Erin Burnett stays ahead of the headlines, delivering a show that is in-depth and informative. also on this, just breaking tonight, minutes ago, the associated press is reporting that the national enquirer kept a safe with documents on hush money payments and other killed stories that were damaging specifically to trump. a safe. do you know anything about that? i actually don t know anything about it. i haven t been at the company for quite a while. but then again, it wouldn t surprise me. because when you have ammunition, it gives you a lot more ability to get to people who you want david pecker owns a stable of publications. it s not just the national enquirer. and there s actually been stories of him using killing a story in the enquirer to get someone to do something with his other publications. so. all right. so carrie, let s talk about the law here. at the same time the national enquirer was catching and killing these stories about trump, it was also taking on his opponents, hillary clinton, ted cruz, we just laid all of this out. where the the legal line here? where is the legal issue here that could cross the line into campaign finance violations by and michael cohen said that under oath this week. april, to you. i want to quote a former staffer at ami who told ronan farrow of the new yorker when he did this big profile on pecker months ago, he said, in theory, you would think that trump has all the power in that relationship, but in fact, it s pecker. he has the power to run these stories. he knows where the bodies are buried. does pecker have the upper hand on the president here? pecker has the upper hand and the president is not happy about that. you know, anytime that you dance with the devil or know something about what someone is doing, that person doesn t necessarily want it to be told. and right now, it s about david pecker trying to save his own skin. because how deep is david pecker? this president talks about and poppy, you said it. he talked about fake news and crafting news. and he, indeed, himself, as a civilian, was crafting news. killing stories. and smearing people s names. this does not bode well for this president. i mean, you don t know how far this goes. and it s like every day, what level of crazy are we in? what level of reality show, white house reality are we in? it just keeps going and going. this president has something to fear. he has something to fear. let me read to you, stu, something from gus winter, who sold us weekly to david pecker. this is what he told the new yorker about a discussion that he had with pecker regarding then citizen trump. he said, quote this is what pecker was saying about trump, okay? he was painting donald as extremely loyal to him and he had no issue being loyal in return. he told me very bluntly that he had killed all sorts of stories for trump. you worked there hand in hand, leading kmupgs ining communi. do you have any sense of other stories that would not reflect well on the president that were killed or caught and killed by pecker, by ami? well, over the course of the relationship? yeah. sure there were stories that were caught and killed. because when david pecker would that the prosecutors would have to file where they d have to weigh, is it in the public interests for this person to be granted immunity? right. and then the details of that would be would depend on the specific agreement that the prosecutors would have worked out with mr. pecker s lawyers and ami. so i don t think we quigt know enough publicly about what the scope of that immunity agreement is. in other words, whether he has agreed to provide information discreetly about these two particular women and their cases that are described in the cohen documents or whether his immunity agreement is much more broad. but the one other point. the important piece about what he has potentially to provide with respect to the cohen document what s in the cohen documents about the two women is whether or not donald trump knew that the purposes of the payments was to affect the election. the timing is certainly suspicious. sure. as it was october and close to the election. but whether or not mr. pecker actually can give prosecutors that information would be very important. very prorimportant. so, april, as we all remember, last june, msnbc host joe scarborough and mike nicco, they claimed they went on the air and they claim, look, we were threatened by the white house, they said. they were told, according to them, if they didn t apologize to the president for some of their critical coverage, the national enquirer would run some hit pieces on them and their former marriages, right? right. essentially, they were saying, this is blackmail. just listen to this. we got a call that, hey, the national enquirer is going to run a negative story against you guys and it was, you know, donald is friends with the president is friends with the guy that runs the national enquirer. and they said, if you call the president up and you apologize for your coverage, then he will pick up the phone and basically spike this story. well, they didn t do that. and april, as you know, the national enquirer did run some negative stories about them. i mean, this, this sort of dirty way of doing business was all out in plain sight. dirty way this is street politics. this is the straeet this is not even politics. this is a street game. let me get something on you so i can hold you at bay and puppeteer you. you know, poppy, this is something that i m very familiar with. you know, myself and two others were told that there were dossiers on us. this is what they try to do when they want to put you bring you in control. this is an administration and formally a civilian organization and circle of friends who tried their best to keep you in line. this is what this administration does. they look up things on you, try to get dirt on you, and then try to smear you. the bottom line is, you know, this is what they do, this is not politics that we know. this is what donald trump, who was a ruthless businessman who is now president of the united states and has not necessarily changed, this is what he does. this is what he does. and if you see it one time, believe it. stu, bottom line, you re the one on this television screen, none of us have worked with david pecker, you have, very closely with him, managing crises. yeah. if you re the president tonight, you are worried, extremely worried, or not worried? i would be kind of worried. i do think at the end of the day, however kind of? pecker will respond to what s better for him, not what s better for trump. so i guess as he evaluates all the things that are presented to him, he ll make the choice that s better for david pecker. the guy s a survivor. he s outlasted many expectations of his demise and always landed on his feet. thank you all for being here. outfront next, jeff sessions fighting back tonight against trump like never before. my next guest, a longtime friend of sessions. what set the attorney general off today? plus, breaking news, the new yorker reporting trump s advisers have circulated this memo accusing former obama staffers of engaging in a conspiracy theory against them. the reporter who broke the story is outfront. and kmacongressman duncan hunter leei ileaving court afte pleading not guilty to charges that he and his wife stole $250,000 from campaign funds for a lavish lifestyle. is hunter blaming it all on his wife? 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within hours, sessions slammed those remarks saying in part, quote, i took control of the justice department the day i was sworn in, which is why we have had unprecedented success effectuating the president s agenda. while i am attorney general, the actions of the department of justice will not be improperly influenced by political considerations. wow. phil mattingly is on capitol hill with more. awkward alert, he then went to the white house for a meeting face to face with the president. okay, there s that. and then there s a flurry of reaction on capitol hill tonight to all of this. what are you hearing? reporter: poppy, one of the most interesting elements to the day, we saw the first kind of crack in what had long been a united front on capitol hill saying, please don t do this. it s not worth it for a myriad of reasons. but lindsey graham said after the election, not now, but after the election, it is probably time for a new attorney general. i will note, though, poppy, he does not speak for all republicans. and frankly, he was pretty much on his own there. take a listen to some of the senators that i ran in to today. there would be a concern about a domino effect, you know, then what happens to rosenstein? is this a way to go after the mueller investigation? so, it s a big concern. i think it would be a mistake and i don t think it would be good for the country. he s a man of integrity. i ve worked for him 20 years up here and you get to know people. and i wish him the best. reporter: now, poppy, let me explain the behind the scenes here, one that s really been prevalent for the last couple of months, and that is, what would the fallout be here. essentially, it would shut down the senate. you heard senator jeff flake talk about the ramifications for the russia investigation. firing somebody who s recused and trying to install somebody who wouldn t be recused to oversee the special counsel. democrats would lose their mind and they would never be able to get someone confirmed. you have the potential fallout shortly before a midterm election. and the most interesting element of all of this, you mentioned it, the attorney general was at the white house today for a prescheduled meeting. what we are told from both white house sources and justice department sources, the issue never even came up. so as you noted, kind of awkward. this is a dance that s been going on for several months. but the big difference today, you saw the attorney general fire back. and interestingly enough, in that meeting, the president more or less sided with the attorney general on a separate issue in terms of the future of criminal justice reform on capitol hill. one thing we know for sure, the vast majority of republicans including senate republican leadership do not want the president to do anything here. we also know that this fight is most likely going to continue, because it certainly hasn t he would held off on a weekly basis. phil, appreciate all the reporting and getting that sound from republican senators on the hill. outfront now, politics editor for the times, patrick healey, and william huntley joins me, an alabama attorney who has known jeff sessions since 1997. william, you ve known the ag for the better part of three decades. he has never before shot back in the way that he did today. and those words were very, very carefully chosen. 