rlgaique helps maintain healthy cholesterol naturally, and it's odor-free, and pharmacist recommended. garlique good morning, i'm martin savidge in for fredricka whitfield and we're going to begin with a lot of new developments in the impeachment inquiry which may link some of the main players with a campaign of shadow diplomacy and an orchestrated smear against the bidens. a lawyer for lev parnas tells cnn that his client is willing to testify about secret meetings between ranking member of the house intelligence committee, that's congressman devin nunes, and a disgraced former ukrainian prosecutor. this alleged meeting took place in vienna in december of last year and reportedly involved the two discussing how to dig up dirt on the bidens and how to

push a debunked conspiracy theory that ukraine interfered in the 2016 election, sentiments that have often been cited by nunes during the impeachment hearings this week. take a listen. >> no conspiracy theory is too outlandish for the democrats. you would think they would take some interest in burisma and you'd think they would be interested in joe biden. we need to subpoena hunting biden. i think the mother of conspiracy theories is why the president of the united states would want a country he doesn't even like to have the ukraine aians start an investigation into the bidens. also documents released late last night show how the white house helped arirange a phone call between rudy giuliani and secretary of state mike pompeo. that happened the day after the president's personal lawyer handed over unproven claims about biden and his son. then there's this, new details

are emerging that the u.s. intelligence officials briefed senators and their aides earlier this fall about russia's role in pushing a years-long campaign to blame ukraine for 2016 election meddling. let's get started with all of this with the reporting now that cnn has originated of these meetings between nunes and former ukrainian prosecutor. for that we turn to cnn's marshall cohen who's here. marshall, what more do we know about this? because it's pretty shattering stuff. >> martin, there is a chance this really could make waves as democrats continue to move forward in the impeachment inquiry. here's what we know. as you mentioned, the lawyer for this indicted associate of rudy giuliani, lev parnas, the ukrainian american businessman who was connecting guiliani with some ukrainian officials that were offering dirt on the bidens. as we reported last night, he wasn't just connecting -- he didn't just have knowledge of guiliani's ties for these

people, he also is ready to testify that devin nunes had a meeting with a man named viktor shokin, the former prosecutor general of ukraine. the top dog in ukraine for several years until 2016 when he was forced out for not doing enough to crack down on corruption. and because of that, he sort of re-emerged now in this saga, offering dirt and information about the bidens, much of it sketchy, much of it uncorroborated, but it appears that he may have had an audience with devin nunes, the ranking member of the intelligence committee, who as you saw in that clip has been pushing many of these same theories about joe biden and his son. >> and what's also interesting here, marshall, is that this isn't the first time that we've seen nunes play defense for the white house. how is he responding to all of this? >> yeah, you know, from the very start of the trump presidency, devin nunes has an a stalwart

ally and defender of the president and has pushed back on so many of these very credible allegations of russian meddling. cnn tried to get a response from him. he was not cooperative with that. he said that he wouldn't speak to any of our reporters in this lifetime or the next lifetime, which is kind of interesting. but he did give a comment to another outlet overnight saying that it is false that he met with this man, viktor shokin. we'll see how this all hashes out. as we said, lev parnas is saying that he's willing to say it under oath so we'll see. >> i think it's only just beginning. marshall cohen, thanks very much for that. let's turn now to tara, a former undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs under president obama. good morning. >> good morning. thanks for having me, martin. >> tara, give us a sense really of all of this. how significant would a meeting between the ranking member of the house intelligence committee, a meeting with what

you would describe as a foreign actor in this capacity, how significant would it actually be? >> well, i'm afraid i'm going to be a little bit of the skunk at the party here because as a journalist, and i know i'm speaking with an esteemed journalist, at least in the old days we were careful with this kind of information. what are the sources, what are the motivations? and i think we're in a bit of an era of rush to judgment. i think the public is still trying to absorb what happened in the last two weeks with these inspiring public officials. so for me, i think, russia, putin, the blame ukraine game should really be the top of our agenda and i would let this one play out. >> all right, fair enough. let me ask you this. you were deeply involved in diplomacy. when you see someone like a rudy giuliani, the president's personal lawyer, running around gathering information and having a meeting with foreign officials, what does that do for u.s. foreign policy here?

