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McConnell Didn't Express Views on Trial at GOP Lunch; Nikki Haley on Impeachment Trial: "Give the Man a Break"; Senators Sworn in for Trump's Historic 2nd Impeachment Trial; GOP Argues Against the Constitutionality of Trump Impeachment. Aired 2:30-3p ET

Aired January 26, 2021 - 14:30   ET

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

[14:30:00]

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Wolf, Jeff Zeleny was talking about the closed-door lunch Senate Republicans held before the swearing in that should start shortly.

My colleague, Manu Raju, reports from a source inside that lunch that everybody is very closely watching Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell.

Obviously, it's become very clear over the last several weeks, according to people close to him, that he believed what the president did, in the lead up to the January 6th attack, may have been an impeachable offense.

And there's also no question that McConnell has broken away completely from President Trump. They have not spoken since December 15th.

He's tried to move his conference away from several elements of key agenda items of President Trump, now former President Trump, over the last several months as well, move things in a different direction.

At this closed-door lunch, my colleague, Manu, reports McConnell did not tip his hand either way in terms of his view of the trial. And made clear to his colleagues, to his conference that everything would be litigated in the briefs.

I think what this sets up going forward is obviously everybody is going to watch how Republicans vote on this procedural issue that will come up in a short while, particularly how the senior Senator from Kentucky votes.

But I think also how he acts or interacts over the course of the next several weeks or however long the trial takes once it launches February 8th.

Look, Wolf, I don't think there's any question now that anybody expects 17 Republican Senators to join with Democrats to convict the president. And I'm not sure, based on people I talk to close to minority leader,

Mitch McConnell, that anybody expects McConnell to convict at this point in time.

But how he operates over the next several weeks, what he says publicly over the next several weeks, it carries a lot of weight.

Not because he will bring 16 Republicans along to convict but because he's still the leader. He's still very respected inside the conference.

And because he's so clearly is, in the words of one adviser, "done with President Trump."

How he operates is going to be something that's very closely watched not just by us, not just by Democrats, but by Republicans inside his own conference -- Wolf?

WOLF BLITZER, CNN HOST: Certainly is.

Phil, thank you very much.

John King, is with us as always.

John, we're waiting for this quorum call. And then all 100 U.S. Senators will be sworn in, in groups of four, alphabetically. And then the process can get going. They'll hold off two weeks before the real trial begins.

JOHN KING, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Which is another odd twist in these unprecedented times, that you swear in the jury and then hit the pause button for two weeks.

But it's a reminder of this remarkable collision of events, impeachment trial of the former president just days into the critical early days of a new president.

How much does this impact the Biden agenda? How much does this impact the mood on the Hill?

Just today, they finally reached a deal and reorganized a 50/50 Senate.

How much does this impact what Phil was just talking about, this soul searching -- there are stronger words you can use -- going on in the Republican Party now over do we stay loyal from Donald Trump, do we break from him completely, do we try to find some middle ground?

I think it's important, and Phil was touching on this, the consequence of Mitch McConnell saying open mind. Keep an open mind and let's hear the evidence.

For four years, Donald Trump said jump and most Republicans said how high. Mitch McConnell is trying to prove this day is over.

That does not mean, in the end, he's going to vote to convict or, in the end, organize enough Republicans to vote to convict.

It means he's planting his flag in the, "I'm worried about my Senate. I'm worried about 2022."

There are other Senators who are already thinking about 2024, presidential ambitions.

We're heading into very unprecedented times where, if you're President Biden, you're worried about COVID relief plans and vaccines.

Yes, you believe Donald Trump should be held accountable but you're worried about your agenda because the impeachment trial will fall critically in that critical 100-day period.

If you're Republicans, there's a mess in the Republican Party, a big fight over where you should stand.

McConnell making clear he's done with Trump, in Phil's words, and that's correct.

But again, if you're a Democrat or somebody at home or Republican that thinks the president should be convicted, there's no math to get you to 17. However, in these unprecedented times, we'll see.

BLITZER: And, Gloria, there's a possibility of a lot of new evidence coming forward in the next two weeks that would maybe create an opportunity for the Democrats to go ahead and find 17 Republicans and convict.

GLORIA BORGER, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, I think they're hoping to find that line that some people will have to cross that they didn't intend to cross when they sat down in the chamber.

There's some people like Marco Rubio who already said this is a waste of time, we shouldn't be doing it.

Rand Paul saying, look, it's unconstitutional. We shouldn't even be doing this.

But they're hoping that there are some people who could be swayed by their own conscience.

