little bit? >> are we going to pretend we're not sitting next to each other? >> and now i move to a different camera. i'm excited you're doing that show. i spent a lot of time not in the new hampshire primary. my in-laws are there. i feel like i have bon doing anecdotal polling for a long time. thanks, my friend. appreciate it. all right. in 1968 when richard nixon ran against democratic incumbent vice-president hubert humphrey and beat him, and the nixon/agnew ticket ascended to the white house for the first time, nixon's campaign chairman in that election was a man named john mitchell. in a somewhat unusual move after he was sworn in as the 37th president of the united states, nixon then named his campaign manager john mitchell to be the next attorney general. that's not a natural evolution in terms of political jobs going from campaign chairman to attorney general.

but nixon went ahead and did it and installed john mitchell at the top of the u.s. justice department which turned out to be one of nixon's many disastrous early decisions as president. john mitchell, of course, would end up being up to his neck in the watergate scandal, specifically in the cover up as well. ultimately, john mitchell would go down in history as the first u.s. attorney general to ever be convicted of multiple felonies and imprisoned. but at the height of the watergate scandal, at the height of the inquiry, the nixon administration thought mitchell gave them an ace in the hole when it came to the watergate investigation because before he ever served as nixon's attorney general, before he ever served as nixon's campaign chairman, john mitchell had become friends with this man. this is howard baker, republican -- we have howard baker? howard baker, republican senator from tennessee.

and when the senate formed its special committee to investigate the watergate scandal, howard baker was appointed to be the top republican on that committee. how handy, right? how handy for the nixon administration that the top republican on the committee investigating watergate was this close friend of john mitchell, right? campaign chairman during '68, had been a linchpin in the whole scheme and in the whole cover up, was then serving as attorney general, right? i mean, having howard baker be the top republican on the watergate inquiry, it wasn't quite like having a guy on the inside for the nixon administration, but it was close. and what was worse is that howard baker at the outset really considered himself to be the nixon administration's guy, their inside guy in the senate watergate investigation. senator baker sort of considered himself to be their ace in the hole. he was delighted to be named to the committee, specifically because he thought he could help nixon out.

he later admitted that he fully intended at the outset to use his prime position on that committee basically to get nixon cleared because coming into it, howard baker thought the whole watergate scandal was just a scam and just a put-up job by the democrats. he was glad to be there as part of the investigation, as the top republican in the investigation basically so he could make sure that nixon's interests were taken care of against those dastardally democrats. howard baker let nixon know that. it's interesting. it was never recorded in the white house diaries and schedules and notes about who the president was meeting with that day. but on february 22nd, 1973, howard baker secretly went up to the white house and took a meeting with richard nixon specifically to tell him that the president should be reassured, that he had an ally on the senate watergate committee. that the top republican on that committee, he, howard baker, was

essentially team nixon. and nixon, of course, was delighted to hear that. and there is a tape of the interaction. it's one of those nixon white house tapes. it's kind of too garbled to hear. sounds like a coin operated space invaders being played inside a washing machine. but it is senator howard baker and richard nixon on that tape. richard nixon can be heard saying, if it does get rough, you may have to turn and get away from this. you are going to have to get away from this. that's president nixon coaching the top senate republican, that howard baker is going to have to figure out a way to shut the investigation down if it goes too adverse to nixon at any point. a secret meeting at the white house, top republican on the committee and the president who is under investigation. that's bad, right? in terms of this idea that this was going to be an impartial open minded just seeking the facts inquiry, here's the top

republican on that inquiry, later admitting that he considered himself to be secretly in cahoots with president nixon from the outset. and he was intending to steer the thing as much as he could to protect nixon's interests. except as howard baker would later explain, things veered off for him in an unexpected direction. notwithstanding that initial sort of attitude that he had toward the watergate scandal, the initial way that he saw his own role as a nixon loyalist republican on that committee, things didn't work out that way because at that secret meeting at the white house where howard baker went up there to go tell president nixon, don't put this on your schedule, let's meet off the books. i want to assure you i'm going to take care of you on the committee. when he went to the white house to talk to nixon in that meeting, something happened that

changed howard baker's own course when it came to watergate. something happened at that meeting that changed the course of american history. watch this. >> when the committee was constituted, i felt it's just a democratic effort to embarrass him. the election is over and that's what i thought. and, indeed, i called president nixon on the telephone. i said, mr. president, i am the senior republican on this committee and i would like to come down and talk to you. he said, of course. and i did, the next day as i remember. he was in his office in the old e.o.b., old executive building across the street from the oval office. when i walked in, i said something like, mr. president, i'm the senior member of this committee, i want to you know i'm going to protect your rights. i'm your friend, i'm the senior republican. we chatted a few minutes.

then i said the most important point of my life. i do hope my friend john mitchell doesn't have any problems. and nixon said, well, howard, he may. and a light bulb went off in my head and i decided, you know, baker, you don't know as much about this situation as you think you do. and you better just put your head down and charge into this thing and let the facts fall where they will. that was not often when you find a single moment, a defining moment when you make a decision of that magnitude. but that was such a moment. and i decided that notwithstanding my personal friendship with nixon, that he had campaigned for me in my races for the senate, that he was a republican president, i was a senior republican, notwithstanding all of that, this is a very serious matter and that i didn't know much about it, i better find out. and that's when i decided to do that. and i hope it does not sound vain of me to say it, but i think we did a pretty good job of it. >> i hope it doesn't sound vain

of me but i think we did a good job of it. we all know how that turned out. that was howard baker speaking 35 years later. the defining moment when he realized his preconessentials about watergate, his hope and expectation his friend john mitchell wasn't implicated in the scandal. his sort of partisan self-assurance about the president's innocence, and the scandal being some democratic invention, this moment when he realized, you know what, maybe i'm wrong about all that. and so he decided to drop his preconceived notions and his plans to use the inquiry to try to protect the president, and instead he decided in that moment, he said, like a light bulb went off. he decided in that moment that he would actually be humble about it. that he would stop assuming that he knew everything there was to know about this and, instead, he would try to find out the facts and to follow them wherever they would lead.