17 months of relentless attacks by the president. why was today the straw that broke the camel s back? i think today was the day that attorney general decided that he finally needed to go public with the support of all of the employees of the department of justice, because there s a large number of employees and they needed to know that the attorney general supported and backed them and would prevent them and protect them from political influence. and that s what he did today. and i think he accomplished that very well. it was pretty clear he s had it. republican senator lindsey graham today, as you just heard phil mentioned, said he believes that trump very well may replace sessions after the midterms. here s why. listen to this. clearly, attorney general sessions doesn t have the confidence of the president. after the election, i think there will be some serious discussions about a new attorney general. patrick, how significant to hear lindsey graham, who is a high-ranking republican on the judiciary committee, who would be a senator, who would have to confirm a new ag, how significant to hear that from him today? it s infant. i think there was an assumption that the senate would stand by sessions, a former senator himself, one of them, because they also knew that any kind of confirmation fight over the attorney general would pull in mueller the investigation, pull in rod rosenstein. there s so many ripple effects to this and it s not the fight that the senate wants to have this winter. willie, he has been, jeff sessions, just a virtual pun punching bag for the president, okay? let s remind people, lest they need it. sessions should have never recused himself. and if he would if he was going to recuse himself, he should have told me before he took the job and i would have picked somebody else. i m very disappointed with the attorney general. the attorney general made a terrible mistake when he did this. he made what i consider to be a very terrible mistake for the country. how on earth has jeff sessions taken it this long? i mean, and how do these attacks personally impact him, willie? jeff is a strong individual. i think he can take a lot of punishment and keep ticking. and i think that s what has happened. i think jeff s number one focus and number one goal was the department of justice and all the employees that are impacted by it. and i think he was withholding any type of response or comment out of respect for the president and in order to respect the employees at the department of justice. but i think it probably reached a point where the employees at the department of justice probably thought that they had been abandoned. if they would have been subjected to any type of political ramifications. that s interesting. so you re saying, it s not about him and his feelings, he can take this. it s about the people that work for him. i mean, patrick, there is a new tone today. because it s not just this statement saying, you know, i ve been running this place since the day i was appointed. also, a source tells cnn that the attorney general said, you know, i m not going to be quote, blackmailed into supporting a criminal justice reform bill that i don t support, right? he s against taking away mandatory minimum sentencing. right. he opposes the president, jared kushner, on that. is it possible in your mind that the president may actually respect jeff sessions more after today for that comment, for the statement he put out? because we have not seen trump punch back. right, right. trump, the worst insult that trump thinks he can give to someone is sort of questioning their manhood. you know, what kind of man is this? and i think in some ways, sort of seeing jeff sessions stand up and basically saying, i m not going to be improperly influenced, it s a strong i m not going to be your punching bag. i m not going to be your punching bag or whipping boy. but at the same time, the whole notion of improper influence really does bother trump. he sees all of these people, the cabinet secretaries and toeratty general as working for him. they don t. they work for the american people. but from his point of view, the time had kind of come to say, you know, it was kind of a shot across the bow to the white house, to the senate. i m not going to be pushed around, i m not going to be blackmailed into this. and improper influence, and those words were chosen very carefully. totally. every word of that statement. right. and this is part of the critique criticism of the trump white house. that essentially, you know, obstruction of justice, part of that is about getting in the face of your enemies and sort of shutting down investigations, pressuring, you know, government officials who do you think he works for? who s the loyalty to? to the american taxpayer that pays you or to the president directly? willie, before we go, because you have known jeff sessions for so long, do you think he would step aside voluntarily? no. i believe jeff believes in the heart and soul of the department of justice. i know this is probably his dream job, because he has an opportunity to impact so many lives. and i just don t think that he would voluntarily step aside. i don t think that is part of the makeup of jeff sessions. thank you both for being here, willie. nice to have you, patrick, as well. all right. breaking news next. the new yorker reporting tonight that the trump white house circulated a memo accusing former obama staffers of conspiring against them. and longtime trump supporters on what would change their minds. en .to give you the protein you need with less of the sugar you don t. i ll take that. 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they re declining comment on this. i think the news we had earlier last week about john brennan and his security clearance, this is a function of a similar dynamic. which is this deep suspicion within this white house, held by this president, but also by some of his advisers, some of whom have since left the white house, that there is a conspiracy against them that involves former members of the obama administration trying at every turn, working with what they describe as their allies in the media to undermine the administration. and what trump did not do in 2017 against john brennan and other members of the former obama administration, he seems more willing to do now in 2018, in part because some of the advisers who told him not to retaliate are no longer there. that s a very important point. fascinating reporting, important reporting, adam entis, thank you. pleasure. outfront now, denny heck, he sits on the house intel committee. nice to have you this evening. and before we get into other issues, let me get your take on this new reporting from the new yorker. well, i don t think anybody should be surprised. this administration has been marked by daep, deep chronic suspicion of others since its beginning. there s another word for that, paranoia. they ve been dog whistling to the qanon conspiracy network since day one. i think actually what s more interesting about it is, what happens to an administration that is deeply suspicious, if not paranoid and given to conspiracy theories when the pressure really gets on. because clearly, the walls are closing in on this administration. and we have all read or remember what happened to the last days of the nixon white house, what happened to that to the dynamic and the psychology of the people in the inner circle then. so i think that s the more interesting question. people give in to conspiracy theories. what happens when the heat s on and the heat is on. i ll get back to your comment on the last days of the nixon white house in a moment. but on this reporting, before we move on, just to push back a little bit, you have seen a complete dismantling of every part of the obama administration s foreign policy that this president can undo without congress, essentially, right? the paris climate accord, the iran nuclear agreement. reason for former officials to fight in a coordinated way? last time i checked, poppy, they had a first amendment right to dissent and disagree with that, but that s not really what s being written up about here by adam in a superb piece of journalism. this is about a conspiracy theory that this is super organized and that all of the dots are connected and that the moves on a daily basis are coordinated by some kind of puppet master and i know ben rhodes, i know jake sullivan. nothing could be farther from the truth. all right. so let s get back to your comment about saying this is a bit analogous to the last days of the nixon white house. and obviously, you re pointing to impeachment. today, the president was asked about impeachment. here s what he said. if the democrats take back power, do you believe they will try to impeach you? well, you know, i guess it s something like high crimes and all i don t know how you can impeach somebody who s done a great job? i ll tell you what, if i ever got impeached, i think the market would crash. ping everybody would be very poor. as someone who would vote on articles of impeachment, should they be brought in the house? what s your reaction to that? so first of all, can i stand up in defense of poor vice president pence, who evidently the president president trump is implying would not be able to assume would crash the economy, was the implication there. right. under then newly ascended president pence. i m going to stand up for president pence. i don t think that would necessarily happen. look, the only people talking about impeachment are the republicans. you don t hear democrats talking about this you hear some. you hear some. well, but not on any kind of a scale that would suggest that this is around the corner. look, i said last april on this network, poppy, that i actually thought the thing that ought to happen now that is analogous to the nixon administration is that the president ought to be talking with his god and his family and his self about the possibility of a resignation. what is different between now and then is that we had a couple of very principled republican members of the united states senate, notably barry goldwater and howard baker who went to him and said, it is over, mr. president, it is time for you to resign. but the walls are closing in on president trump. i confidently suggest to you that tuesday, august 21st, 2018, will go down as a watershed day with the guilty convictions of manafort and the michael cohen plea bargain deal. we now have the most corrupt administration in modern history. this is a factual statement. i don t think it s a subjective interpretation. because you bring up howard baker, i mean, i have heard very little from many republicans in congress right now. you know, especially on the senate side. and, you know, i get that the house is on recess, but you re still doing an interview. i mean, who is there someone that is the howard baker of this moment who will say, what did you know and when did you know it? do you see that turning point in your republican colleagues right now? i absolutely believe that there are members of the united states senate in the republican conference who could step up and do this. but the question really is, will they step up and do this? and that remainsto be een. i appreciate your time tonight, congressman. thanks for being with me. you re welcome. outfront next, after a week of legal drama for the president, what is the red line for his supporters? the president better watch about the pardons, because with the pardons that he does that, it looks like it was set up by him. and republican congressman duncan hunter and his wife in court pleading not guilty to charges that he stoe stole campaign funds for lavish ships and shopping sprees. is hunter going to throw his wife under the bus? now that s eatin good in the neighborhood. comdeeper than the oceanrld as unfathomable as the universe a world that doesn t exist outside you, but within you where breakthrough science is replacing chemotherapy with immunotherapy where we can now attack the causes of disease not just the symptoms. where medicines once produced for all, are now designed to fit you. today, 140,000 biopharmaceutical researchers go boldly to discover treatments and cures unimaginable ten years ago and they re on the verge of more tomorrow. 