>> right. what we do know about foreign policy is it's messy. you have a lot of diplomats, a lot of cables, a lot of meetings, a lot of principals, a lot of security. democracy is messy but it is normally contained within the framework of those who have clearances, are confirmed, are nominated and serve. so when you have outside actors whispering in the president's ear, of course you're going to end up with this very convoluted, complex side tracking of our national security. we saw this happen somewhat in iran contra many years ago, although that second shadow foreign policy happened from within the administration. but it reminds me of what happens when there are too many cooks in the foreign policy broth. >> we are also learning that the u.s. intelligence officials briefed members of congress. i believe it's members of the

senate in recent weeks, about russia's involvement in pushing the ukraine meddling conspiracy. as someone who's worked with the white house, does it surprise you that such a conspiracy seemed to make its way all the way to the oval office? >> this is the central question that i hope we focus on in the next few weeks. there used to be a bipartisan consensus in this country about putin and russia. we needed to find our interests with russia and work on those, but never, ever doubt the global chess master, vladimir putin. ex-kgb, smarter than all of us. it is no surprise that he would have figured out ways to insert himself into this process. fiona hill will turn out to be one of the most important witnesses. she said publicly what you're now asking me about that happened privately after that testimony.

>> the fact that you bring her up, let's turn to the sound bite actually because several republicans involved in the impeachment hearings have pushed this ukraine meddling conspiracy theory this week. here's what president trump's former top russia advisor had to say about those claims. we'll listen. >> some of you on this committee appear to believe that russia and its security services did not conduct a campaign against our country and that perhaps somehow for some reason ukraine did. this is a fictional narrative that is being perpetrated and prop debated by the russian security services themselves. >> tara, she is saying that members of congress, certainly some of them, are playing right into vladimir putin's hands. >> she is actually saying, if you look back, martin, at what george washington warned us about in his inaugural speech, he said beware of the foreign meddlers. at that point it was europe and the british. but he warned our country of

three things. beware of outside influence, go for the public good, and lastly, he said truth will always in the end win, but the pains will be there for us to get there. >> that's actually a very telling statement about the pains of today. tara, so good to talk to you this morning. thank you very much. >> happy thanksgiving, thank you. >> and to you, thank you. there is much more ahead. a white house, how it arranged the phone call between rudy giuliani and secretary pompeo. cnn now has new emails linking them to a plot to smear former vice president joe biden. plus, former national security advisor john bolton is again teasing he has a lot to say. announcing today that he's formed a political pac and a whole lot more. we'll talk about that, next. i'm not hungry! you're having one more bite! no! one more bite!

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cnn national correspondent kristen holmes joins me now from outside the white house. kristen, moments ago bolton promoted now a super pac on twitter. i'm wondering, is this just a political stunt or what more do you know? >> reporter: well, martin, look, i can't answer that. what i can tell you is that this would be a good time for him to promote anything, as you know, because all eyes are on him and here's why. throughout the week, this last two weeks actually, bolton emerged as this critical witness. we learned that he was in these meetings with ukrainian meetings and had to end them abruptly. we learned from one aide that he actually met privately with president trump trying to get him to release this aid to ukraine. no real answers on what happened in that meeting. so he has emerged as a central figure. why hasn't he testified? well, democrats essentially chose time over information. we know that john bolton from his lawyer would not come appear

with just a subpoena. that if he was to be subpoenaed by democrats, that he would then fight that in court. that will take a long time. we know democrats even as yesterday we discussed, they're hoping to have their side of the impeachment inquiry wrapped up by christmas, likely to not happen if this is in court. but these latest tweets are going to probably make them reconsider. he continues to tease that he has more information. he essentially said that the white house locked him out of his twitter account and afterwards said maybe they're afraid of what i'm going to say. so that implies that there's something more here than just talking about his pac. maybe he is throwing this in here because he thinks it's a good time to promote it. this is a man who has a lot of information that people wanting to hear. there are still questions of whether or not he will testify just under a subpoena or whether or not democrats are going to really push this. his lawyer says he has information that the house committee just hasn't heard yet.