>> the central question at this point is simply put, what did the president know and when did he know it? >> that's the same howard baker. his famous crystallizing question from the watergate inquiry. what did the president know and when did he know it? you know, even at the time he asked that in the watergate trial -- in the watergate investigation, howard back-to-back bakbeckon baker didn't know what nixon knew and when he knew it. at that point howard baker was hoping nixon would be shown to be out of the loop. the facts would prove nixon was unaware of what was going on in the scandal. but, in fact, he agreed to follow the evidence as it came to light and howard baker and the rest of the watergate committee, republicans and democrats, would go on to discover that there was important new evidence they needed to look at. that shed light on the president's direct involvement in the scandal, including the

tapes that were made at the white house. and despite all of his preconceptions, which he later copped to, his preconceptions and intentions coming into it, howard baker followed the facts and ended up joining the leader of the committee and demanded the tapes be handed over, and it produced the president's guilt beyond any doubt and that is why richard nixon resigned from the presidency rather than be forced out rather than by a bipartisan vote in the u.s. senate. >> i said, baker, you don't know as much about this situation as you think you do and you better put your head down and charge into this thing and let the facts fall where they will. >> the lesson of howard baker from the watergate scandal, i think, is often told as a story about sort of nonpartisan, country first bravery.

but when howard baker himself described it, though, when he looked back on it decades after the fact, he told the moral of the story in a way that was -- i guess it was a little more subtle than that. the way howard baker described that himself was that there was this crucial inflection point in watergate, this moment when he decided he better take this inquiry seriously. he better follow the facts. that was when he realized he didn't actually know the whole story. he couldn't confidently predict what was going to happen next. things might not end up the way he and his colleagues predicted they would go. that was the inflection moment when he realized it was important to be real about whether or not he really knew what was going on. when he realized it was important to be humble about the fact that there were parts of this he did not know, that was the inflection point. that was when the light bulb went off. impeachments of u.s. presidents are not unicorns.

they're real. but they are rare and odd enough that we really don't know what's likely to happen next in any one impeachment. it was definitely true with watergate. it was true with the clinton impeachment. i think we know enough of the history to say it was probably true with the johnson one as well. but it is certainly true with this one. i mean, tonight "wall street journal" was first to report the republican leader in the senate mitch mcconnell says he doesn't have enough votes to block the introduction of witness testimony and other evidence from the president's senate impeachment trial. they need 51 republicans to vote no, to vote against hearing witnesses and introducing new evidence. "wall street journal" was first to report that they don't have those 51 votes. since then, that reporting has been matched by "the washington post" and "the new york times." all of these reports are citing mcconnell's comments to his fellow republican senators in a closed door meeting that happened today after the president's defense counsel dramatically cut short their presentation of the president's side of the case. they ended their arguments to

the senate with more than 14 of their allotted 24 hours left unused. now, again, these reports about whether or not mcconnell has the votes or not, about introducing witnesses and bringing in new evidence, these reports are sourced to multiple sources describing something that happened behind closed doors. nbc news has sort of contrary reporting tonight suggesting that while senator mcconnell doesn't have those votes now, republicans think they might yet get them when it comes time to actually cast and count them a few days from now in the senate. i don't know. i mean, ultimately we'll see. if we have learned one thing from the american history of impeaching presidents, it is that humility is in order when predicting next steps, when predicting ultimate outcomes. maybe the votes in the senate will be there to hear from witnesses. maybe they will not be there. we will know when they actually vote. in terms of predicting stuff from here on out, i would be

cautious. stuff happens. things change. twists develop in plots, right? in that same spirit, i would like to offer a piece of context for the debate over the impeachment scandal and what the senate is likely to do next. i'd like to offer a little piece of news and context about that debate that you might not be expecting to hear from me. which is that if you take an honest look at the record here, there is a fairly large contingent of republicans in both the house and the senate who i think it's fair to say have behaved pretty heroically on the issue at the heart of this impeachment scandal. maybe heroic isn't exactly the right word. maybe they were just being diligent, sort of patriotically doing their jobs with a little bit of bravery. but there is an important piece of how we got here to this impeachment of this president, to this crux in the debate right now as to whether or not we're going to hear from witnesses. there is a through-line in the recent history of how we got here that is being ignored by

everybody on both sides because it doesn't fit the narrative of republicans versus democrats and some sort of evenly divided mirror image split on the politics here and the disagreement on the basic facts. but i honestly think this is a very important piece of recent history in terms of how we got here. and so take it from me. rachel maddow on msnbc, i hereby want to praise some famous republicans, more than a hand. of them, for having ernestly pursued the america's defense of the relationship with ukraine and unshakeable support for them as a matter of foreign policy, and having done so in ways that required them to confront the president and confront the trump white house in very recent days. and i don't know why this history is being written out of the way we got here, but i think we should stop doing that. i think this is worth paying attention to. the night that the senate impeachment trial of president

trump opened, a freedom of information act lawsuit resulted in the publication of these documents from the white house, from the office of management and budget inside the white house. american oversight had filed a foia lawsuit to force the release of these documents from omb. documents having to do with ukraine over the time period that's implicated in the president's impeachment scandal. and most of these documents were ridiculously redacted by the white house. but we did in these documents -- again, that came out the night of the first -- the first night of the impeachment scandal, right. we did get to see the full text of a whole bunch of republicans in the house and the senate contacting the white house -- contacted omb in august of 2019 to try to find out why the trump white house was holding up aid to ukraine. why is this aid being held up? these multiple republican members of the house and members of the senate contacted the trump white house to ask about the hold-up on the aid and to demand that the hold be released and that the aid make its way to

kiev. for example, there's this one. to michael duffy, omb from staffer and republican senator rob portman's office. dated friday august 24th, 1:56 p.m. michael, i work or affairs for rob portman. as you know he works on securing assistance and wants to make sure ukraine has the capabilities it needs to defend itself against russian a greks. i understand omb placed a hold on funding for ukraine which could impact pending equipment contracts. if you're the right contact, i'd like to know if you would layout the reason for the hold. if you're not the right person, please put me in contact with the right office. a related email chain a few hours before that blunt letter of concern from rob portman's office gets sent up the chain at omb, we find that republican senator james enhoff has sent a similar inquiry. quote, thanks, jason. flagging for another staffer as well. we got a similar inquiry from

senator enhoff's team. oh, really? senator portman and senator enhoff sending similar inquiries. then there's this. august 22nd, 3:42 p.m., chief of staff to republican congressman matt thornberry sends a similar inquiry. good afternoon, hope you're doing well. i heard today omb put a pause on spending funds authorized for ukrainian security assistance. is there somebody there i could talk to to understand why? signed chief of staff to republican congressman mac thornberry. here's another one. this is not just an email or a call. this one is on proper congressional office letterhead from republican congressman paul cook of california sent to mick mulvaney and his position as white house chief of staff. quote, we strongly urge you to direct that all ukraine security assistance funding proceed to execution as planned. this funding is critical to support the ukrainian armed forces against russian aggression. actions by omb that delay implementation of this critical

