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Interview with Carl Bernstein on Impeachment; Interview with Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) on Senate Vote on Witnesses; Senate Poised to Reject Witnesses, Acquit President. Aired 9:30-10a ET

Aired January 31, 2020 - 09:30   ET

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

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JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: The Senate impeachment trial of President Trump, just the third president to be tried in the Senate, now hinges on one critical vote for witnesses. But it looks like that vote is poised to fail. If that happens the president will almost certainly become the third U.S. president to be impeached by the House but, of course, not convicted in the Senate.

My next guest says this impeachment is a cover-up plain and simple. Joining me now, Carl Bernstein, who won a Pulitzer Prize for covering the Watergate scandal for the "Washington Post."

And Carl, good to have you on here particularly as we --

CARL BERNSTEIN, JOURNALIST AND AUTHOR: Good to be with you.

SCIUTTO: As we compare the playing field to Watergate. Of course, the key to Watergate was that you had a handful of Republican senators who, in effect, turned on the president, that the weight of the evidence was too much. You have not seen that here. Why?

BERNSTEIN: Well, first of all, let's look at what Watergate was because it was about a criminal president who acted as a tyrant. And what we have here now is the Senate of the United States through the Republican leadership and membership has now joined hands with a tyrant. The assertion that Professor Dershowitz made really is an excuse for tyranny. That the president cannot be checked by the Senate.

So what we have, unlike the Nixon case, is we now have a precedent that has been set, especially if we are going to follow this new catechism of cult of Trump that Professor Dershowitz has advanced, this catechism that you cannot abuse his power. So totally different situation that happened in Watergate because in Watergate, the real heroes were Republicans who stopped tyranny.

SCIUTTO: What did you think, seeing Lamar Alexander last night who, of course, was a protege of one of those Republicans you referenced, Howard Baker. To say Democrats proved their case, a remarkable thing to hear from a sitting Republican senator, but not impeachable, and not only that, I don't see any need to hear from a key witness, the president's former National Security adviser, who his account seems to confirm the Democrats' allegation?

BERNSTEIN: I think it's going to be remembered as a truly craven moment in our history by a senator who had the opportunity to make a real difference and act courageously in our history because that ability to hear these witnesses, we don't know what Bolton would say. We don't know if perhaps the, quote, "conspiracy of Giuliani," the president, et cetera, might go farther than what has been presented by the Democrats so far.

The example of Watergate is the relevant one because John Dean was in the Oval Office with the president of the United States. And he was the key witness that really showed us what Nixon had done. Up until now, the Republicans in their presentation in the Senate kept saying, well, we know everything. There's nothing more to know. We now have in Bolton the opportunity to find out, is there more? Might Bolton have been exculpatory in some way?

We have not had a fair trial now. We've had a sham trial. A rubber stamp Senate, the Republicans, that has really set a precedent that this country is going to have to grapple with for generations to come.

SCIUTTO: And you wonder if immediately, one could imagine a Richard Nixon, if he was acquitted in the Senate, what he would have perceived the message to be as to what he could do with presidential power. So look at President Trump. You've studied him for the three, four years of his presidency. How does he take this message? Does he take it as carte blanche to just go forward and continue to, for instance, pressure foreign countries for help in this election?

BERNSTEIN: What we know about President Trump is contempt. His contempt for the rule of law and what we have now seen is the Republicans controlled Senate of the United States, the Republican Party in the higher body of Congress has now gone along and endorsed and enabled his further contempt of the rule of law.

Let me say one more thing about your comparison there that you were making with Watergate. Bob Woodward and myself at the end of Watergate, we wrote a book called "The Final Days," and we went to see Senator Barry Goldwater who told us about how he pulled out his diary that related how he and the other Republican leaders of Congress went to see Richard Nixon after the smoking gun tape had been found and here we have the smoking gun in Bolton.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

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BERNSTEIN: And Goldwater and the leadership of the Republicans in the Congress went to see Nixon and Barry Goldwater told Nixon, you do not have my support or the leadership of this party. You will be convicted in the Senate of the United States. And that's the difference.

SCIUTTO: Yes, no moment like that here certainly. Carl Bernstein, always good to draw on your experience. Thanks very

much. Poppy?

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: Such important perspective he has.

All right, when impeachment is said and done, whichever way this thing goes, who is going to pay the bigger political price? Republicans for probably saving the president or Democrats for trying to remove him?

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SCIUTTO: The biggest question today is, what next? Including how will the president react? How will he behave in this election? Because now it is all but certain that Trump will be acquitted by the Senate. Republican Senator Lamar Alexander extinguishing nearly all Democratic hopes of simply hearing from a witness or witnesses in this trial after last night. He announced his intention to vote no.