And I keep coming back to the thought that the people who are the judges are also the potential victims here, and also the witnesses.

And they know what happened that day. They know how close that mob was to running into the Senate chamber when they were sitting there.

And they know that something really more awful could have happened.

[14:35:01]

So I think with the use of video perhaps -- we don't know if they're going to call witnesses.

I think that they're hoping that some people may just say this was a step too far and we have to condemn the president.

They're not saying that's likely to happen, but they believe that it is their constitutional duty to try to make it happen -- Wolf?

BLITZER: You know, that's really important.

Jake, if, in fact, the Senate were to convict Trump of this one article of impeachment, they could then pass a separate bill that would bar him from ever serving, running for any federal office again, which some Republicans certainly would welcome.

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: Secretly, yes, absolutely, Wolf. We'll see how many are willing to vote that way.

Because right now, we should note, that instead of holding former President Trump accountable for his role in inciting the capitol riot, a role that even Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader, and Mitch McConnell, the House majority -- or Senate majority leader or soon to be minority leader, have said others are making excuses.

And his former ambassador to the United Nations, for example, Nikki Haley, a potential 2024 presidential candidate, she believes Democrats should just give the former president a break.

Haley admits she's troubled by Trump's actions after the election. She said his words on the day of the violent capitol riot, terrorist attack, were, quote, "not his finest.

But the former South Carolina governor says she opposes the impeachment. She argues Trump is the real victim in ways of the capitol insurrection. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NIKKI HALEY, (R), FORMER SC GOVERNOR & FORMER U.S. AMBASSADOR TO THE U.N.: They beat him up before he got into office. They're beating him up after he leaves office. I mean, at some point, I mean, give the man a break. I mean, move on.

The idea is they're going to do impeachment? That's not going to bring our country together. That's only dividing our country.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: Abby Phillip and Dana Bash are with me.

And we should note, after the terrorist attack, Haley denounced Trump. She said he was, quote, "badly wrong with his words and stroking and inciting the riot."

Now she's saying that he's the victim, Democrats are beating him up, time to move on.

It's remarkable considering how much Republicans often portray themselves as people who supports consequences. DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: And justice, never mind

the blue line of police, who were certainly, in large part, victims in that event as well.

Look at what she said, look where she said it.

TAPPER: Right.

BASH: She went on FOX News. She was speaking to a very specific audience, parenthesizes, Republican primary voters for 2024.

Do we need to go to the floor?

TAPPER: Let's listen in. Senator Patrick Leahy is beginning the trial.

Majority leader, Chuck Schumer.

SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER (D-NY): -- for the Senate rules on impeachment in the United States Constitution, the president pro tem emeritus, the Senator from Iowa, will now administer the oath to the president pro tem, Patrick J. Leahy.

SEN. CHUCK GRASSLEY (D-IA): Please raise your right hand.

Do you solemnly swear to all things pertaining to the trial of impeachment of Donald John Trump, former president of the United States, now pending, that you will do impartial justice according to the Constitution and the laws, so help you God?

SEN. PATRICK LEAHY (D-VT): I do, so help me God.

At this time, I will administer the oath of the Senators in the chamber, and in accordance with -- in conformance of Article I, Section III, Clause VI, of the Constitution and the Senate's impeachment rules.

Will all Senators now rise and raise their right hand?

Do you solemnly swear that all things pertaining to the trial of the impeachment of Donald John Trump, former president of the United States, now pending, you do impartial justice according to the Constitution and laws, so help you God?

SENATORS: I do.

We'll call the names in groups of four, Senators will present to the desk to sign the oath book.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Ms. Baldwin?

Mr. Barrasso?

Mr. Bennett?

[14:40:02]

Mrs. Blackburn?

TAPPER: So let's just tell our viewers what we're watching here. We're watching Senators swearing an oath, right, Dana?

BASH: Swearing an oath to be impartial jurors in this trial. And it is something that, now, because this is the second time this happened in a year for the same man, maybe have gotten accustom to seeing.

But we have to emphasize this is a very, very rare event in American history, only the fourth time this kind of thing has happened, that Senators have had to line up of both parties to swear to be impartial jurors for an impeachment trial of the president of the United States, now former.

TAPPER: And they're doing it in alphabetical order.

That's Senator Roy Blunt, a member of Republican leadership, who has a potential primary challenge to worry about for 2022.

Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey.

And that primary challenge threat looms over a lot of this, Abby, for many of these Senators.

If they deviate from allegiance to Trump, that might be held against them and they might face a challenge, even if they've been incredibly loyal to Donald Trump, as have Marco Rubio and Roy Blunt, if they deviate from complete and utter loyalty, they might face defeat in the primary.

