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Trump Adds To His Legal Team As Impeachment Trial Starts; Pompeo Says He Was Not Aware Ex U.S. Ambassador Was Possibly Surveilled; 11 U.S. Troops Injured In Iran Missile Attack. Aired 10- 10:30a ET

Aired January 17, 2020 - 10:00   ET

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

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: -- is officially open.

[10:00:01]

And breaking this morning, sources tell us the president is now composing his defense, adding seasoned lawyers, many who appear on television, to a legal defense team, some are very familiar names.

Let's begin at the White House. CNN White House Correspondent Kaitlan Collins, tell us who's on the list.

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes. These are some really notable people and figures that people are going to recognize, especially Ken Starr, who, of course, was this hard-charging prosecutor who led Bill Clinton's impeachment.

But he's not the only name who is being added. Another interesting figure who is on the other side of things is Alan Dershowitz, who makes clear in his statement, he is someone who voted for Hillary Clinton, but he believes given what's at stake here, that is why he's coming in to represent the president.

And not only that, we're learning a little bit more about what his role is specifically going to like. He is going to be presenting oral arguments on the Senate floor, according to Jay Sekulow, the president's other outside attorney, who was going to be part of this.

And then also, of course, Robert Ray is going to be joining. That was Ken Starr's successor after he left the Office of Legal Counsel.

So those are three figures that the president is adding to his impeachment defense team. They are, of course, in addition to Pat Cipollone, the White House Counsel, and Jay Sekulow, the president's outside attorney.

And it's notable because we have been reporting trying to report for days about exactly what the president was thinking about in his legal team if he was going to be adding those Republican House members who people like Senator Mitch McConnell had told him, no, they're not the best people to add. Because that's not who you want making your case to this group of Senators, some moderate Republicans that you're going to immediate on the side. And in the end, the president is going with three additional legal heavyweights that he's going to be adding in his team.

Now, this is also notable because we were talking about Pat Cipollone and Jay Sekulow leading this team. One question that had been coming up is Pat Cipollone, the White House Counsel, and his T.V. experience. He is not someone that you're going to recognize, the average viewer, or have seen on camera a lot in the past. I mean, it's hard to actually find video of him on camera.

But, of course, Alan Dershowitz is someone who, just this morning, the president was quoting something he had said on television. That is really what led to his appeal to President Trump. He's someone who the president has relied on for advice throughout the Mueller investigation when he was being impeached in the fall. So that is someone really notable. As you see him there, someone the president made clear he wanted on his team.

Now, Jim, as far as the discussions with getting Dershowitz to join the president's team, he wasn't incredibly eager to join. It was actually a lot of back and forth between President Trump and Alan Dershowitz on this. But, of course, as you can tell with this announcement, this news today that my colleague, Pam Brown and I are getting, Alan Dershowitz is now going to be on this team along with Ken Starr and Robert Ray. And you'll see them on Tuesday presenting on the Senate floor.

SCIUTTO: Okay. You can see the president's hand certainly in these decisions. Kaitlan Collins, thanks very much.

Let's get more on the next steps of the impeachment trial. CNN Senior Congressional Correspondent Manu Raju on Capitol Hill.

Manu, they have been sworn in, this justice -- chief justice of the Supreme Court has been sworn in now. And starting Tuesday, they're going to sit and begin to hear the evidence.

MANU RAJU, CNN SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes. And this weekend, there will be work that's going to be happening behind the scenes as the House impeachment managers prepare their first brief, written brief, laying out their arguments and then the White House, the president's defense team expected to respond ahead of those Tuesday arguments.

And Tuesday, there will be a fight over the resolution on the floor of the Senate. They'll lay out the terms of this trial, the procedures going forward. Democrats had demanded that this -- that procedure would detail exactly the -- an agreement up front to call in witnesses, also to provide documents that have been blocked by the White House. Republicans, Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, pushed back to those decisions, need to wait until later.

So that fight is going to flare up on Tuesday as try to Democrats amend that resolution and try to force the Republicans hand on witnesses. Expect Republicans to push back on that.

But once that settles out, Republicans have the votes to approve their resolution, then the oral opening arguments will begin, the Democrats will make their case, they'll have a set a time to make their case, and the president's defense team will made their case as well.

And afterwards is that big question about how they deal with matters going forward. After senators asked their questions, then the senators will decide whether or not to bring forward any witnesses, whether or not to demand or subpoena any documents.

And just four Republican senators at least could join with 47 Democrats and that would be 51, a simple majority in the Senate, to subpoena some of these witnesses or subpoena some of these documents. At the moment, Jim, we just don't know if those votes will be there, so a lot of unpredictability ahead of this historic trial.