>> let me ask you this, the new information that cnn is learning the details of, an orchestrated effort by the white house to connect rudy giuliani with secretary of state mike pompeo. right as guiliani was pushing for an investigation of the bidens, which is of course fascinating timing. what have you learned about this? >> reporter: so we know we've watched these public hearings and know that the state department has withheld documents. it has been a central part of this entire investigation, and so has the white house for that matter. but these documents, about 100 pages of them, were released under a court order to a nonprofit oversight group. so that is how we have them. i just want to be clear that we didn't get them willingly from the state department. essentially they show that guiliani and pompeo had two calls before guiliani announced that packet of what he said was information, dirt against the bidens, before he gave that packet to pompeo. this is interesting for two reasons. one is that second call was actually orchestrated by the

white house. guiliani calling up president trump's personal secretary and saying that he couldn't get in touch with pompeo. then pompeo putting the two of them in touch. so this undermines any kind of argument that the white house was unaware of what guiliani might have been doing this ukraine. the second thing is it really ties pompeo to all of this. we have to keep this in mind. this is coming after we learned from the ambassador to the european union, gordon sondland, that pompeo was involved. of course i want to say that is alleged. this is his testimony. but that these top officials knew about this. so this really draws pompeo in deeper, while he has been trying himself to distance himself from all of this. >> that is pretty interesting stuff. kristen holmes, thank you very much. let's talk about this a little bit more and i'm joined by now former federal prosecutor, shan wu, to do just that. good morning to you, shan. >> good morning. >> let me start with john bolton. two weeks ago bolton's lawyer teased that he had relevant information in the impeachment inquiry. now he has a book coming out,

also a political pac now we've learned. do you think we'll ever actually see him testify? >> i think as of today with the tweets, i think it's a little bit more likely that he will testify. i think he's from a legal standpoint wise to hold out for the subpoena, get his ducks in a row and protect himself. from a legal standpoint he's probably looking for possible immunity for his testimony and that would be of something that would be of grave concern to the trump defenders. >> one of the things we have not heard from bolton, even though he's apparently freed his twitter account, is you may remember how sondland was describing that mulvaney as a drug deal to others. why isn't he denying that now, coming out forcefully? >> well -- why isn't bolton denying that? >> right. >> i think that he very much wants to keep that as his bargaining chip for how valuable

his information is. i don't think he's going to walk that back. i think it's been corroborated by the other testimony, by miss hill's testimony as well. so i think that's exactly what his leverage is in being able to appear in person, give that kind of information would be extremely damaging to the trump defense. he wants to make it clear that he has that. he's not going to come out now and attempt to soft sell that or walk it back. >> right. i agree. it would be very hard for him to do so. and i want to talk about then this new information we're getting from these documents about the phone call or phone calls between pompeo and rudy giuliani that was arranged reportedly by the white house back in march. i'm wondering, does this now really implicate president trump in any way directly? >> it's very strong circumstantial evidence of his involvement, martin. it would be very hard to imagine that his personal assistant is going rogue and just setting up this connection between guiliani and pompeo. so i think it brings it right

inside the oval office at that point. as kristen was reporting, it makes it really difficult to argue that the president was unaware of what was going on between pompeo and guiliani. i think it's very interesting for pompeo that it required the white house's intervention to get that connection going, because that sounds to me like pompeo was wisely trying to keep his distance from guiliani and really had to be perhaps a little bit strong armed into actually meeting with him. >> and that was my -- actually my next question to you. why is it that you need the white house directly to sort of connect these two people here? and you think at this particular point it shows that pompeo knew that this was something he didn't necessarily want to be involved in? >> i would think so. certainly were i his lawyer, i would be telling him to stay as far away as possible from guiliani. pompeo is an experienced man. he's been around the block. he would sense that this is a dangerous situation. i mean guiliani is acting as the