2016. in the aftermath of the legal bombshells involving trump s former attorney michael cohen and campaign chair paul manafort, here in liucerne, voters like ann marie is so encouraged by the economy, she says she can overlook allegations of trump s infidelity. unless the money came from campaign funds, then i don t think that it s good. reporter: i see. so that s where you draw that sort of line. yes. reporter: i see. but i would still vote for him again. reporter: trump s win in this part of the state is also thanks in part to democrats like eileen and richard sorocas. this is all from president obama s campaign. reporter: who after voting twice for president obama switched their vote to trump. this is what the couple told me weeks after trump s inauguration. you ve got to get a businessman in here, get the deficit down. reporter: the couple stands by their decision. our retirement is in the stock market and the stock market has been growing for quite a while now, so i m sort of happy what s happening with the economy. reporter: they say the legal crises involving cohen and manafort as a side show and many others here agree. the investigations were supposed to be about russia interference in our elections. and so far, i ve seen nothing concerning that. as a candidate, trump infamously joked about the dedication of his supporters. they say i have the most loyal people. did you ever see that? where i could stand in the middle of fifth avenue and shoot somebody and i wouldn t lose any voters, okay? it s like incredible. reporter: loyalty only goes so far. and supporters here say it could be tested if trump began issuing pardons. oh, the pardons. i don t agree with them. reporter: barbershop owner aldo satorio is an independent voter who supported trump. if the pardons started coming down, would that change your mind about voting for him? that s going to be my decision. that would be in the decision, sure. sure, also mine. the president better watch it about the pardons. because with the pardons, that he does that, it looks like it was set up by him with the last couple of tweets that he had, where he sticks up for, who is it the guy out there they re talking about. manafort. he says he s a great guy and he s wonderful and everything else. and he s kind of sending the message that if you stick with me, i will pardon you. reporter: and poppy, in addition to the pardons, the other line in the sand for many of the trump supporters that we spoke to would be if the mueller investigation found any collusion between members of the trump campaign and russians. again, that would be another line in the sand for many of the folks we spoke to here. but they also expressed a great deal of frustration that the mueller investigation had not wrapped up yet. poppy? that was a fascinating piece, jason. thank you so much for that. let s talk about it. outfront now, rob astorino, who is serving on the trump 2020 advisory board. he is a new cnn contributor. and jen psaki, former white house communications director for former president obama. nice to have you both here. great to be here. good to have you. so rob, to you first. the voters were clear in that piece. it was fascinating. i didn t know that they would say that and they would be so concerned about potential pardons here, but they were clear that s a red line. still tonight, the white house, and i quote, sarah sanders, the president has not made a decision on pardoning paul manafort or anyone else. that s not a no. in your opinion, should the trump white house right now close the door on a possible manafort pardon right now? i don t think it matters right now, because the action is going to speak. and if he doesn t do it or at some point he comes out and says, no, i m not going to do it, or doesn t ever speak about it again, it s a closed issue. why do you think it doesn t matter when all of those trump voters just told us it does matter. i agree with them. i don t think he should. not because he can t. he has absolute power to do that. any president does. but why even give them the rue to speculate or worry. i don t think he should. i honestly think he should not ever even consider it or issue a pardon. because i think that sends the wrong message. all right, jen, to you, would a presidential pardon of paul manafort be a gift to democrats? yes, in the sense that it would are continue to energize democratic voters about how outrageous this violation of the rule of law is. and it might make, as we just saw in that piece, some independent voters, some people who are on the line question whether this is a guy who is draining the swamp or if he s a part of this, you know, corrupt washington that they hate so much. i mean, just on that point, bob, to you, the swamp, right, that the president said he was going to drain, paul manafort was convicted by a jury of his peers of some pretty horrible things, right? of defrauding american taxpayers. and the president still called him a good guy who he feels bad for. isn t that bringing the swamp right along with you. well, i think what he meant there, and maybe i ll do a trump translation, he worked with him, he helped him, and so he thinks he s a good guy. he should have said, comma, who did a bad thing. and you can t excuse what he did. okay, i just need to know that you work on the trump 2020 advisory committee, and therefore you have signed an nda that includes a no non-disparagement clause. so you can t really tell me, then you really don t believe the president s own words, he s a good guy ? about paul manafort. are you talking about paul manafort? yeah. no, look, i ve known people, have you ever met somebody that you knew well or knew or worked with that became a convicted felon? no. who did something wrong. who became a convicted felon? no. nor would i say after the fact that they defrauded the american people, they re a good person. they can be a good person who did a bad thing. we can make that distinction. eight counts. yeah. you know how many people commit fraud who evade taxes? i m not saying it s the right thing. i do not poppy, let me get this straight. it is not a good thing and he should go to jail for what he did. you re down okay, jen psaki, your take? i think there s a really dangerous lowering of the bar here of what s acceptable. people have served in governments for the white house and for the federal government for hundreds of years and we have trump supporters what is happening in this country? of course, paul manafort is a bad guy and trump is trying to keep him in his corner. we all know what s happening there. i don t think it s an easy thing for him to explain especially for his recorders. every time a president issues a pardon, it s somebody who did a bad thing. they re paying their debt to society. i think we can all agree there s a big difference between pardoning. for this reason or that reason i m giving you a pardon. there s a big difference between pardoning somebody who served time for dealing drugs and served 30 years and served an extended period of time and pardoning someone who has violated and potentially colluded with russia, we don t know yet. there are huge differences here. pardoning somebody like paul manafort, this is trump again putting out there he s above the law. that s what people don t like about it. you say, look, you know people who have done this, done a lot of bad things. shouldn t there be a different standard this high in politics? shouldn t there be a different standard if you re running a campaign for five critical months? yes. i m not making any excuse and neither are those in pennsylvania. here s the big issue, i think voters are understanding that. it has nothing to do with russia at this point that we know of and it has nothing to do with the campaign of president trump, everything to do with what he did 10 years ago and paying those prices. money he got from the ukrainian government he s wrong. that was propped up by the putin regime. by the way, he s the man who led the change of the republican platform, having to do with ukraine and russia at the rnc. and in republican politics back to president ford. i get that. that does not change there are ties to russia when you look at the money. that s what i m saying. not to do with the collusion what mueller is looking into. we have no facts whatsoever. what he went to jail or will go to jail for is for tax evasion and hiding money. he should go to jail for that. he faces money laundering charges in three weeks in washington, d.c. thank you. nice to have you. important conversation. jen, thank you for being here as well. thank you. republican congressman, duncan hunter, pleading not guilty to misusing a quarter of a million dollars in campaign funds. hunter defiant today as he walked into court to protesters shouting, lock him up. out front. instead of the halls of congress, representative, duncan hunter, entered the halls of justice in san diego, he and his wife making their first court appearance after being indicted by a federal grand jury, accused of stealing more than $250,000 of campaign funds to furnish a lavish lifestyle including a $14,000 family trip to italy, $11,000 at costco, $3,000 on fast food and hundreds of dollars on clothing, some of which prosecutors say they tried to pawn off as charity for wounded veterans. both remained defiant, pleading ng to the 60 counts against them. the day before court, representative hunter went on the attack against the justice department. i paid the money back. this is political, period. reporter: that is also what he told the crowd at a town hall in 2017. i am a representative to you and the campaign finance stuff, i was not watching it close enough. i have fixed it now. it s all straightened out. reporter: a grand jury didn t see it that way. prosecutors said even his campaign staffers kept warning the couple they were violating the law. the assistant u.s. attorney said the couple wasn t a flight risk due in part to their dire financial condition. hunter racked up $137,000 in overdraft fees on his personal accounts, hunter as much as admitting his family is going through financial troubles. there s nothing illegal about being poor. i don t think there s anything illegal about not having money in your bank account. reporter: there is something illegal about using campaign funds to shore up your finances. he s paid $174,000 out of tax coffers. few would call that poor. outside the court, democratic voters make clear they are sickened at the charges and gunning for his seat. his democratic opponent says he commenced hunter as a former marine who served his country abroad. he says hunter appears to have served himself during his time in washington. i think washington chewed him up and spat him out and engulfed him in the corruption that has plagued washington too long. i think the voters come november will change that and hope to have real representation for the first time in a long time. reporter: something else interesting happened inside and outside court. we noticed that mr. hunter and his wife entered at different times in different ways and they did not sit together while in court, and when representative hunter was asked about those thousands of overdrafts to his account, he seemed to put that on his wife saying while he was overseas serving in the marines he gave her power of attorney over those accounts and he was simply unsure about those details. fascinating development. thank you very much, sarah. up next, jeanne moos on trump s late night all caps twitter rant. up to fifty percent off appliances with your sears card. like this washer and dryer for $539.99 each. and this refrigerator for $899.99. hurry in to sears today. let your perfect drive come together during the final days of the lincoln summer invitation event get 0% apr on select 2018 lincoln models plus one thousand dollars bonus cash. we ll leave the light on for you. reporter: it s 1:10 a.m., do you know where your president is? he s tweeting, with the caps lock on no collusion rigged witch hunt. at a recent rally the coughed up five no collusions in 10 seconds. where is the collusion? they re still looking for collusion. they re still looking for collusion. find some collusion. we want to find the collusion. reporter: when critics found no collusion at 1:10 a.m. in a tweet, they colluded to mock him in tweets. it s 1:10 a.m. and the president is in an all caps scream. journalist howard fineman says nothing says innocent like a random 1:00 all caps tweet screaming the same nonsense you spout everyday. another commenter saw shades of nixon. this is the equivalent of nixon walking through the white house, talking to the portraits. you don t want end to up like me. reporter: what better time to hunt witches than after midnight. no collusion. reporter: the president is making it again, the last time a tweet got this much attention, the president dozed on the keyboard. what is that? reporter: that time he might have had trouble staying awake, mr. president, if you re having trouble sleeping ask your doctor if covfefe is right for you. this is a witch hunt like nobody has ever seen before. before you go, we want to welcome the newest member of the out front family. that beauty is aaron thomas born to our own erin burnett august 20th. he is getting to know his big