SCIUTTO: A number have said they're open to it, but have certainly not made a commitment to it. Manu Raju on the Hill, thanks very much.

Joining me to discuss, Dana Bash, CNN Chief Political Correspondent, Ross Garber who teaches impeachment law at Tulane Law School, who is also a CNN Legal Analyst.

Dana, let me begin with you. These three names, as you said just a few minutes ago, you see the president's very much in this choice.

DANA BASH CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Look, I mean, they are people we know.

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Alan Dershowitz has not just been given the president advice through the airwaves, which is a place the president likes to get advice, particularly from lawyers, but, you know, in person, on the phone, they have had contact. And Ken Starr, look, I mean, he was the guy who was responsible for the entire -- back then, it was an independent investigation of the last president who was impeached. So he knows the other side of this.

SCIUTTO: And an aggressive one.

BASH: Yes, and an aggressive one, an aggressive one. And Robert Ray also has very deep experience.

The question -- and as we just heard from our incredible reporters, Kaitlan and Pam, the plan is for them to be the presenters, the ones who are going to be speaking on the floor of the Senate, the sort of the opposing council, if you will, to all the managers that we saw.

SCIUTTO: The face of the presidency.

BASH: The face of the president's defense and the voice.

SCIUTTO: And the as Kaitlan was saying, the president seemed to be not that convinced that Pat Cipollone and the the others had that kind of teeth.

BASH: And one other quick thing before we head to Ross. There has been such a tug-of-war about whether it should be people like this, or in addition to people like that, or maybe instead of people like this, the House Republicans who were the other favorites of the president when he was watching on television, because then he felt they were making their case. The Senate majority leader pushed back hard on that, saying that's a bad idea for the people that you're trying to convince in the Senate. And it looks like at least based on this that he was right, he won.

SCIUTTO: Ross Garber, this presents an interesting question, does it not, because Ken Starr and Robert Ray, when they were leading the impeachment investigation of Bill Clinton, they called witnesses in the Senate trial. There were new depositions, right? They had access to a whole host of documents and so on that the White House blocked. Does that not open something of a vulnerability in the president's defense here?

ROSS GARBER, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: So you're right, there were depositions. But I think the bigger issue is I think what's going to happen now is everybody is going to go through all the past statements of Ken Starr and Robert Ray and find lots of comments about, you know, how significant impeachment is and how important the office of the presidency is, because remember Ken Starr was on the other side of an impeachment before. And so, yes, you know, I think you're going to see that.

But as Dana noted, these guys are very good on T.V., which is what the president is looking for. And they can potentially speak to those Republican senators in the middle who are at issue not really for removal of the president but for calling witnesses.

SCIUTTO: Let's talk about that, Dana, a vote on witnesses, right? So it looks like we're headed towards a two-stage process here, listen to the arguments, which is giving Republicans something of a potential out to say, I may call for witnesses if I hear something that convinces me that that's necessary after hearing the initial arguments from both sides here. Are you convinced there will be a meaningful vote on witnesses?

BASH: I'm not convinced of anything. I mean, this is -- we are heading into, as one of our colleagues said, the Wild West. I mean, yes, there are rules and there are parameters, but we don't know how it's going to go. Because as much of a road map the founding fathers gave on how to deal with a president, who the Congress, as part of the checks and balances, thinks is not doing right by the country, how to get there is subject to the rules of the Senate and the rules of the Senate are subject to the senators who are there.

So what we know is that the Democrats who are going to be prosecuting this case, they want witnesses, they're going to clearly try to push for witnesses and there will have to be votes on those witnesses. But the majority leader has a lot of power into how to craft those resolutions and so that's a long way of saying, we don't know.

SCIUTTO: Yes. I don't know, Democrats want two witnesses, Republicans might want to undermine the case.

Ross Garber, timeline here. I mean, I had Senator John Barrasso on yesterday, and he said, from his perspective, this might take weeks. So this idea of two to three weeks, is that a guarantee, like Dana said, like I said many times, dispense with the idea of any guarantee, I imagine, but how long can this go on?

GARBER: Yes, you guys are exactly right. And the big question is witnesses. I think what we're going to see is probably a couple of days of arguments by the House managers, the prosecutors and the president's lawyers and then period of Q&A from the senators through the chief justice, the chief justice asking the questions of the senators, you know, that might go on for a day or two.

And then the question is witnesses. If there are no witnesses, then they go right to closing arguments and we're done in a couple of weeks. If there are witnesses though, then who knows how long it might take. In Clinton, there were depositions of the witnesses.