funding could undermine our clear national security interests. slowing implementation of resources appropriated for the safety and security of ukraine could undermine our relationship with ukraine and our regional strategy. again, these documents, this evidence of republicans -- republicans in the house, republicans in the senate expressing ernest concern about why the white house was screwing this up and hurting our own national security by doing this, these documents were only made public the first day of the senate impeachment trial. but it exposes these republicans for having done the right thing here. and having been willing to stand up to the trump white house to do it. this is all their communications to the trump white house, to omb, to the white house chief of staff. hey, what's going on here? this isn't right. i need to get an explanation here. this isn't right. this is bad for the united states. i need an explanation. but it's not just those republicans within those few

days in august from which we have those documents. within a couple of weeks of those letters to omb, here's more. here's republican senator rob portman and republican senator ron johnson. this is september 3rd, writing with a bunch of democratic senate cleolleagues to mick mulvaney. we write our concern of the administration not obligating security assistance for 2019. quote, we have worked hard in a bipartisan manner in the senate to provide funding for security assistance program for ukraine that is effective and transparent and fiscally responsible. we strongly urge you to direct the defense department to obligate these funds immediately. two days after that, september 5th, another republican, congressman mike mccaul, top republican on the foreign affairs committee writes to mick mulvaney and to the head of omb russell vought. he says, quote, we write to express our deep concern in support of ukraine's defense regarding reports that omb is

holding up significant security assistance funding and support of ukraine's defense. we urge you to make these funds available for obligation without delay. i mean, there's all these republicans who have been acting somewhat heroically, who have one r been getting up on their hind legs and demanding answers from the trump white house, questioning the trump administration, demanding that ukraine needs to get its aid, right, standing up for how important that is, how crucial it is, as a matter of us keeping our word, what a central matter it is for u.s. security. ultimately when the aid was finally released in mid september -- you might remember at the time we finally found out the aid was being released, in a sort of weird statement from republican senator lindsey graham. >> with the ukraine aid, what exactly happened either today or yesterday with ukraine aid? >> i don't know. >> you said that it was -- >> i still don't know. >> it had been freed up? >> yeah, last night.

you need to ask them. >> yeah, yeah, last night it gottfried up. you need to ask them. got freed up. you need to ask them. that was lindsey graham. he was the one who confirmed to reporter and thereby to the public the first time for some mysterious reason he didn't even know, this long-standing and increasingly troublesome hold on aid to ukraine had finally been lifted overnight. what he doesn't talk about now and what has been somehow lost in the sauce of this impeachment scandal is that the reason reporters were asking him, lindsey graham, is because he lindsey graham had taken a stand on this issue. lindsey graham and democratic senator dick durbin that very day had been working together on an amendment that would have confronted the trump white house on why that aid was being held up. the amendment essentially would have forced their hand to make them release it. so lindsey graham was getting asked about the aid finally getting freed up because lindsey graham was a key part of the

effort to force the aid out, to force the white house to do the right thing, to confront the white house on this hold they had put on ukraine's aid and to make it stop. republican senator john kennedy of louisiana suggested to cbs news that same day he would have been with lindsey graham and dick durbin on that as well, telling cb sp-rbgs news when they asked him about it, quote, we support ukraine, period, end of discussion. good for you, senator. and none of this is all that long ago. this is all within the last four, five months. in which all of these republicans in the house and the senate were somewhat heroically, at least ernestly and aggressively standing up to get in the way of the trump administration messing with ukraine. standing up to the white house to aggressively push back on this mysterious white house effort to try to mess with ukraine, right. all these republicans in the house and senate standing up to protect ukraine against these

weird machinations of the trump white house that were as yet unexplained. standing up for our national support for ukraine, pointing out that our national support for ukraine was under girded by a huge bipartisan vote in the united states congress to direct that aid to them, which had been signed into law by president trump and, therefore, shouldn't be screwed up by anyone. mac thornberry, michael mccaul, paul cook, ron johnson, rob portman, lindsey graham, john kennedy, james enhoff, they honestly have all been in the lead here. they've at least been willing to stand up alongside democrats to do the right thing here. they have all been white hat good guys standing up against the trump white house and demanding answers in terms of the mistreatment and the messing about of our ally ukraine. they have all been doing the right thing here. until very, very recently. it's only been a few months

since they all stood up on this issue to do the right thing. we've got the receipts. i mean, we've got the details of it. have they since lost their convictions on this matter? i mean, does it turn out this is something they don't really care about? they were faking caring about it a few months ago for some reason? or have they all decided it's important to support ukraine, but it's more important the president announce investigations of joe biden and if they don't, we can let that aid slide. is that really what they think? i doubt that all of those republican members of the house and members of the senate have changed their mind very much on the importance of u.s. aid to ukraine. i doubt that any of them feel less strongly about it now. but where are they now? and where are they going to be if this goes forward? impeachments are unpredictable things. we may or may not be about to

head into the witness and evidence portion of this trial. that itself will be unpredictable even in terms of the process. be humble in anticipating what might happen next here. the facts are still coming out. just tonight as i sat down, i was just handed this. this is more documents that are pried loose under another freedom of information act lawsuit tonight. pried loose from the department of energy. we're just starting to go through it. yet more documentation released tonight. but, you know, as this story continues to develop and the scandal continues to be exposed, at the heart of it all are individual elected officials, republicans among them, who know about and care about and have fought for the real issues at the heart of this scandal. no matter what you think about any individual politician in terms of how this fits into the rest of their politics and the rest of their biography, they all know in all likelihood, their behavior in this

impeachment of president donald trump is going to end up in the first paragraph of their obituary some day when they finally leave this earth. they all know that. and the human conscience is a powerful thing, and i think we do all know that every member of congress, every senator associated with this scandal and with this impeachment will all want to look back at this moment as something they get to brag about 30 years down the road, not something they hope people will forget about them. we'll be right back. >> he campaigned for me in my races with the senate. he was a republican, i'm a senior republican. notwithstanding all of that, this is a very serious matter. i didn't know much about it. i better find out. that's when i decided to do that. and i hope it does not sound vain of me to say that, but i think we did a pretty good job with it. h liberty mutual. con liberty mutual solo pagas lo que necesitas.