including at the top of the hour. you mentioned his meeting with the leader of venezuela, this is one of several one on ones that the president has today. msnbc happens to be able to be in the room, interacting with the president. one of our team s producers is there. i ll be in the room for the meeting with the president and the leader of ukraine in just a bit. it is now 10:00 and we re going to get to breaking news. as this moment is trump administration is releasing what the president describes as the transcript of that phone call that launched the democrats impeachment investigation. what we now know, it was a 30-minute call with the president of ukraine two months ago. we ve got a team of reporters covering the story and let s get to julia at the justice department. what are we learning so far? we went over the transcript of the call and we also went over why the justice department is not going to release the whistle-blower complaint. what stood out to me about the transcript is that the president talks about two things explicitly. one is crowd strike. he seems to think that the origins of the mueller probe began in ukraine and he wants the president s help getting to the bottom of that. and then he does talk about vice president biden and how he used his connections in ukraine to drop a prosecution into his son and repeatedly, hallie, the president talks about the need for rudy giuliani and the attorney general, william barr, to get in touch with the president of ukraine and his prosecutors there to try to get to the bottom of this, to open investigations into crowd strike and into the bidens. and another thing, hallie, they bring up the issue of this investigation and the fact that they should have this communication immediately after the president of ukraine says that he wants to continue to cooperate on military funding, on getting military supplies from the united states. but, from speaking to senior justice department officials, they said that did not rise to the level of a criminal campaign finance violation. that it wasn t something of value which is in the statute that you have to get something of value from a foreign leader in order for that to be a violation. and that reason, we are not continuing this and they re not going to release the whistle-blower complaint. they also say they re not releasing the complaint because it does not fall within the statute that would allow the intelligence communities on the hill to review it because it didn t involve a member of the intelligence community but was rather a diplomatic call. lots of questions about this call and why it doesn t rise to that level, because it is clear from this the president had clear intentions he wanted this investigation and he was talking about it with the president of ukraine. it is possible, though, that he never followed through on that. we asked whether or not the attorney general did actually get that response, whether he heard from the president, and they say that attorney general barr never heard from the president or anyone in the white house about investigating about talk to go ukraine about investigating, biden, his son or any other matter. we have a lot to unpack. to be clear for our viewers, this is new reporting that you and our colleagues at the justice department have just received and i want to quote now what this transcript, this essentially five-page call transcript describes according to your reporting. that the president, i m just going to read from our notes here, that the president congratulated president zelensky of ukraine for his election vikt rye. at some point the president said i would like to ask you to do us a favor, though, because our country has been through a lot and ukraine knows a lot about it. the president says to zelensky, i would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with ukraine. the president says they say crowd strike. i guess you have one of your wealthy people, the server they say ukraine has it. it is not clear what the president meant here. and then the president says this, i heard you had a prosecutor who was very good and he was shut down, which is really unfair. the president says there s a lot of talk about biden s son. i want to go to let me finish this. i know house speaker nancy pelosi is speaking. at some point the president says whatever you can do with the attorney general would be great. biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution, so if you could look into it, it sounds horrible to me. that appears to be at the crux of some of the concern that was raised by this whistle-blower. let me go to house speaker nancy pelosi who just wrapped up speaking talking about impeachment. let me repeat this because i think it s critical. if we can get our team in the control room to pull this up, the president says there s a lot of talk about biden s son, what biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that. so he says whatever you can do with the attorney general would be great. biden went around dragging that he stopped the prosecution, so if you can look into it, it sounds horrible to me. that is the only mention in this phone call about joe biden. it s about a five-page call transcript. the president of ukraine reprice that he is appointing a new prosecutor who will look into the situation. an intel community employee apparently heard about this call from white house officials and that is what triggered this complaint to the inspector general, right? reporter: yeah, that s exactly right. he heard about this call, he wasn t a first-hand witness to the call. but there were other people who were witnesses that were note takers or officials on the call just like you see, hallie, when the president has a call with any foreign leader. they were part of this call. but the justice department didn t reach out to them. they say they relied solely on the transcript. i also ask the senior justice department officials did you take into consideration the fact that military funding was being withheld before this conversation, before words about biden and the investigation just like you read there, they said they did not take that into consideration, that they relied solely on the transcript because it was the best piece of evidence that they had before them. they also ruled out whether or not they ruled out that the attorney general did not have the final sign off on this opinion not to release the complaint and not to go forward with any kind of criminal prosecution or investigation. but that he was generally aware of it. those are a few more details. the other thing about that quote is there s a dot dot dot, and i asked is there something we re not getting there and i couldn t get an answer to that, whether or not that was just a pause in the call or if there was something they left out. typically if they leave it out they would redact it. but there s a lot of questions about what he s implying here. and then there are things that seem pretty explicit to me. let go to garrett haake over on capitol hill. i know we just heard from house speaker nancy pelosi and i know she said she has not had a chance to see the transcript yet. the way that you are listening to this and reading this, what do you expect the reaction to be from both house democrats and frankly other republicans where you are? reporter: yeah, i think both parties here are going to get something that they can say that they like in this. the republicans will say you don t have an explicit ask by president trump here or an explicit quid pro quo. you have a suggestive, gee, it would be nice if somebody could look into this, you have a nice country, a kind of suggestion from the president. and speaker pelosi made a comment to this effect earlier this morning essentially that the what the president has admitted to is enough. they feel like they already have enough information based solely what the president admitted up to this point. now they have a document which they are not inclined to trust that says the essentially the same thing, that biden did come up in the context of this investigation and coming up right on the front end of the call. so i think both sides are going to go back and feel like they ve got a little bit of a good start. i m curious what senate and house republicans on the intel committees are going to say about this. they re going to see the acting dni before the end of the week and get a lot more information from him. and the transcript, it s clearly not a transcript. garrett, we are just now getting from the white house what they describe these are called in the national security sphere a memorandum of conversation, a mem-con to use the terminology that you would hear. it is about five pages long and it s not a word for word transcript but it says president trump says x and zelensky says y. i m going to ask our team in the control room to pull it up. the white house has just released this. at one point, in addition to what we ve talked about, this idea that the president said whatever you can do with the attorney general will be great to the then new incoming president of ukraine, at one point the president also talks about how he will get rudy giuliani, his personal attorney, get in touch with him. the president says i will have mr. giuliani give you a call and i m also going to have attorney general barr call and we will get to the bottom of it. i am sure you will figure it out. the president goes on to say that he heard the prosecutor was treated very badly so good luck with everything. so the president not shying away at all from discussing the bidens, but raising the prospect of his own personal attorney, who by the way, does not and did not have a job inside the administration reaching out and getting in touch with the president of ukraine about this. kristen welker, this is what house democrats have been wanting to see, this transcript. whether or not it validates the argument they had been making remains to be seen as we take a look now at this transcript here. but the white house wanted to get it out there. they wanted to get it in the public sphere as they have in the last couple of minutes, releasing the five-page transcript here. reporter: there was a robust debate, hallie, about whether or not to release it. they decided to do it. some administration officials concerned because they thought it would be a bit gray and in fact that seems to be the area in which we find ourselves. as you point