ABBY PHILLIP, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: That is the predominant force that is going to be driving what we see over the next several weeks.

Where Republicans are not entirely sure what the politics of Donald Trump is going to be in the long term. But they certainly know in the near term that he has overwhelming support among Republicans.

And those are the people that they need in their primary fights, in their -- when they go up for re-election, especially in these off years, like 2022. So it's driving everything.

And there are some real questions about whether President Trump's threats about primarying some of these individuals, retribution against those who cross him, will actually materialize.

But you see many Republicans in the Senate following, frankly, Republicans in the House, in basically making a determination that they would rather be safe than sorry.

They would rather not cross Trump and not take a risk and just avoid the issue altogether.

BASH: And they're looking for ways out.

TAPPER: Off-ramps, right. BASH: Right. As Jamie Gangel called it, a chair to hide under. And one

of those chairs is the argument that it is not constitutional, a motion we will likely see come up from Senator Rand Paul.

You're probably going to see a lot of Republicans take that off-ramp, to use your metaphor.

PHILLIP: And they had a meeting today at lunch, at the Senate Republican lunch, with one of the Republican lawyers, Jonathan Turley, who's been putting forward this idea that it's unconstitutionally unwise to impeach a former president.

It just gives you a sense that they are trying to find a place where they can be comfortable going that does not involve them actually dealing with the substance of what -- what Trump did.

Which, by the way, actually is not that dissimilar from what happened a year ago during the last impeachment trial, where you saw a lot of Republicans doing the very same thing.

Basically implying that, you know, they didn't like how the call with Ukraine went, but, you know, I don't think we should impeach him over this because, technically, he was allowed to have a conversation with, you know, the Ukrainian president about this general subject.

Just looking for technicalities I think is where Republicans have been with President Trump not just in these two impeachment trials, but really the four years in which he was president.

TAPPER: Yes.

That's Delaware Senator Chris Coons.

And here's John Cornyn from Texas.

Let's bring in CNN legal analyst, Norm Eisen. He served as special counsel to President Obama. And he joins us now to talk about this impeachment trial.

Norm, you were the former impeachment counsel to the House Democrats last time.

Does the Constitution differentiate when it comes to impeaching and potentially convicting a current president versus a former president?

Because my understanding is that is the objection Senator Rand Paul and others are raising. Because he's no longer president, three say, this is not constitutional.

[14:45:05]

NORM EISEN, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Jake, thanks for having me back.

That argument, like so much we hear from the GOP in defense of Trump, is constitutional nonsense.

The Constitution has a remedy of disqualification. That applies to former officials and former presidents.

It's been done before with other officials in the 19th century with Belknap, in the 18th century, with Blount.

And as John Quincy Adams said, "I could be impeached until my last dying day."

Jonathan Turley, who's advancing this argument, wrote in a law review article that it was proper. It's just specious and cowardly -- Jake?

TAPPER: In fact, several years ago, a lot of Trump's minions, House Republicans, were talking about how you can impeach a former president, referring to President Obama, with the nonsensical Obama- gate, nonexistent crime.

They were saying then that you could do it to a former president. Now they're singing a different tune.

Norm, many Senators cited Chief Justice John Roberts not presiding over this trial is a sign it's not constitutional.

Is there any merit to that any argument? And why isn't Chief Justice Roberts presiding?

EISEN: The Constitution provides that the chief juice presides over the trial of a current president. So there's a distinction that is rooted in the constitutional language.

Typically, for all other trials, including ex-officials, you have the president pro tem of the Senate. And that's going to be Senator Leahy, the most senior ranking member of the majority party who will preside. That's been done many, many times.

But to jump from that constitutional distinction to the completely cowardly, ostrich-like, "bury your head in the sand" position, we can't sit in judgment on Trump, is just ridiculous. It just doesn't hold up legally.

TAPPER: That's Lindsey Graham signing in right now. Lindsey Graham, who's been helping former President Trump quite a bit in finding representation, defense counsel.

Norm, the last impeachment trial a year ago took 21 days. How long are you expecting this one will proceed?

EISEN: Well, I think the last impeachment trial is probably not a bad template for us to study, Jake, as we look at how long this one will go.

There's some things that could lead to a faster trial here, as you and our colleagues have noted.

Every single person in that chamber is a witness. They saw what happened. So the facts are well known.

But there are some things that require maybe a little more time. We haven't put together the full picture of what happened and the complicity of the president, of his enablers, and complicity of some in that chamber -- Jake?