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joining us now live is congressman adam schiff. he is the chair of the house intelligence committee. he's one of the house impeachment managers. he's been at the center of the impeachment trial. mr. chairman, thank you so much for joining us tonight. it's a pleasure to have you. >> thank you.

good to be with you. >> so, there's been some reporting sort of on both sides as to whether or not senate majority leader mcconnell has the 51 votes he's trying to get to block any witness testimony at the trial. whether he really doesn't have the votes or he does president ha the votes or he doesn't have them now, is not sure. what is your understanding? >> it's in a state of flux. i don't think the senate leader can be all that confident of how it's going to turn out. i think it's increasingly hard every moment every day for republican senators to say, we don't want to hear from this witness who was at the center of things that had the president's ear, that the president talked to about the heart of what the president is charged with. and, therefore, we come to the end, at least of this beginning of the trial where we thought we would be once we presented our case, and the president presented his case, and that is the president's team basically has admitted that donald trump

acted corruptly, withheld this money, tried to cheat in the next election, use the money to coerce or extort the leader of ukraine into doing his political dirty work. so all we can fall back on now is, so what? the constitution doesn't allow us to do anything about it. and for that argument their savior is alan dershowitz, a criminal defense lawyer who admits in his statement that his view is out of the mainstream. indeed, jonathan turley, who is the republican's own constitutional expert in the house, has said now again publicly dershowitz is wrong. but you don't need constitutional law professors to tell you that this whole theory is wrong. you just have to apply common sense. are the republican senators really prepared to say that a president who compromises our national security uses hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer money for military gear and weapons to help an ally

defend itself against our adversary to coerce political investigations into his opponent, are we really prepared to say that that conduct is compatible with the office of the president? >> tomorrow begins a new phase of the trial. you said this is sort of the end of the beginning. we're going to start tomorrow 16 hours of written questions from senators on both sides. and i went through all of the questions that were submitted in the clinton impeachment trial. i saw the remarks today from chief justice roberts, that he wants the questions to be framed in such a way that they can be answered in five minutes. i wonder how you and your team are preparing for this next stage. you obviously don't know what you're going to be asked and you need to be prepared to answer in fairly short bites on any number of things that you might get from each side. >> well, we've tried to divide up the topics so that members can focus in on specific subject matter areas so if the questions relate to that area, we have a

manager to go to here or there. it's difficult to divide them out precisely. you can't anticipate everything you're going to be asked, but we can anticipate a lot of it. i looked at the clinton questions. a lot of them would ask the side that supported the case that the senators believed had been made, and then the other side would ask the other, either the managers or the president's lawyers, if they wanted to respond to what had just been said. both parties i think used it to expand their case, but also respond and rebut arguments made by the other side. so i would anticipate that's largely what will happen. but we'll have to see. >> congressman schiff, if you have a second, if i could ask you, we have to take a quick break. i have a couple things i want to ask you about including some of the latest reporting on john bolton, his prospect as a witness. if you could stick with us. >> sure. >> great. congressman adam sheef, one of the house impeachment managers. we'll be right back after this. stay with us.

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joining us once again is chairman adam schiff, chair of the house intelligence committee, one of the impeachment managers. thank you for your time and sticking with us. >> sure. >> if the senate ends up not voting for witnesses, there has been reporting they may or may not have the votes to do so. if they end up not voting for witnesses, would you consider ask chief justice roberts if he himself would authorize

subpoenas for witnesses? >> rachel, i really don't want to get into our strategy or what our fallback plan may be if the senators refuse to call for john bolton, but i will say this. you were asking earlier about the questions senators will have for us. i won't have a chance to ask the senators questions, but if i did, the three that i would ask the senators are, would you agree that john bolton has relevant testimony? and if you do, why don't you want to hear it? and how can you have a fair trial without witnesses? i may not get a chance to ask the senators that question, i won't get a chance, but their constituents will. and i think those are very difficult questions for the senators to answer. so i want to keep the focus where it is right now. john bolton should come and testify. i think that's abundantly clear. the president's lawyers tried to contest what john bolton has to say. they claim that this was about a policy dispute, that the president is being impeached over a policy dispute. this is not a policy dispute.

john bolton, i think be, will make clear the aid was withheld not because of any policy reason, but because of a corrupt reason, because of the president's desire to use that money as leverage to get help, improper, illicit help to cheat in the election. that, i think, is really what's at issue here. and i just don't want to get into strategy beyond that. >> we, of course, don't know what's in john bolton's book. the reporting from "the new york times" says that in the manuscript, bolton asserts president trump specifically told him that he didn't want to release any aid to ukraine unless ukraine announced investigations into the bidens. that's actually the core claim at the heart of your case for the president's removal from office. is that the core issue that you would plan to ask bolton about, or is there more that's directly relevant to the question before the senate that you'd like to ask him about as well? >> there's certainly a lot more we'd like to ask john bolton. after all, as dr. fiona hill

testified -- said, you go tell the lawyers after this meeting on july 10th at the white house in which sondland basically blurted out in front of the ukrainian delegation, hey, we've got a deal here with mulvaney. you make the announcement of these investigations and you'll get your white house meeting. we'll give you a date. and john bolton says to fiona hill, go talk to the lawyers, tell them i don't want to be part of whatever drug deal sondland and mulvaney have cooked up. obviously we want to ask him what he knows about that drug deal. that was in july. purportedly in this book, john bolton confronts the president or has a conversation with the president the following month in august about the other quid pro quo involving the military aid. that is certainly the most serious allegation against the president, now proven by the house in this case. this is further direct evidence in addition to the direct confession by mick mulvaney that he talked to the president, that the president told him that, yes, the investigations are one

of them or part of the why he held up the money. sondland also, another firsthand witness, said that while the president said no quid pro quo on the same call also said, but zelensky has to go to the mic and he's got to want to do it and announce these investigations, basically describe the quid pro quo. so bolton is another confirming witness. there was also abundant circumstantial evidence during the trial. witnesses who said based on all the facts, the only conclusion they could reach, 2 plus 2 equals 4 is that this is exactly the corrupt scheme the president was involved in. so while we want to ask him about it, yes, that's the most serious allegation. it comes apparently in a direct conversation with the president. >> congressman adam schiff, one of the house impeachment managers, the senate impeachment trial. sir, i know the next couple of days are going to be long days when you and your fellow managers are going to have to be on your feet a long time. good luck. keep us apprised and we hope to see you back soon. >> thank you very much.