out, a lot of open questions here, whether house democrats will ultimately prevail and be able to determine that these are impeachable offenses. one thing we know for sure, he discussed a political rival with a foreign leader essentially asking this leader to investigate his rival, joe biden, one day after former special counsel robert mueller testified on capitol hill. that is significant, it is remarkable. i know you re going to have a chance to ask president trump questions about all of this later today. but it is stunning that he would have this conversation just a day after effectively he was taking a victory lap over the mueller probe. so what happens next? look, the administration, some officials believe that this impeachment inquiry will embolden the president politically and they re going to argue there s nothing to see here in this transcript, hallie, that there was no explicit quid pro quo. bottom line, though, for president trump, he s now a president who is going to be linked with the i word. he s a former reality tv star and that s not something that he wants, politics aside. i want to bring in now ned price, former special assistant to president obama who i believe is standing by. i think it s important to get your perspective. the president is calling it a transcript. it is not a verbatim of the conversation. when these things happen, ned, we know there are officials who are listening and taking notes and what we have now is their best sort of summery, essentially of what went down on this call. is that a fair assessment? i think that s right. i can only speak to the obama administration, but in the obama administration, these were essentially treated as transcripts. this was the best effort on the part of several individuals, including professionals, career professionals in the white house situation room listening in essentially transcribing as the call went on. i m going to interrupt you. senator mitch mcconnell is speaking on the floor since the first time since the impeachment inquiry was announced. threatening impeachment without the facts in hand. so look, mr. president, republicans support the established proper procedures for considering this whistle-blower report, and in the mean time while our friends across the capitol rush to judgment and dive deeper into their nearly three-year-old impeachment addiction, we ll stay focused on the american people s business. now, on another matter, earlier this year president trump led the federal government to recognize our insecure southern border for what it is, a national emergency, a humanitarian and security crisis. congress had heard plea after plea for more border security funding, we had heard from seen year leaders and career border patrol officers, we had heard about all the surging illegal crossings and the strain on our facilities. but washington democrats decided that giving this very real crisis the resources it required might anger the far left, which wants them to oppose nothing necessarily surprising from senator mitch mcconnell as he speaks for the first time after the house speaker announced the impeachment inquiry, now formally launching against president trump. i want to bring in the others, not just ned price, but others who are here to talk through this release of the transcript of that now critical phone call from july 25th. we know it was about a 30-minute phone call. we know that the readout essentially of that call is about five pages long and in it president trump, as he himself as acknowledged, does bring up former vice president joe biden and that investigation that he wants the president of ukraine to conduct into biden s son and his activities in ukraine. ned price, thank you for sticking with me as i interrupted you there. your reaction to what we have seen so far, i think you ve had a chance to see some of the highlights from the transcript. just skimming through this, i have to say this is much worse than i thought it would be. why do you say that? i say that for a few specific reasons. one, the whole game here is the mention of vice president biden and his son. it was really a binary, either he did or he didn t. and we had good reason to suspect president trump did, because he essentially said that in his public comments. but to see it in this call memorandum is really striking and i think it brings into sharp relief the fact that president trump as we suspected was putting his own political prerogatives and priorities ahead of those of the country. it s actually worse, because he raises another investigation, that into crowdstrike. we had no idea that president trump would also raise the origins of the mueller probe again in his continuous effort to target legitimate law enforcement efforts that produced this vo lumous report on his wrongdoing. once again, this is nothing but for his own benefit. there are two other points i would make. the repeated mentions of rudy giuliani and bill barr really jumped out at me. this makes very clear that rudy giuliani was not free-lancing, he was not being crazy uncle rudy and ukraine and carrying his own water, doing his own business. it seems he was doing this for the president of the united states, if not at the direct behest of the united states. and i think most surprisingly in this context is bill barr s appearance in this transcript. the fact that the attorney general, the president would direct the ukrainian counterpart to set up a call with the attorney general of the united states to speak about investigations that have personal and political import to president trump himself, that s pretty startling. that is shocking, in fact. and let me read some of that. again, we are working to get some of the graphics up on screen from the summery. but you have the president of ukraine, after president trump brings up this idea, he says i would like you to do us a favor, though, continues to talk about this investigation. the president of ukraine says i plan to surround myself with great people, and in addition to that investigation i guarantee that as the president of ukraine that all the investigations will be done openly and candidly. that i can assure you. president trump then responds good, because i heard you had a prosecutor, the president says, who was very good and he was shut down and that s really unfair, according to the summery of the call. the president then goes on to say a lot of people are talking about that, the way they shut your very good prosecutor down and you had some bad people involved. he then refers to his personal attorney, mr. giuliani is a highly respected man, he was the mayor of new york city and i would like him to call you, i will ask him to call you, along with the attorney general. the president says rudy very much knows what s happening and he is a very capable guy, if you could speak to him, that would be great. and ned, to your point as we see the president now at that venezuela multi-lateral meeting at the united nations general assembly, the president invoking not just his personal attorney but the attorney general as well. administrator mark green, thank you all for these here. thank you very much. i want to extend my profound appreciation to every representative with us from across the western hemisphere. each of you is part of a historic coalition of 55 countries that recognize the legitimate constitutional government of venezuela. we are special grateful to be joined by representatives of the people of argentina, brazil, columbia, chile, ecuador and per rue for their relationship and assistance in the unprecedented economic and humanitarian disaster, which has been going on for a long time and we re helping a lot. we are helping a lot. let me also recognize two leaders from the government of venezuela s legitimate interim government, presidential commissioner for foreign affairs, julio borges. please stand up. thank you very much. thank you. [ applause ] and venezuela s ambassador to the united states so we dipped in for a moment to see if the president would address any of this at the top of his meeting with the venezuela leader. you can see the president calling out the aides who are alongside him, including secretary of state mike pompeo, wilbur ross and others. this is happening live just a few blocks from where we re sitting. the president meeting at a hotel in mid town manhattan with these leaders. it is likely that at the conclusion of the president s remarks reporters will ask him questions related to everything that we have been talking about right now, including the release just about 17 minutes ago of what the white house describes as a transcript, but may be best described as a summery of a phone call between president trump and the new president of ukraine in which president trump raises the bidens and that investigation that has triggered now a phone call that has triggered the democrats impeachment inquiry formally as house speaker nancy pelosi announced last night. we have not just the president, but nancy pelosi in the hallways speaking about this. we are listening in to see if kevin mccarthy mentions this. we also in a matter of hours will see president trump in another meeting with the president of ukraine, the very man he s having this phone conversation with on july 25th, that is at the center of all of this. let me see if we can pull up our many guests and analysts who are joining us, including ned price, evelyn fark is, kristen welker. ned, i think i ll go back to you because we were interrupted in our conversation before. you mentioned that you are particularly concerned about the idea that president trump raised his personal attorney, rudy giuliani in this phone call with a foreign leader, seeking to find out more about a political opponent. talk through that. seeking to find out more about a political opponent, because president trump pulled a lester holt moment once again and gave up the game saying there would be nothing wrong with talking about the purported, alleged and actually false corruption that he thinks the bidens were involved in. he asked his ukrainian counterpart to work with rudy giuliani, his personal attorney on an issue involving crowdstrike and it seems this be an apparently effort to undermine what is about as hard a fact as you can imagine, that the russians were behind the hack and leek of the dnc emails. to think that the president of the united states is pushing a conspiracy theory, that only fringe actors, by the way, to include his personal attorney rudy giuliani, really believe at this point should give us all great pause about the mental state of the individual sitting in the oval office. but even worse to some degree, president trump is involving much of his administration into this. the mention of bill barr as a prominent actor in this, and it s unclear exactly what bill barr was supposed to discuss, whether it was the biden matter, whether it was the crowdstrike matter or whether it was all of the above. but for the attorney general of the united states to be carrying the president s water and for the president to be making that clear to his foreign counterpart is striking. and finally i would note that when president trump lays all of this out, the response from the ukrainian president is not surprising. he says i ll look into all of this. and that underscores the key point. we didn t need an explicit quid pro quo. i want to bring in congressman from michigan, house democratic caucus who is joining us from the capitol. i appreciate you joining us. let s start with your reaction to what you have seen so far from the summery of the call that the white house has just released. i ve only been able to see a little bit of it. this is not good for the white house. again, this is