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And then there was a discussion about whether the witnesses would actually testify at trial. So then, yes, we could be looking at many weeks if there are witnesses.

SCIUTTO: Dana Bash, Ross Garber, you know you'll be there for it. Thanks very much.

GARBER: Absolutely.

SCIUTTO: Well, this morning, the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, says that he was not aware of possible surveillance of the former U.S. ambassador, Marie Yovanovitch. We'll hear more.

Plus, from zero casualties to multiple injuries, what we're now learning about U.S. troops who were hurt during last week's Iranian missile attack on an airbase in Iraq.

And three suspected neo-Nazis arrested ahead of a pro-gun rally at Virginia State capital. The tensions have sparked comparisons to Charlottesville. We'll have more.

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SCIUTTO: This morning, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's responding, sort of, to allegations that former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch was possibly under illegal surveillance during her tenure in Kiev. Keep in mind, Ukraine is now investigating this.

Text messages released earlier this week between Parnas, Lev Parnas, of course, an associate of Rudy Giuliani, the president's personal attorney, and a Connecticut GOP congressional candidate named Robert Hyde, an ardent Trump supporter, show Hyde smearing Yovanovitch and alluding to a surveillance operation.

On March 25th, Hyde texted Parnas, they know she's a political puppet, they will let me know when she's on the move. Parnas replied, perfect. Hyde made then made the quip to Parnas that you can do anything in Ukraine with money, what I was told, to which Parnas replied, LOL.

Secretary Pompeo made his first comments about those allegations this morning in a radio interview, denying knowledge, really. Have a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HUGH HEWITT, AMERICAN RADIO HOST: Do you know Lev Parnas?

MIKE POMPEO, U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE: Never met him.

HEWITT: All right. Until this story broke, were you aware that Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch was being surveilled while serving as ambassador?

POMPEO: Yes, never heard about this at all, Hugh.

HEWITT: Okay. Now --

POMPEO: Until this story broke, to the best of my recollection, I had never heard of this at all.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCIUTTO: Well, Ukraine, as I said, is conducting a criminal investigation into the matter. No word yet as to whether the U.S. will conduct an investigation of the surveillance of the U.S. ambassador.

I'm joined now by David Gergen, he's the former adviser to Presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Clinton, and CNN National Security Reporter Kylie Atwood.

Kylie, if I could just begin with you, because you've been pursuing this repeatedly with the State Department and the Secretary's Office here. Here, you now have the secretary is saying he wasn't aware of it, to the best of his recollection, he was not aware of it. How about the answer to the simple question, is the State Department investigating this?

KYLIE ATWOOD, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY REPORTER: And that question was not posed to the secretary in this interview this morning with Hugh Hewitt. He did say, as you said, the first comment that he has made on these revelations that Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch was allegedly being surveilled by the Giuliani associates, he said, it is something he did not know about to the best of his recollection. But he did not take an opportunity there to go any further and talk about the fact that --

SCIUTTO: But you've asked that question at the State Department, have you? What have they said? It would be a simple thing to say, yes, we're investigating the possible surveillance of the U.S. ambassador. Have they given you a simple answer?

ATWOOD: No, they haven't. And we have asked repeatedly about any reaction to this news and to what the State Department is going to do about it if they say that it's wrong, that they should be defending the security of the U.S. ambassador.

And as I mentioned to you earlier this morning, they have said they have made comments about the safety of U.S. ambassadors in the past. So this is noteworthy that they're choosing not to say anything specifically about the safety of Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch when she was in Kiev.

SCIUTTO: David Gergen, you advised repeated multiple presidents here. What's your response? Why not investigate and be very public about investigating the surveillance of Yovanovitch? We know she testified under oath that she was worried about her safety at the time.

DAVID GERGEN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: She should have been worried about -- should have been worried about it, Jim.

Listen, I think the whole way that this ambassador was treated was shameful. We now have abundant evidence that there was a smear campaign led by Rudy Giuliani to bring her down and it was part of a quid pro quo but different from the quid pro quo we have been talking about all along. In this case, it was the Ukrainians telling the Americans we will help you on Biden, but you first have to get rid of Yovanovitch, you got to get her sent home. And what happened? They sent her home under a cloud ad with legitimate fear about her safety.

So it seems to me at this point, it's entirely credible that Secretary Pompeo did not know about all this, the gum chews (ph) and everything like that. But you would think at this point that his State Department would be coming to the defense of their person, of their ambassador, that they would -- they lift the cloud that has been over her, they would make it clear that she's going to protected and all these other things.