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this is the front page banner headline of "the new york times" yesterday morning on monday. "money to ukraine tied to inquiries, bolton book says." spurs leaks for calls for testimony. bolton claims aid to ukraine freeze. he sought bolton book, it says. those were headlines yesterday morning monday. now today for a second day in a row, still dominating. "the new york times," bolton's account fuels senate push to call witnesses. washington post, bolton revelations roil gop senators. the los angeles times, above their understandably giant headline of the death of laker star kobe bryant, there it is in the left-hand column there. bolton claims rattle trump lawyers. usa today.

bolton book adds to call for witnesses. politico, taking up the entire front page. bolton sets off trial frenzy. here's the tampa bay times, all caps. bolton's book steals spotlight. the minnesota star tribune. bolton book upends gop strategy. the des moines register. six days out from the iowa caucuses, right? going with the huge headline above the fold, bolton sought as witness. the charlotte object everybodier in north carolina. gop defends trump as bolton book adds pressure. the bolton news is sticking. two days in a row of front page headlines about ambassador john bolton's testimony in the impeachment trial, it is not going away. amid questions tonight about whether senator mitch mcconnell has the votes to try to block john bolton and all witnesses from testifying, and what the white house might do to try to stop that testimony even if mcconnell does have the votes. how much muscle the white house could bring to bear in their own

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while we wait to see whether senate republican leader mitch mcconnell has the votes to block testimony at the impeachment

trial including john bolton, we'll wait to see what the white house will do to fend off that possibility. here's something intriguing. headline, why the white house may not dare fight on executive privilege. joining us now is andrew weissmann, former federal prosecutor including his work as special counsel of robert mueller's team. mr. weissmann, thank you for being here. appreciate it. >> welcome. >> i feel you have done a service. everybody is talking about executive privilege when talking about the power the white house has talking about privileges. you're saying it's a bluff, they're not going to assert it. >> we started thinking about this when we heard senator murkowski concerned about just how long it would take if they called john bolton because it may just be a long drawn out process in court. and we thought, okay, there are two issues to that. one is waiver because now we've seen the president himself and authorizing other people to talk about what it is that happened or he claims happened with john bolton. the other is that if you

actually go to court and you ask a court to defend -- bolton shouldn't be able to talk because of executive privilege, the court is going to look for whether it's waived or whether there is crime or fraud because that is an exception. the whole point of executive privilege is you want good advice from your -- and legal advice from the people around you. >> literally legal advice. >> exactly, in both sense of the words. if you are doing this, you're actually making -- having this conversation in order to commit a crime, the court obviously is not going to say that's protected by the executive privilege. >> that came up in watergate as well when the white house was threatening to invoke executive privilege as a reason for things not to be admissible. that was part of the problem, is that these conversations were about crimes or covering up crimes and therefore, they couldn't, by definition be privileged. >> exactly. >> what would go right there if he did bring this into court? >> some judges might duck it by saying it's waived.

i don't need to reach this issue. but a lot of judges, at least in the argument phase, will explore all of the different issues, so you can imagine a district court judge saying, i want to talk about waiver and now let's talk about crime fraud. this, by the way, came up in the special counsel's office with chief judge howell, this is all public, had a decision about paul manafort and when he spoke to his counsel, we had made a motion saying, you know what, that should not be privileged because of crime fraud. and the judge asked for all of the evidence about it and then made a decision that, in fact, crime fraud applied. that's the same court that the senate republicans or the white house would have to go to in order to make a decision. >> in that -- just to be clear, in that part of the manafort case, he wanted that evidence withheld. the judge said nope, crime fraud is admissible. >> exactly. >> which would happen to the president if he were in the same boat -- same court, yikes.

>> yes. politically unlike the manafort case, for the president it would not be great obviously, like stating the obvious. to have a court make a finding. it wouldn't just then be the democrats saying, we are alleging something is improper. you're going to have a court making the initial determination i find crime fraud applies and thus executive privilege is not going to block this. >> bottom line, this is helpful. there is a lot of nonsense being said what the white house can do or will ultimately do to drag this thing out. it's worth calling their bluff on some of it. andrew weissmann, thank you very much. appreciate it. >> nice to be here. >> we'll be right back. stay with us. >> man: what's my safelite story?

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here it is in the wild. this is a billboard truck that puttered around washington, d.c. all day shuttling between the capitol and the white house paid for by republicans for the rule of law. a group of self-proclaimed lifelong republicans who have been rallying against this president. the reason this thing has a giant picture of the vice-president's face on it is because this truck is supposed to convince republicans who might be on the fence about removing president trump from office that going ahead with doing so might not be so bad. if you look clearly, it says there, remove trump for pence on the one side. and it says pence, it could be worse on the other. i'd also point you to a website, president pence.com where they

seem to be testing out a possible campaign slogan for president pence. quote, i guess he'll do. here's their pitch for president pence. quote, dump donald trump. get mike pence. mike pence is a bland, boring typical ordinary conservative republican from indiana. and if the senate does its duty, they'll make him the next president of the united states. if donald trump is removed from office, mike pence, not nancy pelosi or hillary clinton, becomes the president. and, you know, we could do worse. i didn't say it, they did. that does it for us tonight. we will see you again tomorrow. now it's time for the last word with lawrence o'donnell. good evening, lawrence. >> look who's here. >> it's weird. >> it is weird. i don't know how to do this. >> you hold this in front of your face. >> could you get in a box somewhere? so much for overturning an election. if donald trump is removed from office, you get the other guy that people voted for when they voted for donald trump. >> um-hmm, you get donald trump's personal choice of the

guy heed most like 'd most like him. >> this turns out to be harvard law professor versus harvard law pro percent. alan dershowitz on the floor of the senate being challenged by pl professor lawrence tribe who is a constitutional law professor. he has greater stature on the subjects. professor tribe is going to join us in this hour. >> nice. >> to respond to the dershowitz argument that no matter what the impeachment managers say about donald trump, none of it -- none of it is an impeachable offense. >> the dershowitz v. dershowitz argument is the most impressive argument of the week i have to say. seeing him argue against his former self. seemed both he and ken starr concede. these arguments will not be joined by most of the legal profession. nevertheless, take it from us, both of whom have -- famous for publicly arguing the exact

opposite in this lifetime. >> it's going to be fair this hour. dershowitz and tribe versus dershowitz. we have a referee for it. >> oh. >> i think i'm going to turn to a third harvard professor to referee this harvard law professor battle another harvard law pro percent. >> who do you have? >> former law professor elizabeth warren. >> very good. >> she can referee this thing, right? she knows both of them. she was on the faculty with both of them. >> seems like a jury of peers, my friend. >> can we shake hands? >> no, i just like -- and then go. >> it's in the same frame. this is so strange. thank you, rachel. the breaking news of the night -- that worked. you're still here. the breaking news of the night is, of course, that mitch mcconnell does not have the votes to block witnesses in the senate impeachment trial of donald trump according to reporting in "the new york times," "the washington post" and "wall street journal." so let's begin our discussion

tonight with one of the senators who is going to vote for witnesses in the senate trial. we are joined now by massachusetts senior senator elizabeth warren who is also now a democratic candidate for president of the united states. senator warren, thank you very much for joining us tonight. i really appreciate it. >> oh, thank you for having me. i'm delighted to be here. >> so, it's unusual for mitch mcconnell to allow it to be publicly known that he does not have the votes. what is your sense of where we are right now on getting witnesses in this trial? >> oh, listen, i think the heat under the republicans has gotten to the point it is excruciating for some of them. and, look, it should have been from the very first day. we have a trial in the senate because it is constitutionally required. regardless of how people see the politics of it later on, once the house has delivered those articles of impeachment, we are constitutionally required to have that trial. that means presumably a fair

trial. and when the republicans, mitch mcconnell start out by saying, we're not going to do any witnesses, and he also says we are not going to have any documents, we can't see any of the emails, that's not a fair trial. and everybody in america knows that. i don't care whether you are a trump supporter, you supported clinton -- doesn't make any difference. everybody in america knows that. and then when the argument from the president's lawyers turns out to be that, well, see, the thing is -- they say that no one is able to link donald trump to an actual decision to withhold aid because that aid would be withheld until -- until ukraine came up with dirt on his political rivals. and john bolton says he has that direct information.