clear evidence that the president put america s national security, our national security interests behind his own personal political interest, his own narcissim, and particularly the fact that he refers to rudy giuliani, not a government employee, one of his fixers, his tv lawyer, but more importantly, the attorney general of the united states as a person that the president of ukraine should engage with to advance the president s witch hunt, to use his term, against the bidens. this is bizarre behavior by the president and i don t know what the report from the whistle-blower will say. this is certainly not adequate just to see this readout of the call. but even just looking at it, any american should be absolutely shocked to see what this refers to. i was watching leader mcconnell on the floor. that s an embarrassment, to see the republican leader of the senate try to minimize this. he is essentially acting as a lap dog for the provideesident e united states. this is a time for people to take stock of what our president is about and the president is putting at risk the national security of this country in order to advance his bizarre goal of discrediting a political opponent. so do you believe that this bolsters your argument for impeachment? without any question at all. the fact that we have from the white house itself something that they i assume believe they were not going to be able to prevent from being released anyway, an acknowledgment of what the president has already acknowledged, that he raised this issue with the ukrainian president. that fact alone is impeachable as far as i am concerned. but to go further, and suggest that they work directly with rudy giuliani and, for god s sake, the attorney general of the united states of america, goes beyond anything that i ever imagined, even in the last two years as we ve watched this president run just roughshod over the rule of law and trample over the constitution. this is scarier and more bizarre than i imagined i would ever see. you were honing in on the presence, at least in the summery of the president s personal attorney rudy giuliani. it appears rudy giuliani had a better sense of what is in the summery than members of congress as he was on another network this morning and was suggesting that he was read or given some sort of summery of this summery. i imagine well, i ll ask you, do you find that appropriate? no, i don t. first of all, i don t find it appropriate that the president would activate anybody inside or outside the white house to pursue his political goals by engaging a foreign leader. but the fact that he turns to rudy, his new fixer, somebody who is not within the government of the united states, and tasks him to work with a foreign government to try to take down a political opponent, is just beyond comprehension. so many republicans that i see running around this building now ringing their hands and saying you better be careful, you re not sure you re doing the right thing. i ask them to take a look in the mirror at themselves and ask them whether or not they actually want to do the political and moral gymnastics that it takes to try to normalize this behavior. this is something that everyone should be rejecting. let me ask you this. as you and i are having this conversation now, there s a lot happening. on the one side of our screen, you see president trump and secretary of state mike pompeo sitting in a meeting right now with the leader of venezuela and others. congressman, you also have on the other side of the capitol house leader kevin mccarthy making remarks, and he is suggesting that speaker nancy pelosi, her ability to be speaker should be in question based on the moves that she has made over these last 24 hours. your response? well, i think if the speaker swears an oath to the constitution and then works to actually up hold the constitution, that more than qualifies her for the office. i question what mr. mccarthy might be speaking of. but i also question whether or not my republican colleagues are actually living up to their oath. i suppose they have now sworn their loyalty to donald trump. we get it. they re either petrified or they worship him. they took an oath to the constitution, but they might take a moment to read it and follow what it asks us to do. they re not doing that and the speaker is. you ve mentioned now several pieces that are in this call summery that i want to make sure that people have a grasp on. i m going to ask my control room to pull them up. president trump, according to this call, referenced his personal attorney. he said mr. giuliani is a highly respected man, he was the mayor of new york city, a great mayor and i would like him to call you. i will ask him to call you along with the attorney general. rudy very much knows what s happening and he is a very capable guy. if you could speak to him, that would be great. the ukrainian president then responds saying yes, it is very important for me and everything that you just mentioned earlier, for me as a president it is very important and er open for any future cooperation. he then says i will personally tell you that one of my assistants spoke with mr. giuliani just recently and we are hoping very much that mr. giuliani will be able to travel to ukraine and we will meet once he comes to ukraine. we should note that the ukrainian told another outlet that he didn t pressure from president trump in in instance. do you buy that? first of all, there s no need for a quid pro quo. but if you read those comments it s very clear that the ukrainian president feels the pressure from the president of the united states, the call is ostensibly about u.s. aid to support ukraine s effort to deal with the russians. to see evidence of a conversation where they re conspiring to get mr. giuliani, not an american official or official of the american government, to sit down with ukrainian officials and work out how they re going to go after a political opponent of the president, it s just breathtaking. the idea that anybody in this building is somehow able to rationalize this or to somehow look the other way or try to minimize it is just breathtaking. we ve heard the rationale from some members of frankly the house of representatives on the other side of the aisle who say this isn t about the president, this should be about joe biden and hunter biden and that whole situation there. that appears to be the rationale from some inside the gop. that s why i say it s gymnastics. first of all, what vice president biden was asserting in that moment was the policy of the united states government, the policy of our western allies, also articulated by the international monetary fund that there needed to be reforms in ukraine. there is never and still is never a shred of evidence that there was any criminal wrongdoing or investigation of mr. biden s son. but the president creates these confections in order to justify his own misdeeds, to try to create some bizarre equivalency. and anybody who continues to repeat that as if it s a real story, which i ve seen my republican colleagues do, they re just buying into the president s long history of rationalizing his own behavior by creating complete falsehoods, having them repeated and then using them as if they are fact. i expect donald trump to do that. that has been his history long before he became president of the united states. i do not expect and cannot accept mitch mcconnell, kevin mccarthy or any of these republicans buying into this bizarre confection that he has created in order to justify his own misdeeds. based on the conversation that you and i are having, congressman, and then i ll let you go, it seems to me that you are more committed than ever to move forward with this impeachment inquiry? am i understanding you correctly here? without a doubt. i was there already, but this takes it to a completely different level. this is the president engaging a foreign power to advance his own interests, conspiring with a foreign power to try to do political damage to an opponent and using the attorney general of the united states in order to achieve that goal. that s an impeachable offense and we ought to pursue that. congressman dan kildy from michigan. i appreciate you being with us. do you have any insight into what nancy pelosi told you all at the caucus meeting this morning? is she also as committed as you are to this? i don t think there s much doubt. she, herself has acknowledged that this recent set of events has taken the conversation to a different level. i appreciate i. thank you. it is now 10:31, which means for about 31 minutes we had had our hands on what the white house has released, a summery of the phone conversation 30 minutes long between president trump and the president of ukraine back on july 25th. a phone call that has apparently trig ld the whistle-blower complaint that the white house initially did not want members of congress to see. and the phone call that has put into motion this impeachment inquiry process that we have been covering now for the last 12 to 18 hours. i want to reset and make sure that everybody is up to speed on what this conversation was about, what democrats find concerning and what republicans are likely to be defending today. we ve already heard defense of the president from his allies so far. we re going to pull up a series of graphics that we have made so which he can share with you the summery of the call. the president says to the leader of ukraine after some initial sort of small talk about congratulations on your election win, he says there s a lot of talk about biden s son, what biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that, so whatever you can do with the attorney general would be great. biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution, so if you can look into it, it sounds horrible to me. at a different pint in the conversation the president says i would like to ask you to do us a favor, though, because our country has been through a lot and ukraine knows a lot about it. he says i would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with ukraine. they say crowdstrike, dot dot dot. i guess you have one of your wealthy people, dot dot dot, the server, they say ukraine has it. that whole nonsense, the president continues, ended with a very more performance by a man named robert mueller, an incompetent performance. the president says whatever you can do, it s very important that you do it if that s possible. the president says the united states has been very, very good to ukraine. i wouldn t say that it s res. the president brings up his attorney who does not have a role inside the administration, rudy giuliani rudy giuliani. he says he was a great mayor and i would like him to call you. i will ask him to call you along with the attorney general. rudy very much knows what s happening and he is a very capable guy. if you could speak to him, that would be great. the ukrainian president, zelensky, who by the way president trump will sit down with, says yes, it is very important for me and he responds everything that you just mentioned earlier. for me as a president it is very important and we are open for any future cooperation. there s an e lip cease and president zelensky continues i will personally tell you that one of my assistants spoke with mr. giuliani just recently and we are hoping very much that mr. giuliani will be able to travel to ukraine and we will meet once he comes to ukraine. i want to bring in now a number of people to be able to break this down, not just our reporters, but also our analyst experts in the field of national security, ned price, jeremy bash. jeremy bash, i would like to start with you. i want to talk about your reaction to