HARLOW: Similarly put, it would take a major development to drop in the next couple of hours to change the fate of the votes that are set to happen today.

My next guest said just two days ago that he had a glimmer of hope in terms of getting witnesses. With me now is Senate minority whip, Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois.

You said glimmer of hope two days ago. Now you know where Senator Alexander is going to go. Senator Murkowski, though, we don't know. And she asked a fascinating question yesterday when she said why should this body not call Ambassador Bolton. Do you have a sense of which way she will vote on witnesses?

SEN. DICK DURBIN (D-IL): I don't. And I respect Lisa very much. She's shown courage in the past when others did not and I will respect her judgment whatever it might be. But that glimmer of hope that I had a few days ago disappeared last night with Lamar Alexander's decision. I don't see the fourth vote that's necessary.

HARLOW: You just said that you will respect Senator Murkowski's decision either way. Do you respect the decision that Lamar Alexander made by essentially threading the needle saying that the House made the case, the president's behavior was inappropriate but it's not enough to impeach him -- Remove him from office?

DURBIN: Listen, in this business, you can respect a person and vehemently disagree with their conclusion of their vote. Tomorrow is always another day. And I have worked with Lamar over the years and I really have a high regard for him as a person. So even though I'm sorry about this decision, I am going to continue in the closing months of his tenure to do my best to work with him.

HARLOW: You wrote this on Twitter this morning. Quote, "Getting access to key documents and witnesses is essential to holding a full and fair trial. Anything less would be a cover-up." Do you believe that in saying that he will vote against witnesses, for example, Senator Alexander is engaging in a cover-up?

DURBIN: I am not going to get personal about this, but I will say, generally speaking, the Senate Republicans are afraid of a trial and they're afraid of the truth. To think that they would not allow one single witness to come forward, an employee on the staff of the president, to tell us what he believes happened under oath tells the whole story.

HARLOW: Well, nothing stopping John Bolton from telling the whole story. You know, at a podium, at a press conference now, and I suppose if the president is acquitted, then it's voters that will have to take that to mind and make up their own decision based on what he says.

Let's talk about what could happen today. If you get Murkowski on your side, if she's a yes on witnesses, looks like you guys will stand at 50-50, a complete tie in the Senate on whether or not to call witnesses. The chief justice could step in here, could weigh in and could break the tie.

We have heard Senator Blumenthal say late yesterday that he does not believe the -- sorry, that he does believe the chief justice should do that but your other Democratic colleague, Senator Chris Murphy, doesn't agree. He said, quote, " don't want Roberts voting. That's to me pretty clear that the Constitution specifically gives that power to the vice president to break ties. It is silent on that matter in an impeachment trial."

Who is right? Should Roberts break a tie or not?

DURBIN: Listen, to have two colleagues from the same state disagree on that issue is an indication of the fact that the law is not clear at all. The rules are not clear. The Constitution gives us a handful of sentences to handle an impeachment, and we have kind of a mixed precedent in terms of impeachment trials in the past as to whether the presiding officer, in this case, the chief justice, has the authority to vote.

I can make a case for his vote ultimately, but it's also subject to an appeal of the ruling of the chair.

HARLOW: Right.

DURBIN: And he has that authority. So ultimately, Mitch McConnell, with his loyalists, is likely to prevail.

HARLOW: Do you want Chief Justice Roberts to break a tie if there is one, or not?

DURBIN: Well, I could see that happening. And if that's his decision. If you want to ask me whether I think it's going to happen, I doubt it.

HARLOW: OK.

DURBIN: I think he'd rather stand on the sidelines for this critical and historic vote. HARLOW: Well, you make a good point. We didn't see Rehnquist breaking

ties but we did see it twice in the impeachment of Andrew Johnson.

Finally, Joe Manchin yesterday -- Senator Joe Manchin said, I'm wrestling with it every minute of every day in terms of what his decision will be to acquit the president or not. We don't know what Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona is thinking, Doug Jones, we don't know. I mean, how likely do you think it is, Senator, that multiple Democrats may vote to acquit the president?

DURBIN: I just don't know. And I -- as I said earlier, I respect them. And even this whip which normally is supposed to be -- not just the vote counter but the persuader, when it comes to an issue of this magnitude and one of this historic importance, it really is up to the conscience of each individual senator, and I hope as Joe Manchin has mentioned, that he thinks this through carefully and I believe he will.

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HARLOW: Senator Durbin, it is an important day. And just three days before the Iowa caucuses as well. And we'll see if this has an impact there.