so to argue that the evidence is not available while john bolton and his book, at least, seem to be saying he would provide that evidence and he's glad to testify, really just puts the republicans in a completely, completely untenable position. so no wonder mitch mcconnell doesn't have the votes to be able to keep out the witnesses. he never should have had them to begin with. >> now, at least publicly, john bolton has kind of a character witness, a credibility witness from the white house, from the trump white house, former white house chief of staff john kelly who is being now quoted publicly as having told an audience that, i believe -- in effect, i believe john bolton. if john bolton put that in john bolton's book, i believe john bolton. this is someone who knows donald trump, worked with donald trump, and he has -- he's made his decision about who is credible. >> that's right. well, you know, that's the thing about bringing in the witnesses. and i keep wanting to say this,

and the documents. the emails, whatever traffic was going back and forth. over and over, the president's lawyers have stood in the well of the senate and said, no evidence, no evidence, and donald trump did nothing wrong. and the question is, then why can't we see the witnesses and why can't we see the documents? but that's the thing. you open up and the witnesses start coming out, the documents start coming out, and you don't know where the next piece leads and the next piece leads or let me put it this way. i don't know where it leads. you may not know where it leads. it's entirely possible donald trump and his administration know where it leads and that's why it is they're trying to keep this wall up. >> let's go to this extraordinary battle between the harvard law professors, professor dershowitz, professor tribe. you heard professor dershowitz on the floor of the senate. you've read professor tribe on this. professor dershowitz saying that

nothing -- nothing the impeachment managers are alleging against the president rises to the level of an impeachable offense for which he could be found guilty and removed from office. professor tribe argues exactly the opposite. professor dershowitz did have the decency, at least, to acknowledge to you when he was on the senate floor that this is a complete change of mind from the last time he thought about the impeachment of the president when it was the bill clinton case where alan dershowitz argued the opposite. can you referee this one for us? >> actually, i want to give professor dershowitz credit. he also acknowledged that his position was not one that was supported by most people who study and know this area. and, in fact, the house managers in presenting the case had made the point that the republicans had been using their own constitutional law expert,

professor turley, and had used him for several other issues that they wanted to have, called him as a witness in earlier hearing in the house. and now they can't even use professor turley because he's not on the side where professor dershowitz is. so not only are the weight of academics not in the place where professor dershowitz is. even the republican who was trying to help in the impeachment outing is not in the place where professor dershowitz is. i believe that professor tribe has laid this out pretty clearly, and frankly, very soberly and given a good and full reason why, yes, the things that donald trump are accused of are, in fact, exactly the kinds of things that our impeachment laws were written for, that we were a nation at our founding

that was worried about foreign influence. that we were a nation that was worried at our founding that our president -- because he was not a king, was not someone who would forever be wealthy, perhaps, after his time in office -- might have reason to try to take care of himself instead of simply taking care of the country. and impeachment was designed as the framers so often did to be the check on a presidency that was out of control over a man or now i'd like to think a woman, who declared himself or herself above the law. and that's the heart of what this impeachment is about. it's about that basic constitutional principle. no one is above the law, not even the president of the united states.

and i think that's the point that professor tribe makes so eloquently, in my view, so persuasively. >> according to "the new york times" report on the john bolton manuscript, john bolton had very important conversations with several other people who would obviously be key witnesses in a real trial of these issues. one of them is mike pompeo. i want to listen now to mary u mary louise kelly talk to mike pompeo about the ambassador to ukraine, what he did to defend the ambassador to ukraine when donald trump was attacking her. let's listen to this. >> i was taken to the secretary's private living room where he was waiting and he shouted at me the time the interview had lasted. he was not happy to have been questioned about ukraine. he asked, do you think americans care about ukraine? he used the f word in that

sentence and many others. he asked if i could find ukraine on a map. i said yes. he called out for his aides to bring him a map of the world with no writing, no countries marked. >> huh. >> i pointed to ukraine. he put the map away. he said people will hear about this. >> if mike pompeo was under oath being questioned by the house managers, i think that interview would go very differently. >> yeah. i think that's right. you know, i hear something like this and it actually -- it's so deeply disturbing. mike pompeo's job is to be a public servant. and i get it, you can get frustrated with how people ask questions. i know, it happens. we all have different jobs here. but this notion of harassing someone who is trying to get at basic information, who is doing what a journalist is supposed to do, it undermines everyone's confidence in government.

it makes you feel like government is not out there as part of public service, but out there to put up big walls. i think that's fundamentally wrong. >> let's take a look at what donald trump said about this today. he actually got a standing ovation for mike pompeo at the white house today and then he talked to him about the way he treated that npr reporter mary louise kelly. let's look at this. >> impressive. [ laughter ] that reporter couldn't have done too good a job on you yesterday. [ laughter ] i think you did a good job on her actually. [ laughter ] that's good, thank you, mike. great. >> i think you did a good job on her. and with that, and i'm not sure you can see that in your monitor -- >> no. >> -- it was alan dershowitz sitting behind mike pompeo, pats mike pompeo on the back when the president is saying to him, i think you did a good job on her. what's your reaction to that,

senator? >> look, this is just wrong, and it is wrong for the president to do this. it's wrong for the people in the room to say, yeah, boy, screaming at a woman who was trying to do her job. you really showed. what a tough guy you are. no, you showed how you're just not in this as a public servant. you showed how this is all, what, all politics, all partisanship for you all the time. that's not why you get to be secretary of state and you do a disservice to everybody in this country, democrat or republican. and you embarrass our nation. it's just wrong. >> what are you seeing in this impeachment trial that if the president remains in office will be part of the presidential campaign as you continue to pursue that presidential campaign? >> you know, let's face it. what this impeachment trial is

