exactly Iran's intention was with those missile strikes and raise questions about the administration's response? QUIGLEY: Oh, I think it raises questions about their response and

their transparency. All the more reason to bring these things to light publicly and hide what is an extraordinarily opaque administration's tactics. Our concerns and thoughts are that with those injured by this attack and recognize that our forces are in harm's way, especially now after this strike on Soleimani.

So we fight for transparency, and the true arguments as to why this took place in the first -- in the first place.

SCIUTTO: Well, and TBI is no small thing. Congressman Mike Quigley, good to have you on the program this morning.

QUIGLEY: Any time, thank you.