Because we have -- we saw in the previous impeachment hearings that there are some very fine people who are working as foreign service officers. They are first rate professionals. And yet we also know that applications now to join the foreign service after all of this, applications are down 50 percent.

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SCIUTTO: David, just to -- on another point, this is the testimony now or the commentary, I should say, of Lev Parnas here, questions about his credibility, he's under indictment. It strikes me that it is a similar situation were with Michael Cohen, and that here is someone under indictment but testified, gave information that, for instance, in Cohen's case the U.S. attorneys took seriously here. How should the Senate trial, how should the House, how seriously should they take Parnas' allegations here?

GERGEN: On the face of it, he is not a credible witness. In particular, you know, he has -- there is a lot of dark sides to Parnas, he has been indicted on other charges by the federal government. So we would typically say, not -- it doesn't rise to the level of taking it seriously.

However, the documents give a lot of support to what the tale -- the tales that Parnas is telling. And therefore, the issue coming up for the Senate is not simply whether they get the witnesses, but also are they going to admit documents because the document trail is pretty important here and shedding new light on the story and it has strengthened the case that the House is bringing.

SCIUTTO: Yes. And we should note that Ken Starr, Robert Ray, when they were involved in the trial of Bill Clinton, they called witnesses in the Senate trial. There were depositions, including the president, first question might be asked of them.

Kylie, just back to the question of Pompeo before we go, I know the official answers that you're getting from the State Department on this, you speak to a lot of people in that building, is there disappointment among U.S. diplomats in terms of the public response and lack of a public defense of a sitting U.S. ambassador?

ATWOOD: Well, there's certainly disappointment, especially among former U.S. ambassadors who are basically disturbed by this. But then there is also the fearful nature of some U.S. officials, diplomats that I have talked to.

One that I spoke with who served in Ukraine said to me, this is a threat. And so there are folks who are reading these text messages and just alarmed by the fact that, of course, the State Department isn't defending Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch and talking about all that they are doing to defend the U.S. ambassador's safety, but they're also fearful because they really don't know about what the State Department is doing to look into this and the authenticity of the possibility that these Giuliani associates were tracking a U.S. ambassador.

SCIUTTO: Yes. Listen, Ukraine is a country where there are some folks wandering around that might pose a threat there. There was even some reference to that in the text messages. Thank you, Kylie Atwood.

David Hergen, just one final question before I let you go. You look at the president's defense team, Alan Dershowitz, Ken Starr, Robert Ray, what does that tell you about the president's approach here to the Senate trial?

GERGEN: I think he is going to bring people who have a lot of experience. But there are also -- they can be very -- they can be very hard hitting on television. And they -- apparently, they can talk after the day -- each day's work while the senators must stay quiet about what they've heard sitting as jurors.

So I think he's gone for -- frankly, it's going to be more of a circus with them. Alan Dershowitz, of course, has been out there for a long time, taking up a lot of controversial clients over the years. He was in the studios at CNN here not long ago, Jim. And at that time he had been talking to the president. That was a few weeks ago. And he was debating whether he should do this or not. I think it's a case that naturally lends itself. But he was, honestly, I think, trying to search his soul, did he want to do this or not do this.

But these are big leaguers the president has brought in. But they do tend to be on the -- especially Alan has a lot of flair. And, you know, there's going to be a lot of questions about circus.

SCIUTTO: David Gergen, thanks very much, much appreciated.

GERGEN: Okay, Jim.

SCIUTTO: Another story we're following this hour. 11 U.S. service members were injured by Iran's attack on an airbase in Iraq last week. Why we're learning just now about those injuries and known as traumatic brain injuries resulting from explosions, we'll have more.

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SCIUTTO: Several U.S. troops are now being evaluated for symptoms of concussion or traumatic brain injury, as the Pentagon described it. CNN learns 11 U.S. service members were injured, this during Iran's missile attack on the Al Asad airbase in Iraq last week.

Let's speak to CNN Pentagon Reporter, Barbara Starr. Barbara, to be fair, they didn't know about this right away, the symptoms emerged afterwards. But it took some time for the Pentagon to reveal this.

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, that -- the Pentagon is saying that the symptoms took a couple of days to emerge.

Let's go back to when the Iranian missile attacks and actually happened, the Pentagon, within a day, said there were no apparently injuries. But protocol is that whenever service member is near a blast site, they are evaluated for traumatic brain injury or concussion injuries. That took place and 11 service members apparently had these types of injuries. And they now have been in the subsequent days evacuated. Eight of the 11 -

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