about is corruption. it's about a president who thinks he's more important than serving the national interest. he was willing to use your tax dollars, he was willing to use the national defense. it's just a bargaining chip to help him politically. i think this is what's broken in washington and exactly how we're going to beat donald trump. look, we've got the most corrupt president in history right now in the white house. and the way i'm going to run this election is to draw the sharp e sharpest possible contrast against that. i have the biggest anti-corruption plan since watergate. the bad news is we need the biggest anticorruption plan since watergate. but it's to beat back the influence of money and self-dealing in washington. and here's the thing. this is the fight we should be having in 2020 because it's

fundamentally about who government works for. is it just going to work for a handful of rich people, people who can make big donations? keep in mind, right at the center of this whole thing is a guy who gets to be ambassador, why, because of his qualifications? no, he gets to be ambassador because he made a million dollar contribution to the donald trump inaugural committee. that's the kind of corruption the american people both understand and are sick to their teeth of. and here's the thing. it's not just democrats who are sick of it. republicans get it, too, that washington has worked over and over and over for those at the top and not for them. that amazon and eli lili and halliburton report billions of dollars of profits and pay zero in taxes. meanwhile, hard working people in this country, they pay their

taxes. somebody has to keep this government running and keep the roads paved and the schools opened and the defense up, and they see a government where these big companies have figured out where the corporate executives have figured out where the billionaires have figured out, instead of following the rules, instead of paying your fair share go to washington and spread around a bunch of money and then you get breaks and the government works for you and sticks everybody else with the bill. we draw that kind of contrast in 2020, that's not only how i beat donald trump. it's how we take back the senate. it's how we take back statehouses all around this country. it's how we win as democrats up and down the ticket. we're the party that's not just for the rich guys who are pulling all the strings in washington. we're the party to make this government work for everyone. >> senator, quickly before we go to the break. >> sure. >> have you written questions --

for the next two days you're going to have a chance to submit written questions to either the house managers or president's defense lawyers. have you written questions yet and do you have any you can share with us? >> i have. they're not ready to share yet. one of the things we're actually doing in the senate is a lot of us are talking with each other. so there's no point in 15 of us asking exactly the same question and having to cycle it through 15 different times. so right now we're doing a lot of coordination and making sure we get all the areas covered. so i think the questions are going to be interesting over the next couple of days. >> senator elizabeth warren, thank you very much for joining us on this important night. we appreciate it. >> thank you for having me. i appreciate it. >> and when we come back, i will explain what i think, what i for one think mitch mcconnell is up to when he's leaking that he does not have enough votes to block witnesses. that's not what mitch mcconnell usually does when he has a close

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in a new quinnipiac poll released today, 75% of registered voters say there should be witnesses in the senate impeachment trial of donald trump. 75% of independent voters say they want witnesses in the trial. and a full 49% of republicans want to hear from witnesses in the trial. and that last number, 49, that number might actually match the number of republican senators who are now opposed to witnesses in the trial. it might just be that only 49 republican senators are opposed to witnesses at this point because "the new york times," the "the wall street journal," "the washington post" are all reporting tonight that mitch mcconnell has told republican senators that he does not have enough votes to block witnesses in the senate impeachment trial.

that means mitch mcconnell has 49 votes or less. it means that at least four republicans have told mitch mcconnell that they are going to vote for witnesses, and that's all it takes to force witnesses in the senate trial. but why would mitch mcconnell turn over his cards like this? why would mitch mcconnell reveal now that he does not have the votes? two, three days before that vote is going to come? that is not mitch mcconnell's style when he is approaching a very close vote in the senate. in the past mitch mcconnell never let it be known that he didn't have the votes even when he didn't have the votes. like the time john mccain voted against mitch mcconnell and donald trump on repealing the affordable act. mitch mcconnell knew that it would leak immediately when he privately told republican senators that he didn't have the votes to stop witnesses. mitch mcconnell wanted it to leak because he knows he needs a lot of help now to get those votes to stop witnesses.

he needs sean hannity's help. he needs rush limbaugh's help. he needs donald trump's help. mitch mcconnell needs donald trump and the media team to spend the next two days trying to strike terror in the hearts of republican senators who are ready to vote for witnesses, terror is what has kept republican senators in line. republican senators live in terror of donald trump and trump voters. that means they also live in terror of sean hannity who will help unleash the wrath of trump voters on republican senators who do what 75% of americans now want them to do, and what half of republicans want them to do, allow witnesses in the senate trial. as of tonight, mitch mcconnell is saying it's all up to donald trump and sean hannity and their trump media teammates to stop the witnesses. joining our discussion now, jonathan alter, columnist for

daily beast and msnbc political analyst. we are lucky to have ari melber, msnbc's chief legal correspondent and the host of ""the beat"" on msnbc. sus susan del persio, and jonathan hayes, buzzfeed and host of the podcast impeachment today. ari, as our impeachment trial chairman here on this committee, i want to start with you. mitch mcconnell letting it leak, i don't have the votes. >> as you laid it out, we were discussing this in our coverage earlier today, this comes out because mitch mcconnell wants to push it out and he hasn't given up. it's not as if the turtle has gone into his shell. as you say, it is him both i think venting a little bit of frustration with how they were blind sided by the bolton stuff and the white house didn't really help him there. and also putting the word out. so if people who have a stake in this -- they could be republican donors, media figureses as you say, the entire trump army -- are now put on notice because,

remember, this isn't just any tuesday. this is the time mitch mcconnell had said wait, then we can get our 51 together after opening arguments. if he doesn't have the votes, he's saying with a day or two more of questions, maybe they can help him get over the line. >> susan, mitch mcconnell is running for reelection which i always think needs to be said at the beginning of every mitch mcconnell discussion. he desperately needs kentucky to know it's not his fault. he needs them to know if witnesses show up in this trial, it is not my fault. >> that's right. and he is also afraid that donald trump will come down on him like a ton of bricks if this does not go the way he wants. and just to elaborate on what you and ari said, i think it's not just the fact that john bolton's information came out in a surprise way to mitch mcconnell. it's that this is the only way mitch mcconnell knows how to communicate with the president is on television. he needs this to be out there and it's his way of saying, hey, we're supposed to be in lockstep together. just so you know i'm not joking.