Thank you very, very much for your time.

DURBIN: Good to be with you, Poppy.

HARLOW: Jim?

SCIUTTO: You get a real sense of resignation there.

Let's bring in Rachel Bade, she's a CNN political analyst, as well as congressional reporter for the "Washington Post."

Rachel, is there any serious expectation among Democrats that the chief justice breaks a tie here to call witnesses?

RACHEL BADE, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes, I mean, you see right there, they're very much divided on this. The Constitution is silent about whether a Supreme Court justice overseeing impeachment trial can actually weigh in. You talked to Republicans, they're even not sure what would happen and I think that that's why Republicans are trying to make it so there's not going to be this 50-50 vote.

I mean, a lot of them privately are really hoping and betting that Lisa Murkowski, one of the last sort of holdouts on where she's going to vote on witnesses will not back the movement and therefore there would not be a tie to break. But you also have to think about Roberts and sort of the role he has played this entire time.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

BADE: His mentor, William Rehnquist, who presided over the Clinton impeachment in 1999, he very much was hands off and didn't weigh in, and, you know, you think about Roberts and things he has said to the courts, you know, just recently over Christmas, he had this long sort of end-of-the-year document where he implored judges to stay neutral, do not even look like you're weighing into the partisan fight.

And if you look at that document and sort of the advice he was giving to judges, it seemed like he was saying stay back, don't --

SCIUTTO: Don't --

BADE: Don't over insert. And so just looking at that, you would think perhaps he wouldn't.

SCIUTTO: So Lisa Murkowski, she's the one remaining undecided on the question of witnesses here. She is -- you recently describe her as a maverick, she was re-elected as a write-in candidate without support of the Republican Party in Alaska. Are Republican leaders applying pressure on her or wisely standing back and letting her make her own call?

BADE: They've definitely been in contact. They -- you know, McConnell was meeting with her just a couple of days ago. But I think they also realized that putting pressure on Murkowski might have the opposite effect and so McConnell has very much been giving her her space to make her decision. This is somebody who bucked GOP leadership when she voted against Brett Kavanaugh. That was a huge decision and she got a lot of Republican criticism against it.

And, you know, I've been watching her throughout this trial. She is very focused on what is happening, paying attention 100 percent of the time, taking notes, sitting right next to Susan Collins, who is a close friend of hers and is now backing witnesses. It is -- it's really interesting. It is the parlor game going right now, you know, who -- which way is she going to go? I would say I would think she would go to back witnesses, just by sort of watching her reaction on the floor. But nobody really knows at this point. So --

SCIUTTO: Yes. Yes. No one knows. And, you know, brace for surprises. Final question, if I can, we talk a lot about, you know, concerns among Democrats, you know, will this rally the Republican base, will they pay a price in 2020 for this. I wonder how -- how concerned Republicans might be, particularly not just voting to acquit the president, but just saying we don't want to hear witnesses, particularly when there's broad public support for hearing from witnesses. Is there a concern in the Republican caucus that they pay a political price?

BADE: You know, might be surprising but it doesn't seem like it at this point. I remember sort of going into this trial and the people we were watching were those up in 2020. Obviously Susan Collins who is going to back witnesses, but also people like Tom Tillis, Corey Gardner, Martha McSally, people who have potentially difficult races, and it seems like with the exception of Susan Collins, all the 2020ers have made this bet that they're going to stay with the president.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

BADE: That that's best for them politically, and during a private meeting this week, you know, it was those members who were standing up and telling their colleagues who are from much redder states, you know, we're done, we don't want to hear anymore.

SCIUTTO: Right.

BADE: We're ready to move on and so that has been a really interesting calculus, you know, we sort of expected that they would maybe want to hear from witnesses given those states, but, no.

SCIUTTO: It seems their strategy is like the president's, a base play.

BADE: Yes. Very much.

SCIUTTO: A base mobilization play and they -- you know, they're not going to win, I imagine, they calculate by going for the middle of the roaders.

Rachel Bade, great to have you wisdom. Thank you very much.

BADE: Glad to be here.

SCIUTTO: Poppy?

HARLOW: All right. An unsuccessful effort to oust the president will undoubtedly shape partly at least the upcoming election in November. The question is, will Republicans pay a price, as Jim was just asking Rachel, for protecting while Democrats get hit with the wave of backlash for trying to oust him?

With me now is Asha Rangappa, former FBI special agent and former RNC communications director Doug Heye.