president's private attorney. he's the secretary of state. it's going to cause some concern if he is asked by guiliani, hard to say no, and also if it ever comes to light, there will be questions as to why are you meeting with the president's private attorney, what exactly is he asking you to do? so i think understandable caution on his part, but he obviously was going to have to meet with guiliani. the timing of that with handing over the documents, i think guiliani was clearly pressuring for these documents to go public. ultimately a little bit of a whimper, not a bang in terms of those documents. >> one last thing before i let you go. sources tell cnn that an upcoming report from the justice department's i.g., inspector general, set to be released on december 9th is now expected to show the fbi's russia probe was launched properly but that lower level employees made mistakes. so i'm wondering, does that report help the president in any way? >> i think it will help him a little bit. he and his defenders are very anxious for anything to always

push back on the original mueller probe origins. i worked with michael horowitz at the justice department. he's extremely thorough. anything he looks closely at he's likely to find some warts on it. but the real takeaway from this if the reporting so far has been accurate is that there was no bad motivation and that the origins were proper and there may have been some more technical errors at the lower level but the origins were proper and really should put to rest, because horowitz is very independent, should put to rest there was any political bias or motivation behind the origins of the russia investigation. >> always great to talk to you. thanks for joining us this morning. >> good to see you, martin. on the heels of the impeachment hearings this week, cnn has taken a closer look at the president's rocky relationship, i guess you could say, with the truth. don't miss this special report "all the president's lies"

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we continue to follow the major developments that could impact the impeachment proceedings. cnn was first to learn about new allegations that congressman devin nunes, the top republican of the house intel committee, remember, who led a very fierce defense of the president during the hearings, went to the vienna last year to dig up dirt on former vice president joe biden. a lawyer for rudy giuliani's indicted associate, that's lev parnas, says that his client is willing to tell congress all about those meetings. there's also new evidence that the white house helped coordinate rudy giuliani's efforts in ukraine. new documents revealed that the white house helped set up a phone call between president trump's personal attorney and secretary of state mike pompeo back in march. with me now is julie hirshfield-davis and samantha vinograd, a former national security advisor under president obama and a cnn national

security analyst. good to see you both this morning. thank you very much for joining me. >> good morning. >> thanks for having us. >> julie, if it is true that congressman devin nunes, the ranking republican on the house intel committee, had a meeting with a disgraced former ukrainian prosecutor to dig up dirt on the bidens, the significance, if you will? >> well, it would put congressman nunes, who is the top republican on the intelligence committee, at the center of the situation that the committee is supposed to be investigating and that could be very problematic. it shouldn't be a secret to anyone who's watched the hearings the last couple of weeks that congressman nunes believes that biden was involved in some corruption, believes that ukraine interfered in the 2016 election, potentially, instead of russia because he's been talking about that to defend the president's conduct in all of the hearings. but the notion that he might have been involved himself in trying to push forward these theories and get more information about them really

does put him at the center of what his own committee is supposed to be investigating. there have already been calls for an ethics complaint against him and that could have implications for the way that the inquiry goes forward. i'm not sure that it affects president trump but it certainly does add a dimension, if it's true, to what one of the white house officials who testified last week called a domestic political errand that the president was trying to execute on. >> it would add a huge dimension to all of this. sam, i'm wondering beyond just making nunes look like a hypocrite, could there be legal implications here, if it's true that he had this meeting? >> well, relating this back to the president, devin nunes is extraordinarily close with the president. so one of my questions is whether the president knew what devin nunes was up to. but clearly abuse of power is trending here. devin nunes is a ranking member on the intelligence committee. he went to europe, as julie just said, to conduct a domestic political errand, really to do work that is helpful to president trump. that is not in his jurisdiction

