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that was personally involved with and ordered the assassination of jamal khashoggi, it certainly shakes you. thank you for bringing this to us. john bolton laying into the president and his approach to north korea. why does he think the president is bluffing? (lamp crashes) ♪music it's the final days of the wish list sales event. sign and drive off in a new lincoln with zero down, zero due at signing, and a complimentary first month's payment.
investigation of his rivals. folks at the pentagon told to hold the aid. michael duffy saying, quote, given the sensitive nature of the request, i appreciate your keeping that information closely held. so what does this do to the stalemate over the senate trial? here's what majority leader mitch mcconnell said just this morning. >> we haven't ruled out witnesses. we've said let's handle this case just like we did with president clinton. fair is fair. we're at an impasse. we can't do anything until the speaker sends the papers over. so everybody enjoy the holidays. >> and then some. and at any moment, mitch mcconnell is expected to be holding a news conference in louisville, kentucky. we'll be monitoring that for you, bringing you news from that. first of all, joining me now is congressional reporter lauren fox. she's on the hill. when you heard from mitch mcconnell there and you see those emails that were released through a freedom of information act from michael duffy, democrats are not letting this
to make the president stew a little over the holidas and think about what all of this means for his future as he heads into re-election. >> absolutely. congressman, let me play for you something that the top republican in the house said this weekend. it deserves attention it deserves, frankly, calling out because it gets back to the ig report that was -- looked into the origins of the russia investigation. listen to kevin mccarthy here. >> if we pause for a moment and read this ig report by horowitz, here's the fbi. they broke in to president trump at the time, candidate trump's campaign, spied on him, and then they covered it up. it is a modern day watergate. and you've got democrats who aren't willing to even look into that. >> so congressman, it's hard enough for people to follow the facts of this process in general. then you have now, i mean, top elected leaders going on tv and just lying about the facts. that is not what the ig found. there was no spying on the trump
the speaker. the main point is we want a fair trial. if you judge the two sides, our side wants simply a fair trial. something that resembles what we all know is a fair trial. and we're concerned that the other side, especially led by mitch mcconnell, will do everything they can to shut it down, to make sure there are flow witnesses to do absolutely nothing to get it done in a week or two in their rush to exonerate the president. and really it tells you about which side is more confident in the facts. the side that wants a fair trial and wants all the facts that come out, or the other side that simply doesn't want that and wants to shut it down. >> well, i mean, i heard your floor speech during impeachment, in the spimt debate. and you talked about one -- one thing you said was the facts are indisputable. so what do you do then with new facts that come out? the email exchange from a top budget official placing a hold on the ukraine aid, telling
senator who at least at the moment appearing open to voting to acquit the president. what do you say to that? >> yeah -- what i hear senator jones saying is he's willing to be fair. that he's willing to be an open-mind eed juror. i also recognize that doug jones is a democratic senator in an overwhelmingly deep red state. so he is in a tough position. he's not necessarily representative of the entire democratic senate caucus and certainly not representative of what we have in the house. but again, though, his overall position is not -- >> doesn't have anything to do with how the -- what color the state is or, you know, blue or red, or how it's comprised, right? >> no. i'm simply saying, though, that i understand that impeachment for him and voting for a conviction would be very difficult for him politically. and i very much empathize with the position he would be in. however, i don't disagree with what the overall point of what i heard him saying is that he's going to be open-minded juror.
folks to keep it quiet, just 90 minutes after the president got off the phone with ukraine. what do you do with new facts like that? >> yeah. when i said the facts aren't disputed, i was talking about all of the witnesses who gave testimony, north of a dozen. these were not people who were bipartisan democrats by the way. career public servants and in some cases either trump appointees or appointees that went back to the reagan administration. all citing from different perspectives the same underlying narrative. the new evidence that came out and that was released right before midnight a couple nights ago is truly explosive because what it shows is almost immediately after the president's call with president zelensky, you had the freezing of the aid. it was immediately after that big ask from president trump that president zelensky either investigate former vice president biden or at least announce that there was going to be a sham investigation simply
appearance on fox news arguing that they are not going to send over those articles of impeachment until she sees exactly how a senate trial is going to be conducted. kate? >> lauren, thank you so much for being there. one of the only people probably on the hill right now. thank you so much. interesting, at the same time, there's an interesting court man over that happened while you were sleeping. overnight the trump administration argued to a federal court to stay out of the ongoing fight between the house and former white house counsel don mcghan. the justice department arguing that the white house vote on impeachment means a quick resolution to mcghan's case is no longer necessary. and remember, this is one of the i would say potentially most significant court cases impacted by impeachment. joining me now, cnn senior justice correspondent, evan perez, with much more on this. what is mcghan's team -- what's the justice department really asking here? >> they're asking the court to stay out of this. they say that at this point because the house has already voted to impeach the president and the senate is waiting to make a decision on whether or
did the president call his aides into the office after the call and say, look, this is what i want to happen, did the president say -- >> let me jump in real quick. we're going to jump to kentucky. mitch mcconnell is taking questions on impeachment right now. >> what are your thoughts about her holding on to this? do you have concerns about those being sent over any time soon? >> yeah. as i've said repeatedly, we can't take up a matter we don't have. and so hopefully it will -- they'll be on the way over at some point. >> you mentioned a potential opponent come the general election, but you've got four republicans filed to primary you. is that about the job you're doing, and are you concerned? >> you get a report card in this business. i'll get two next year, one in the primary, one in the general. >> just listening to mitch mcconnell continue to take questions. on the question, if there was a question this morning, if there's been movement in terms of the standoff getting the articles of impeachment to the senate and, thus, starting the senate trial, they're still at a
back to where is the line for the -- where the house's ability is to get information from the administration and the course of their investigations. and i wonder how significant you think this is because you have on the one hand the trump administration here arguing that courts don't get involved because the trial is going on or will be going on, right. on the other hand you have republicans on capitol hill and some saying let the courts decide before impeachment takes place. everyone's talking out both sides of their mouth here. >> it's an outrageous position, no question about it. you have the white house talking point saying how could they possibly impeach the president on obstruction of congress when they didn't spend six to eight months going through all the layers of appellate process at the courts. and then yet now the administration is saying you can't go to the courts to resolve this. you know, here is where we are -- if you have a dispute between the legislative branch and the executive branch where the executive branch is refusing to acknowledge the constitutionally
not to convict him, that the courts have no role in this. and you know, we should note that this is sort of a different flavor of an argument that they've been making from the beginning, which is this is not something the court should get involved in. this is a fight between congress and the white house. big question as you pointed out, very important, can the president just say there are people close to him who essentially have no -- they have no responsibility to show up in congress to answer a subpoena, that they have absolute immunity. that's the question a judge has decided is not so. they say that the judge in washington ruled that the -- mcghan, the former white house counsel, does have to show up to provide some testimony -- at least in answer to the subpoena. a part of what the justice department in this brief said overnight, said indeed if this court now were to resolve the merits question in this case, it would appear to be weighing in on a contested issue in any impeachment trial. that would be of questionable