All right, guys. So my very smart colleague, Stephen Collinson, who he writes great columns every night, and analysis. Here's what he writes in his column this morning, quote, "The experience of impeachment will certainly tighten the bond between Trump and supporters who just watched their champion once again defy the efforts of a Washington establishment to rein him in."

The impeachment, Doug, may tighten that bond. Will it grow the base?

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DOUG HEYE, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: No, it won't grow the base. But where it not only will make a difference and already has made a difference is, as Stephen pointed out, it really kind of strengthens and codifies that relationship between the Republican base and not just Trump, but those voters, a Thom Tillis, a Cory Gardener, for instance, but also this has been a massive financial fundraising boon for the RNC, for Republican candidates. House candidates at the NRCC have been struggling. They're going to get an influx of cash. They've already gotten an infusion with the Trump campaign, the RNC and super PACs. It's huge for that.

And ultimately, you know, Nancy Pelosi has said that impeachment is forever. That's true. But if this is a boon for President Trump, and helps him move forward and win re-election, the next four years may be more important than a theoretical forever.

HARLOW: Asha, when it comes to what Democrats do next, if the president is acquitted, you know, tonight maybe, and then he can, you know, proclaim that, given the State of the Union on Tuesday night, there are some Democrats who think they should keep going here. You had Jerry Nadler, House Judiciary chair, say they could subpoena John Bolton.

Should Democrats keep digging?

ASHA RANGAPPA, CNN LEGAL AND NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Well, based on Senator Alexander's statement, and what he said was his justification for not calling witnesses, which is that it should be for the voters to decide, I think that that itself suggests that the voters need to know the full scope of what happens. So I think that based on that rational, and especially if other senators come forth with that, absolutely the House should get to the bottom of it, to make sure that the full scope of the president's behavior is known to people and they are informed when they make their vote and therefore the 2020 election is truly a reflection of whether or not they believe that that conduct was acceptable or appropriate.

HARLOW: I think Bolton's book is out March 17th. If it can come out. I know the White House is fighting that. So people will be able to read that. But I hear you, Asha. I just wonder politically if that's dangerous for Democrats.

But, you know, like, things have gotten done, Doug, during this. The president just signed USMCA into law. It passed. It got to his desk in the middle of this impeachment, you know, series of efforts. He needed Nancy Pelosi for that. She needed him to make this happen. What do you think it means to have a president stained by impeachment, but emboldened by this likely acquittal in terms of working in Congress for the American people?

HEYE: Well, we're in a presidential election year, which means the reality is there's not going to be a whole lot of legislative work that gets done anyways. But Trump does have more of a legislative accomplishment record, I think, than we really paid attention to. So often we follow the bouncing ball of the latest Trump created and Trump does create them outrage du jour that we lose sight of the legislative accomplishments. Criminal justice reform is something I'm pretty passionate about.

This administration and Democrats in Congress both deserve a lot of credit for. But at the same time, Poppy, you know, I would remind you of the one constant that we know that we always deal with in Washington, D.C., which is that so often what we're talking about on Friday is not what we're -- what we were talking about on Monday, I think we can extrapolate on that, what we're talking about in February is not going to be on the front of voters' minds come early November.

HARLOW: Guys, listen to this, senator -- Democratic Senator Chris Coons was on with Anderson last night and he said something that struck me and I think everyone should think about. Here he was.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. CHRIS COONS (D-DE): My concern, the concern of many of my colleagues is that President Trump will stand before us next Tuesday night in the State of the Union, declare himself fully exonerated and promptly begin engaging in more inappropriate actions, inviting foreign interference in our upcoming election.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: And a lot of those bills, Asha, just haven't even made it to a vote in the Senate in terms of more funding and more process for preventing foreign election interference. Do you share the concern that the senator does?

RANGAPPA: Absolutely sure, the concern. I mean, first of all, I think that Trump will not proclaim just that he's exonerated. But I think he will claim he was never impeached. And I think that's going to be his mantra. But we know from data, from looking back, he has not accepted any responsibility for what he did. He claims it is a perfect phone call, we know there are other calls that have placed on this code word server that he wanted restrictions to, and basically he's going to now have the message including a legal argument that this -- if he wants to help his re-election efforts by engaging in this kind of behavior, that it would not be wrong. So why wouldn't he? I think that it is entirely expectable -- expected to -- that he's going to continue this.

HARLOW: I like the word expectable.

RANGAPPA: Expectable.

HARLOW: On a Friday after a long week. It's just fine here.

Asha, thank you very much. Doug Heye, so nice to have you. Both of you come back soon.

And thanks to all of you for joining us today. I'm Poppy Harlow in New York. Our special coverage of the Senate impeachment trial of the president begins right now.