what i just read, pieces of the summery and then i want to talk through the actual logistics and mechanics of this whistle-blower complaint. your reaction overall first. first, if you read every single word of this released detailed verbatim, near verbatim notes of the conversation, three things jump off the page. number one is what the president was presenting to the leader of ukraine was basically help me with my political issues. help me with respect to mueller, but more importantly, help me with respect to biden. and it s not just because biden was the former vice president. obviously trump is anticipating 2020 and biden potentially being the democratic nominee. there s almost nothing else the president wants to talk about other than biden. number two is the discussion between the defense help and the support for trump politically is right next to each other. basically the president of ukraine says we are ready to continue to cooperate for the next steps to buy more javelins. that s a defense system, a shoulder-fired anti-tank weapon that the ukrainians were seeking to buy from the united states. in the next sentence the president says i would like you to do us a favor, though. basically he says i will allow you to buy the javelins if you do us some favors. and he lays out what the favors are. so i think the quid pro quo was there on the page. and the third thing is there s a lot more that needs to be investigated, because in the transcript zelensky said, mr. president, you told me already how bad the u.s. ambassador was, we ve talked about this before. this was not their first conversation. we need to see the content of other conversations and we need to understand the content of the conversations between trump and giuliani. jeremy, there s also a piece of this as we bring in everybody here into the conversation, that this intelligence community employee, somebody who works there, heard about this call from white house officials, according to this employee s complaint to the inspector general, and suggested that perhaps this call, this discussion that we re talking about was essentially a violation of campaign finance law, soliciting in effect a foreign campaign contribution. the crux of this is the department of justice said no, that doesn t hold water or meet the standard for passing this complaint to congress, because it doesn t concern an intelligence activity or the conduct of somebody in the intelligence community and additionally the president was potentially asking for in this conversation did not amount to a thing of value. so that seems to be the rationale from the trump administration behind this based on your team at the justice department s reporting. does that hold water to you? i think the inspector general felt differently. he felt that it was urgent, it was credible and it did need to be provided to congress, and of course that s now what is going to happen. look, i think at the end of the day, we know what did administration is going to try to do. they re going to try to out the whistle-blower, destroy them, sort of do everything you re not supposed to do against a whistle-blower, but for the courage and i think professionalism of this individual, we would not know that the president was using his office to obtain political benefits and potentially linking u.s. defense aid to help the president during his presidential election. evelyn, i know you want to jump in here. i really want to jump in here, because, first of all, the president clearly sought to get the ukrainian president involved in u.s. domestic political affairs. he asked for assistance. this is your bread and butter. you know ukraine just about as well as anybody in the country here. this is a topic that is of your expertise. yes. and the ukrainian president had no choice and as jeremy pointed out, this seems to be a continuation of a conversation. i m also getting agitated because the issue of the previous ambassador to ukraine has also come up. that s a separate soap opera, but something where our president, i believe, has behaved improperly, as has the highest leadership at the state department in terms of dealing with a situation not backing your own ambassador in ukraine. but the president of the united states asked for this assistance, the president of ukraine said, yeah, sure, we ll give you this help. how sincere he was or not, you know, we mains to be told by him. but the reality is that he, in essence, said yes. now, this transcript was a secret. here s the intelligence problem. i mean, yes, there s the campaign finance issue, but the intelligence problem is that the ukrainian president now has something on our president, because he has in essence been solicited, and whether he accepted or not, he knows this. and so he can use this against us, the united states of america, not just donald trump personally. and that s black mail. if he wants to use it against us, he can use it as blackmail. that s why the intelligence community should be involved, because if i as a citizen did the same thing donald trump did, you better believe they probably would have revoked my security clearance by now. stand by and i m going to ask everybody to stand by. i want to bring in somebody with the republican perspective on this, somebody i know is a friend and ally of the president s. congressman matt gates who is joining us from capitol hill. i know you have had a busy morning as well. have you had a chance to review and read these transcripts that we re talking about? yeah, i ve had the chance to review the transcripts and chat with the president about them. were you at the white house? yeah, we went over to the white house. who is we? you and democrats, just republicans? i didn t check anybody s voter registration card, but i can tell you that you know who democrats and republicans are. i m just trying to find out did the it was a group of legislators. the bottom line is that in this transcript there is no quid pro quo, there is no improper leverage and the overall tone of this transcript is that it is mutual. you have president zelensky and trump both complimenting one another for trying to root out corruption in their respective countries and i think it s important that squa lin ski wins his election on an anti-corruption campaign so it s only natural that that would be something that would be discussed. frankly if the democrats think they re going to impeach on this, i think it will be fatal for them. there s a lot to unpack. i want to be clear about this. when the president invited you and your colleagues over to the white house this morning, were there any democrats also invited or was it just a group of republicans? i ll leave that to the white house. all i know is i went over there and i had a chance to read the transcripts contemporaneous with reporters being briefed and its transmission to the public and i am thrilled with the fact that president zelensky says in the transcript that he s going to open an open investigation. i would like us to have some open and candid investigations here in our country to determine the corrupt origins of the russian investigation. when the president references crowdstrike he s talking about potential ukrainian involvement in efforts to undermine u.s. democracy. how do you know? it s in the transcript. the president references it s not clear from the transcript. the words are in the transcript. there s a reference to crowdstrike. i want to pull that up. so you talk about how this is a mutual call and you clearly have had a chance to process this. congressman, i want to make sure i m clear on this. fact check me here. it seems to me that you might have had an opportunity prior to other members of congress because you are close with the president to get an earlier look at this transcript than others did. was that a meeting to get everybody on the same page with talking points as far as the president s team and people that are close to him? hallie, it s a five-page document. it doesn t take very long for everybody to read it. let me bring you back to the question as you well know because you work at the white house, there are reporters who get briefed on these things contemporaneous with their release. i think that key committee chairman and others in congress, i m a member of the judiciary committee, so i had a chance to look at it contemporaneous with it being released. were any of those house committee chairman there. there were no democratic committee kparm thechairman the. i can say that. what was his message to the republicans apparently who were in this room getting a look at this and getting briefed? did he seem comfortable releasing it? the president has no worries whatsoever that this is going to result in any sort of impeachment. in fact, the president pointed out to us that throughout the transcript he is serving as an advocate for the ukraine. you have the president of the united states and the president of ukraine functionally throwing shade at mckroen and merkel for not doing enough for the ukraine. so they began with the notion that they re on the same team trying to work for the advancement of democracy and the protection of the ukraine. it is entirely appropriate. senator chuck schumer is speaking now, the democratic side of this. if you re able to, i know your time is precious, but to stand by and i would like your response to that. i would be happy to. a well-earned reputation for dishonesty, altered facts and incomplete disclosure in public releases. we need to see the complete, unredacted whistle-blower complaint without further delay. the whistle-blower must be allowed to testify without fear of intimidation and then we must pursue the many relevant avenues of inquiry that i just described. yesterday afternoon the entire senate, all 47 democrats and 53 republicans, agreed to my resolution calling for the whistle-blower complaint to be transmitted immediately to congress, a reflection of the seriousness with which these events are viewed on both sides of the aisle. this was unexpected. in the past when we ve asked to look into president trump, our republican colleagues have st e stonewall, but to their credit they realize the seriousness of this and unanimously supported our resolution. i hope and pray we can look at the facts, not the politics and come to conclusions. because without doubt, the white house and the president s congressional allies will rush to call this effort a partisan witch hunt, no matter how serious the allegations, or how even-handed the inquiry. i would remind everyone that just yesterday every senate republican agreed that the white house s decision to block the whistle-blower complaint from congress was wrong. there was unanimous bipartisan agreement in the senate on that point, not a single senator objected. but let me be clear, nonetheless, because i know accusations of partisanship are already being written. this inquiry was not taken up for partisan reasons and it does not pre-judge an outcome. our framers in their wisdom assigned to one chamber of commerce the right to accuse, and to the other the right to judge. the house of representatives will investigate and determine whether sufficient evidence exists to accuse the president of an impeachable offense or impeachable offenses. if it comes to that, the senate will be the scene of the trial, senators the jurors. we must take our responsibility with the utmost gravity. our framers, not trusting our liberty to one branch of government alone, afraid of the ever-present danger of tyranny of an overreaching executive, provided a remedy to congress should the attempt to subvert or violate the constitution of the united states. we are not yet at the stage where any judgments can be made one