(CROSSTALK)

TAPPER: Norm, Norm, let me interrupt you because Senator Josh Hawley was just signing his name in, the Missouri Republican, who was one of those who was pushing this big lie that the election could be overturned on January 6th.

That was part of the reason there was this incitement and false belief by many of the insurrectionists when they stormed the capitol.

Laura Coates, let me bring you in along with Norm.

How does somebody like Josh Hawley get treated in this? He's obviously a juror.

But one could argue he should also be a co-defendant in the sense that he and Ted Cruz were also responsible for pushing the big lie, which maybe their words that day didn't incite, but their contribution to this fiction that the election was stolen and could be overturned on January 6th, they played a role.

LAURA COATES, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: That's an important point to raise, Jake, as is the idea of what they're going to have to prove to see who would be a co-defendant of sorts.

Remember, we still don't know what Mitch McConnell meant when he said other important figures. Maybe he meant Hawley and Cruz. Maybe he meant somebody else that we're not yet privy to.

But it's important to think about what the standard will be when you're trying to prove this is not protected speech.

And one of the characteristics, one of the elements that you have to prove is it had to be an indefinite point in time. It can't be some indefinite point in the future.

[14:50:02]

So your comment about having made comments in the past, whether he has contributed to a big lie, you're talking about insurrection, you're talking about incitement to riot, there has to be a straight line drawn between the actually statement and the conduct. And it has to be a definitive place.

Now we saw that in terms of January 6th. There was a straight line right down Constitution Avenue. Many of the insurrectionists seemed to rely perhaps on the president's own comments for that very reason.

That's going to be a very big hurdle for the House impeachment managers to convince of that.

And again, they will be able to corroborate, hopefully, or contextualize by giving more information, like Norm was talking about, and not only about what President Trump said at the rally, but what he did or did not do to quell the unrest, what he did or did not do to aid and abet insurrectionists.

Did he provide some ability to have military or law enforcement to reinforce the capitol police? Or what happened on that call when he phoned Senator Mike Lee inadvertently hoping to get Senator Tuberville instead? What was going on at that point in time.

All of these contextual reasons and ways to get to the president's state of mind are going to be part of any effective impeachment evidence by the managers.

If they don't have that, you will run into what you're talking about, the idea, well, what distinguishes President Trump from say a Hawley or a Cruz?

What makes them different? The uniqueness of the president in that moment and who they were following.

TAPPER: It's interesting that they have -- that I think they are about half done.

Senator Lankford was the last one I saw who signed the book so they still have maybe 50 to go.

Norm, let me ask you, forgetting for a second the issue of co- defendants because there's obviously a complaint before the Senate Ethics Committee when it comes to the roles that Senators Cruz and Senators Hawley allegedly played in the insurrection.

Senator Ben Sasse, a Republican from Nebraska, shortly after the insurrection, went on the Hugh Hewitt radio show and said that he had called the White House while the attack was going on and senior White House officials told him that the president was, quote, "delighted" at the images he was seeing with his supporters staging this terrorist attack on the capitol.

Is Ben Sasse a witness? Who would you call as witnesses?

EISEN: Jake, you read my mind. I was going to supplement Laura's brilliant analysis by saying that Senator Sasse may have the key to helping prove this case as well.

And he's sitting in that chamber because he knows who in the White House saw Trump celebrating this insurrection against two branches of American government, not just Congress, but his own vice president from the executive branch.

I think that very important witnesses will also include, to prove that legal issue, what did Trump intend? What did he want here?

Let's have the insurrectionists appear whether in person or by video. One after another, they have said, I attacked the Congress because the president told me to. He wanted me to do it. I was acting on the orders of the president. When you hear his words, that you won't have a government left unless

you fight for it, let's march down Pennsylvania Avenue, that is directly foreseeable and that's the kind of legal proof.

But no matter how good the case, Jake, we need courage. That is ultimately what this is about. And as we see Senators taking their oaths, will they have the courage to honor those oaths?

That's the American story for almost 250 years of Americans who had the courage to honor what they pledged to this country. That's what this trial, above all, is going to be about.

TAPPER: We just saw the Senate -- now minority leader, Mitch McConnell, sign his oath. We'll continue to watch this.

Let me throw it back to Wolf.

BLITZER: Still on the letter "M." They will go through the awful better, all 100 Senators signing this book. They are jurors now in this trial.

I want to bring in CNN presidential historian, Douglas Brinkley.

This is an historic moment. Only fourth time that the U.S. Senate has tried to deal with the impeachment of a president, in this particular case, now an ex-president.