as ranking member of the intelligence committee. and furthermore, the former chairman of the house intel committee, current ranking member, is going to meet with a corrupt ukrainian official, a prosecutor general who was pushed out of office because he wasn't fighting corruption fast enough. that's the source of the information that devin nunes is using for this conspiracy expedition in europe? he knows better. he knows how intelligence is supposed to work and rather than relying on the fbi or the intel community here in the united states he again is doing political work on behalf of the president. >> julie, do you think that this is likely, this development, to change the minds of congress or the public about this whole impeachment process? >> i don't really think it's likely to. i think what we've seen the last couple of weeks is a lot of facts coming out that sort of fill in the holes of how this entire story developed in the white house, in the state

department, in the national security council. all of these efforts that the president was directing to try to get these theories out into the open, to get ukraine to pursue them in order to discredit his political rivals. and the fact that you have a member of congress who, as sam just said, is known to be a very close ally of the president pushing this as well i'm not sure is going to change the dynamic here. you have most republicans saying that this is not an impeachable set of issues and set of actions, and i don't really think that the nunes' conduct is likely to change that calculus. >> samantha, let me ask you about something else cnn has learned. what are the possible implications you could say of the white house helping arrange a phone call between guiliani, the president's personal attorney, and secretary of state mike pompeo? what do you think of all of that? >> well, we understand from reporting that secretary of state mike pompeo spoke with guiliani on two occasions and took this dossier, this smear campaign against yovanovitch and the bidens, and told guiliani

that he was referring it for investigation to the inspector general. it is really quite striking to me that he referred this dossier of politically motivated material to the inspector general for review, but hasn't, for example, referred gordon sondland's activities to the inspector general for review. it's quite hypocritical and very clear that this was politically motivated mission by pompeo, but more broadly it shows that the trump white house was directly facilitating guiliani's contacts with the state department. through the course of the impeachment inquiry, we've heard that guiliani was in touch with various state officials. there's been obfuscation by the president's supporters about whether guiliani was really acting on the president's behalf and how involved president trump was in guiliani's activities. it's clear here that when the president's personal assistant connected guiliani with pompeo, that the president's personal team, the president's inner circle was directly involved in facilitating guiliani's activities. >> right.

it goes back to that line, everybody was in the loop. julie and samantha, thank you very much. >> thank you. >> thanks. still ahead, john bolton takes on the white house, accusing the administration of trying to silence him. (people talking) for every dollar you spend at a small business, an average of 67 cents stays local. shop small and watch it add up. small business saturday by american express is november 30th. (groans) hmph... (food grunting menacingly) when the food you love doesn't love you back, stay smooth and fight heartburn fast with tums smoothies. ♪ tum tum-tum tum tums

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(people talking) for every dollar you spend at a small business, an average of 67 cents stays local. shop small and watch it add up. small business saturday by american express is november 30th. former national security advisor john bolton is tweeting again, one day after he said that his twitter account was liberated from unfair white house suppression. he said, quote, let's get back to discussing critical national security issues confronting america. the threats are grave and growing. the presidency and control of the house and senate will be decided in less than one year. it is time to speak up again. brian todd has more.

but former national security advisor john bolton could know more than all of them about the allegations that president trump abused his power to leverage the ukraine anz. >> john bolton has been one of the most mysterious figures in this whole saga. he was one of the biggest players in this whole episode with ukraine and yet he was an off-stage character almost the entire time in the impeachment probe. >> reporter: but on friday after more than two months of silence, a tease from john bolton. in a series of tweets and later in an encounter with reporters, he accused the white house of blocking his access to his personal twitter account. >> they attached software to it. and twitter unattached the software to it. >> reporter: bolton didn't explain what this meant. president trump and the white house denied blocking or freezing bolton's twitter account. >> no, of course not. of course not. no, i actually had a good relationship with john. >> reporter: in a tweet bolton asked whether the white house blocked his twitter access, quote, out of fear of what i may