way or the other. but i remind my colleagues today that if the day should come when we are called upon to carry out our constitutional duty, history will judge whether we did so faithfully or not. history will judge if each of us acted as a solemn juror of democracy who placed fidelity to the constitution and our system of government above the narrow considerations of partisan politics. now, on another issue not directly related, but you have been listening to senator chuck schumer on the senate floor. we brought you mcconnell a little earlier and schumer and we have heard in the last 40 minutes or so from house. one of the members of congress is joining us. congress matt gates has been standing by. congressman, i want to be clear. so you are making the argument that you believe this is not politically damaging to president trump. let me read you a section of these notes that i know you have had a chance to look at earlier this morning in your visit to the white house. the president of ukraine, president zelensky, as you know, is thanking the president and saying i would like to thank you for your great support in the area of defense. he says we are ready to continue to cooperate for the next steps, specifically we re almost ready to buy more javelins from the united states for defense purposes. according to the summery of the call, the next thing that the president says in response to the ukrainian president bringing up defense aid, is i would like to ask you to do us a favor, though. and the president goes on to bring up this investigation. how is that in your view anything other than an implicit ask from the president, given the topic that the ukrainian leader had just been discussing? because you ignore the context that is just before that statement, where zelensky and trump are both talking about the fact that europe isn t doing enough so they re trying to leverage greater cooperation. it just would be crazy to me if democrats impeach president trump for withholding aid that was ultimately given. you said you would give me the opportunity to respond to schumer s statements. in one sentence he said that he would not pre-judge the investigation into the president and then a few sentence later he essentially called trump a tyrant congressman, the president is speaking. i ve got to get to the president who is live. thank you, congressman. thank you. the president himself just came out with a statement saying there was absolutely no pressure put on him. what i do want to see is i want to see other countries helping ukraine also, not just us. as usual, the united states helps and nobody else is there. so i want to see other countries help. just so you understand, it s the single greatest witch hunt in american history, probably prob history, but in american history. it s a disgraceful thing. the letter was a great letter, meaning the letter revealing the call. that was done at the insistence of myself and other people that read it. it was a friendly letter. there was no pressure. the way you had that built up, that call, it was going to be the call from hell. it turned out to be a nothing call, other than a lot of people said i never knew you could be so nice. so part of the problem you have is you have the fake news, a lot of corrupt reporting. you have very fine reporters and journalist, but you have a lot of corrupt reporters, a lot of corrupt journalists. i would rate you right in there, by the way. [ inaudible ]. excuse me. so we re having, if you noticed, the stock market went up when they saw the nonsense. all of a sudden the stock market went down substantially yesterday when they saw a charge. after they read the charge, the stock market went up very substantially. we have created the greatest economy in the history of our country, the greatest economy in the world. had my opponent won, china would right now be the number one economy by far. right now china is way behind us, and they ll never catch us if we have smart leadership. way behind. we ve tricked up trillions of dollars and they ve lost trillions of dollars and they want to make a deal very badly. it could happen. it could happen. it could happen sooner than you think. our military is rebuilt. our military has never been stronger. when i came in, it was depleted. our vets are happy. so many great things are happening, and the democrats feel they re going to lose. we had the highest poll number, ras muse en, 53. they said you can at ten to it. a lot of people say you can add more than ten to it. a lot of people don t want to talk about it but they want to vote for trump. i just say this, we have the strongest country we ve ever had. we ve had the best economy we ve ever had. we have the best unemployment numbers we ve ever had. we have the best employment numbers we ve ever had. we have almost 160 million people working, far more than we ve ever had working in our country before. thank you very much, everybody. thank you very much. president trump there meeting with the leader of venezuela as part of his many meetings today at the united nations general assembly. i wanted to see if the president answered any more questions. then you heard his comments on what we ve been talking about, the release of what you could call a memo or summary with the 30-minute phone call with the leader of ukraine. kristen welker is outside trump tower. this is the first time we ve heard from the president after house speaker nancy pelosi said she d move forward with this formal impeachment inquiry. hallie, what we got in that initial reaction from president trump was a snapshot of the d y defiance we can expect to see from him moving forward. you heard him refer to this as a witch hunt. he then pivoted to the economy. his strength, one of his key arguments for re-election and talked about job growth and why essentially he thinks this is a distraction. this is what president trump is best at. he is a counter puncher. he s described himself in that way. the question is how big of a fight is this? is this the fight, in fact, of his political life. now, in terms of the politics of all of this, hallie, taking a step back, here he is at the u.n. holding these critical diplomatic talks and having to answer questions about this phone call, this transcript, notes of this phone call i should say, that have now been released. instead of focusing on the diplomacy he s trying to engage in. it mirrors what we saw just a year ago when he was answering tough questions about the russia investigation. a number of people within trump world say this could ultimately help president trump politically. we know the campaign is touting that they ve already raised over a million dollars off of this in fund-raising. they are going to try to capitalize on this and they re going to try to paint democrats as ineffective and becoming obsessed with impeachment and not able to legislate. those are the talking points. what is the reality, and what is the impact going to be, frankly, as the investigations get under way in all these various committees. they re already on going. but what we anticipate is they re going to escalate. that s going to be a split screen every day on the campaign trail, hallie. how is that going to impact president trump and his re-election? so far from this president, defiance and, of course, we re all going to be watching for that bilateral meeting later today when he s meeting with the president of ukraine. of course, you will be there pressing both leaders on what specifically their reaction is to this. representing the rest of our colleagues in the white house press corps. heard a lot of our colleagues shouting questions at the president. he didn t want to engage. said his peace and was ready to move on. i want to bring in normer deputy national security adviser in the obama-biden administration, tony blinken. he s a senior advisor to the biden campaign. thank you for being on the show for what is an extraordinarily busy morning. you ve had a chance, i assume, to review this memo, the summary of the phone call. is it as concerning as you feared it would be? hallie, it s more concerning. why? this is worse than we feared. a few things. first, we have confirmation that the president of the united states, using the full power of his office sought from a leader of a foreign country to dig up discredited dirt on his leading political rival, in this case joe biden. but beyond that, he sought to bring in other members of his administration, the attorney general. the state department may have been involved in facilitating mr. giuliani s engagement with the ukrainians. this is corrupting his entire administration in the pursuit of his own personal political gain. as you pointed out, the ukrainians desperately need assistance from the united states. when the president and the ukrainian president are talking about the relative lack of assistance from other countries, that only underscores how important the united states is to ukraine. so implicit in this, if not explicit, is the president saying, gee, it would be a shame if something happened to that assistance you need that you get mostly from the united states. i think there s a pretty clear quid pro quo. even if there isn t, soliciting from the leader of a foreign country an effort to bring up discredited dirt on your leading rival is something we ve never seen before. do you believe this will put the former vice president over the line as far as formerly calling for impeachment. he said if the white house doesn t comply with congress, then that would be the right move. is there any question left in his mind? what s clear is we need a full investigation. we have, as you rightly pointed out, what the white house put out if they put this out, we wonder what they re not willing to put out. what they put out was a summary of the conversation between the president and zelensky. there are other conversations he had. beyond that, the whistle-blower, his or her report, his or her testimony is vitally important because we understand from press reports that there are other incidents that gave rise to deep concern, urgent concern by the whistle-blower. we need to know that. we need to know what role, if any, the state department played which pains me as a former employee of the state department. there is a lot here to be found out. so we need a full investigation. we need to get all the facts and follow the facts. we just had a republican congressman on the show. i don t know if you had a chance to listen in, congressman mat gates, an ally of the president. someone i bumped into, meeting with the president. one of the things he mentioned was that the real story, i m paraphrasing here, is about former vice president joe biden, hunter biden, the fact that he was tied to this ukrainian gas company, et cetera. there s been, and let s been very clear here, no evidence of any wrongdoing by the former vice president, and this widely viewed as corrupt prosecutor of ukraine shelled that inquiry into the company prior to the vice president coming out and speaking out against the corruption in ukraine. all that said, tony, if you go back in time, do you think the former vp would like another crack at how he handled that? hallie, every major media institution discredited these allegations. no evidence at all. very clear there s nothing that s shown the former vice president has done any wrongdoing here. this is playing right into the president s playbook. he throws up discredited dirt. he tries to force the media to talk about it, report on it. and instead of focusing on the real issue here, which is the egregious abuse of power by the president himself, that s the story, that s the only story,
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