DOUGLAS BRINKLEY, CNN PRESIDENTIAL HISTORIAN: Well, that's right, Wolf. Jake Tapper had a book called "Unprecedented." And we've used that word over and over again to define anything that Donald Trump has done.

But this is something that's sort of mind-boggling, that we're having a Senate impeachment trial of an ex-president, one who incited an insurrection on the U.S. capitol.

And we're really having a solemn ceremony we're witnessing right now because we're hoping that each of these Senators will be an impartial juror, that they will put blinders on to some of their partisan thinking and just look at the evidence that's going to be presented.

[14:55:12]

And I do think, Wolf, the moment -- the man of the moment in the spotlight is Mitch McConnell. Because we're going to be almost body language on him as the trial as we do sometimes at the State of the Union addresses.

Because does he have the power to bring so 10, 15 Republican Senators to meet a Ben Sasse or meet a Mitt Romney and come up with 17 Senators or not?

And he's going to be poker-faced for a long time.

Let's just hope that he's earnestly going to listen to the information and do what's best for the country, not what he thinks is best for the Republican Party in the future.

BLITZER: Rob Portman signing right now. And then they will get up to the letter "R", "Jack Reed" of Rhode Island will sign. They are getting close to the end.

What do you make of the fact that this very chamber, the U.S. capitol, Capitol Hill, was actually the scene of this crime on January 6th, some 20 days ago?

BRINKLEY: I think, Wolf, that the crime scene is going to be a term -- the new term used over and over again because it is quite surreal.

The fact that our representatives or Senators, people working in the capitol, the police could end up being witnesses for all of this.

It makes it -- you know, they are going to be in the chambers rethinking what transpired on that heinous January 6th of 20 2021.

They will be thinking about the blood on Donald Trump's hands. And they will think of: Is he fit to serve of in any capacity? Is Donald Trump fit to be in city council or state rep.?

Or has this person done damage to the United States, actually behaved in a criminal conspiratorial, seditionist fashion?

Whether Donald Trump gets away with what happened on the 6th or whether history holds him accountable, and that's all going to be on trial here in the next few weeks.

It's an inconvenience to Joe Biden. He'd rather be focusing on other things. But, alas, history always seems to be an inconvenience.

BLITZER: I know you're a presidential historian and an excellent one at that, Douglas.

But what do you think of the argument that some of the Republicans are going to be making that this whole trial of the Senate is simply unconstitutional? You can't have a trial like this of a former president?

BRINKLEY: Well, that's foolhardy. That's typical Rand Paul talking nonsense.

I mean, one could go through, you know, the Belknaps of the 19th century and run some of those through.

But if you took Rand Paul's logic at face value, that means any U.S. president in his last three days could burn a White House, could create havoc, could empty the entire jail systems of America with a pardon, could -- could set militia groups on citizens.

That would mean any U.S. president, in his last days in office, would have carte blanche to do whatever they wanted to do and never face an impeachment trial.

So, of course, the founders didn't want that. And there's no problem with having Senator Leahy preside and not Chief Justice Roberts. Those are just talking points to the Trumpians.

And the hope of the ceremony here is, when you're signing your name, you're thinking back to history that your name is going to live forever, and that you need to be righteous and just and honest and fair and not get tangled in, you know, Trump shenanigans and thinking about 2022 or 2024 too fast.

Deal with the crime scene of January 21st -- I mean, January 6th in a pure, patriotic, and coherent way.

BLITZER: Stand by for a moment.

You know, John, the Senator, Senator Rand Paul, there's a lot of speculation he may actually call for a point-of-order vote on the whole issue of the constitutionality of going ahead with the trial of a former president.

KING: And that vote will fail. But remember, to convict, you need two two-thirds so it could be an odd way, first test case.

How many Republicans support Rand Paul trying to throw this out at the beginning by saying the whole thing sun constitutional? Let's stop this before it begins. Again, that will fail. There will be a trial in two weeks. But it is an early test of Republicans.

And Doug is making an important point, from a historical perspective, you can't ignore the president's politics. This is about the president's big lie, the former president now.

This impeachment trial is about an insurrection born of the president's big lie and then his big rhetoric of the 2020 election. But the Republican Senators are going to be thinking a lot about 2022.

And it's interesting and important and noteworthy that Mitch McConnell is standing back. Mitch McConnell will not say how he'll vote.

Remember the first Trump impeachment trial. Mitch McConnell promised there would not be a conviction from the beginning. So it is very different.

[15:00:04]

But Republicans have 20, 20 seats now held by Senate Republicans on the ballot in 2022.