say? the specter of john bolton loomed over the impeachment hearings. in accounts his top aide, fiona hill, gave of bolton's concerns about the trump team's pressure on ukraine. >> he then in the course of that discussion said that rudy giuliani was a hand grenade that was going to blow everyone up. >> reporter: hill said bolton physically stiffened at a july 10th white house meeting between u.s. and ukrainian officials when eu ambassador gordon sondland first linked a possible trump meeting with ukraine's president to ukraine investigating the bidens. hill said bolton immediately walked out of the meeting and gave her an ominous directive afterward. >> the specific instruction was that i had to go to the lawyers, to john eisenberg, our senior counsel for the national security council, to basically say you tell eisenberg, ambassador bolton told me, that i am not part of this, whatever drug deal that mulvaney and sondland are cooking up. >> reporter: and american diplomat david holmes testified that bolton met with ukraine's

president in august and warned him what it would take to lift a hold on u.s. military aid to ukraine. >> it would hang on whether president zelensky would be able to favorably impress president trump. >> reporter: but bolton could know so much more. two weeks ago his lawyer wrote a letter to congressional leaders saying bolton was involved in many relevant meetings and conversations that have not yet been discussed in the testimonies thus far. >> what could he have witnessed? >> john bolton would have had more communications directly with president trump than any witness we've heard from to date. so anything the president said in john bolton's presence about the pressure campaign on the ukrainians would be enormously significant testimony. >> reporter: including one meeting that an aide testified bolton had with trump in august, where the aide said bolton tried and failed to get trump to lift the hold on u.s. military aid to ukraine. among the crucial looming questions are when will john bolton reveal what he knows

about the ukraine dealings and in what forum. bolton's lawyer said he wouldn't testify at impeachment hearings unless a judge forced him to and he wasn't subpoenaed by house democrats but he might have to testify at a senate impeachment trial or bolton's first revelations could come in a new book he's writing, which is due out next year, sometime before the election. brian todd, cnn, washington. >> thank you, brian. and now we're learning more about a mysterious software that twitter claims to have found on boughton bolton's account. they think it may have been installed to preserve his tweets in accordance with the presidential records act. however, we are told if that were the case, then the software should have been removed after bolton left his job in september. the white house has so far not responded to our request for comment. next, the navy versus the president. how a dispute over how to reprimand a convicted navy s.e.a.l. is putting the navy at odds with the commander in chief. you wouldn't do only half of your daily routine

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vice president mike pence making an unannounced visit to

troops in iraq today. this morning pence and his wife karen serving an early thanksgiving lunch to service members at the al assad air force base. pence also spoke with the iraqi prime minister by phone during his visit and he addressed the deadly anti-government protests that have been going on since october. >> in march of this year, the armed forces of the united states and our allies captured the last inch of territory beneath the black flag of isis. well done. as the world watched one month ago, the armed forces of the united states took out the world's number one terrorist leader without one american casualty. >> just yesterday three people were killed, 26 others hurt after iraqi security forces broke up protests in baghdad. the head of the u.s. navy says that the service should move forward with its

administrative review of convicted navy s.e.a.l. eddie gallagher in spite of objections from president trump. a navy spokesman tells cnn that those comments are, quote, in line with current white house guidance. earlier president trump warned the navy in a tweet not to expel gallagher from the s.e.a.l.s. a military jury acquitted him of murdering a teenage isis militant but he was convicted of the lesser charge of posing with the body. president trump reinstated gallagher's rank after he was demoted, but didn't overturn his conviction. i want to bring in major general james spider marks, a former commanding general and a cnn military analyst. good morning to you, sir. >> good morning, martin. how are you? >> i'm very good. if i see the president tweet and i am the head of the navy, is that an executive order? am i to follow it? or do i reach out to the white house and ask for further guidance? >> the latter. you begin the conversation. you say, hey, mr. president, let

me make sure i understand you clearly. you're stating your thoughts. we, the navy, and also the military, dod, remember, this is the uniform code of military justice, not simply navy naval justice or army justice. so you reach back out to the executive and you say, look, we have a process. it's -- you know, it's moving along. everything is legally reviewed at multiple steps. you have stated your opinion. we are maintaining the sanctity of this process to ensure that it's done well as much as you can maintain the sanctity of kind of an amorphous discussion of who said what. anything that's got a criminal activity around it, as you can understand, can be cloudy. but it's important to begin the conversation and figure out exactly what's happening. this is not a direct order from the president of the united states, yet. >> navy secretary richard spencer is telling reuters at least that the review to determine if gallagher should

keep his tridenting, the navy s.e.a.l. pin is important for discipline. >> the president has not stated emphatically, he's stated in a tweet what his opinion is, so he's entered into the discussion. the secretary of the navy has an obligation first appearnd foremo maintain good order and discipline. that's the fundamental institution of ucmj. so that secretary needs to be able to do his job to ensure this is done fairly and properly. and if the president enters in after the decision is made by the secretary of the navy and that decision is altered in some way, some could argue very clearly, yes, this does undermine good order and discipline and it changes the standard. that's the problem. you end up altering the standard. >> i want to ask you about something else and that's the vice president's visit to iraq, which we just reported. pence didn't meet with iraqi leaders face to face, he talked to them on the phone. but he did meet with kurdish leaders.

so what's >> i think it's one of reassurance. i'm not saying it's between the vice president, the national security council and the message to convey. it might have been an opportunity to try to wrap that potential wound a little bit and say, look, we are here very much for you. also bear in mind we have a much longer relationship with the iraqis, albeit tenuous at times. it's not completely aligned. the relationship with the kurds was a marriage, if you will, a partnership of convenience. that convenience was defined as having been met so we broke that off and so i think the vice president wants to make sure they understand, look, we can fix this thing. if there are things we can do, let's begin this conversation again. >> spider marks, always good to get your insights. thank you, sir, very much. >> thank you, martin. happy thanksgiving to you. >> and to you, sir. >> thank you. next, joe biden versus senator lindsey graham. why biden says he's embarrassed

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we are just weeks away from the first contest of the 2020 democratic primary and we are hearing exclusively from former vice president joe biden who's also a 2020 hopeful. this is in a wide-ranging interview that cnn's don lemon did by sitting down with biden to discuss a host of important issues from the election to the impeachment inquiry into the president. biden also responded to his former senate colleague, lindsey

graham, after graham announced it's his intention to launch an investigation into the biden family, something biden said graham should be embarrassed about. >> linds be si graham, who you worked with, there's video of you saying you're the nicest person he's ever met, the greatest man, he's now asking the state department for documents about you and your son. what do you say to lindsay graham and folks like him? >> they're asking lindsey graham, they have him under their thumb. they know he knows if the truth comes out against trump he's got a real tough road for re-election. number one, i am disappointed and quite frankly i'm angered by the fact that he knows how to do this. trump is now essentially holding power over him that even the ukrainians wouldn't yield to. ukrainians would not yield to,

quote, investigate biden. nothing to investigate about biden or his son. and lindsay is about to go down in a way that i think he's going to regret his whole life. >> what do you say to him? >> i say, lindsey, i just -- i'm just embarrassed by what you're doing. i mean, my lord. >> you can see cnn's exclusive interview with joe biden today starting at 2 p.m. eastern time. in the meantime, we'll be right back. copd makes it hard to breathe.

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i can worry about it, or doe. something about it. save at anoro.com. garlique helps maintain healthy cholesterol naturally, and it's odor-free, and pharmacist recommended. garlique hello. thanks for joining me. i'm martin savage in for frederico whitfield. stunning impeach mtd ment testi. lev parnas is willing to testify against devin nunes. he's a key trump ally and a ranking member of the house intelligence committee. parnas said it was to dig up dirt on joe biden and his son something that