and like you said, lawrence, to get his team back on -- trump's team out there to whip the votes. >> let's take a look at what lisa murkowski said today about john bolton. >> the reporting on john bolton strengthens the case for witnesses, and has prompted a number of conversations among my colleagues. >> mr. bolton probably has some things that would be helpful for us. and we'll figure out how we might be able to learn that. >> hayes, the reason i wanted to see lisa murkowski especially is because she was talking the other day that she is going the other way, she's bothered, offended by some of the managers statements on the senate floor. mitt romney has been strong on witnesses, especially bolton from the start. susan collins was pretty far out

there on witnesses. i didn't see how she could walk it back. lisa murkowski has taken a position that seems hard to walk back from. >> i agree. the reporting on the bolton book completely scrambled the calculus for the republican senate members. it seemed like on saturday when the president's defense team first started up they had their first two hours, it seemed like they had one of the easiest jobs in washington. they just had to last long enough through this like war of attrition basically to make it through to the other side of opening statements so that they could get on to questions, and then on to watching those sweet acquittal votes roll in. but the bolton book reporting has made it so that it's much harder for them to say if we wrap this up quickly it will all go away. that's evidence it will not go away. there will be more things that come out. with these tough reelection races coming in the future and, you know, not just this year in 2020. two years from now, in 2022, more senators will be up for reelection. this is something that will last with them for a long time how they act in this trial. so for them to suddenly have

this new information presented before them, it means that a lot of them are really weighing their options. and i personally think that we will get witnesses when we have that vote on friday. will john bolton be one of them? that's still a question mark. but i think the vote for witnesses will pass. >> jonathan, it's a very different vote after the john bolton manuscript became public in "the new york times" reporting. >> right. so before bolton, if you were voting against witnesses -- >> before bolton seems like two weeks ago. and it's what? >> 48 hours. >> 48 hours. >> if you were voting against witnesses, people like us would say you don't want a fair trial. it was like an abstraction. like you were voting for summary judgment. now if you vote against witnesses, you're voting for a cover up. and they know that the difference between a process question and a cover up is political dynamite potentially for them. i'm not as confident as you are that mcconnell might not pull a rabbit out of his hat because they're betting on two things

basically. adhd and carl marx. they're betting on adhd because they're just assuming by november nobody will remember this, it will be old news. americans have a short attention span. maybe by next week they won't even be focused on this that much. and they're betting on carl marx because they think that the state of the american economy determines everything and it will overcome all of the charges that martha mcsally and the rest of them are cover up artists. >> lawrence, another real glimmer of optimism here is for all of the endless talk about how nothing matters and nothing will change and it's all nialism. listen, everyone knew john bolton was negative on this, drug deal, hand grenade, i don't want to be a parrot of it. that was like a criticism. witnesses said it sounded bad, sounded like a crime. republicans ask -- you're not a

lawyer, we don't care if you think it's a crime. john bolton's book is going to detail his eyewitness account of trump. you're away from the drug deal and in the room. it's interesting for republican senators as you were pointing out, some of them, maybe not most b some, there are some hearts beating in the republican caucus that still see that difference and say, wait a minute, if there's going to be a john bolton book club and a bunch of senate republicans are going to be in the book club reading it together, maybe they want to get this straight beforehand. >> and also one other thing. the number you read in the top, lawrence, 49% of republicans to 47% of republicans want to hear from witnesses. that will surely get the attention of a lot of individual senators who are up for reelection and maybe just want to do the right thing because what that number shows us, too, is there is a sense of fairness this this country. >> some of that, they want biden. >> they may -- that's fine. and it's still about wanting

witnesses, which is the most important part. and if that's how they get there, fine. >> we have to get to a commercial a break. the panel is going so stay with us except for mr. ari melber. he needs to sleep. >> i'm anchoring in the morning, lawrence. >> the guy who has been carrying us through the trial every day. great coverage. thanks for staying with us tonight, ari. really appreciate it. when we come back, the trump defense now comes down to the dershowitz defense. the dershowitz defense is being countered by harvard law school's professor of law school lawrence tribe who will join us next.

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the senate impeachment trial of donald trump was rocked yesterday by the front page of "the new york times" which carried the story describing the contents of former trump national security advisor john bolton's book manuscript. according to "the new york times," in the manuscript john

bolton says that donald trump told him that he was holding back military aid to ukraine to force ukraine to investigate joe biden. in other words, john bolton's book manuscript proves the accusations made in the first article of impeachment against donald trump. former harvard law school professor alan dershowitz was the first trump defender to dare to mention the bolton manuscript in the senate trial. >> if a president -- any president -- were to have done what the times reported about the content of the bolton manuscript, that would not constitute an impeachable offense. let me repeat. nothing in the bolton revelations, even if true, would rise to the level of an abuse of power or an impeachable offense. >> joining us now is lawrence tribe, harvard law school's professor of constitutional law.

he is coauthor of "to end a presidency, the power of impeachment." professor tribe, thank you very much for joining us tonight. really an honor to have you. >> thank you, lawrence. great to be here. >> i want to get out of the way and give you the floor as if it was the senate floor to respond to senator dershowitz. professor, i should say. >> right. i suppose what i would say to the senators is this. you may want to vote to acquit donald trump either because you really believe he's innocent or because you are frankly scared of what a vindictive donald trump will do to you if you don't vote that way. but i would implore you, not only because america deserves a fair trial and is worth it, but because you're going to have to explain to your constituents as well as yourself and your kids

and your grand kids why you voted the way you did if you end up voting to acquit. and the only way you can do that fairly, the only way you can do that is to vote to hear bolton and other witnesses and the evidence. and i say that because otherwise you'll never be able to explain the way you voted without adopting this remarkably absurd and extreme and dangerous theory that my former colleague alan dershowitz is pedaling. namely, it doesn't matter if a president uses the vast powers of his office to shake down an ally and help an adversary in order to get dirt on an enemy and corrupt an election. that doesn't matter. and, therefore, you didn't need to hear any witnesses. but nobody will really accept

that as a plausible theory. in fact, there is no legal scholar in the country other than alan dershowitz who believes it. one of my colleagues, niko bowie used to say he agreed with alan. now he says professor bowie is wrong. not only is he out on a limb from every other scholar, he's out on a limb from the framers of the constitution. what would happen if you used that fig leaf to justify your vote? what would happen is you might save your skin, but not your soul because you would be leaving a message to future generations, to future presidents that anyway they want to abuse the power of their office, anyway they want to take appropriated money and turn it to their own benefit, anyway

they want to shake down an ally at war with an adversary for their own corrupt benefit is just fine because trump got away with it since the ultimate ruling was, so what, it doesn't matter. if you leave that message, and if that's the explanation, you end up having to give to people, you will harm not only the country today, but you will leave a lesson for future presidents that will be terrible to the republic. it will not be a constitutional democracy, but it will be a dictatorship. so i implore you, if you are inclined to vote to acquit this president, don't do it on the ridiculous basis that abuse of power, because it's not a statutory crime, it is rather open-ended is not a basis to remove. don't do it on that basis. do it, perhaps, on the basis

that after you've heard john bolton and looked at the evidence, you're just not convinced. i don't know that i would agree with you. i probably wouldn't. but at least that would be something that wouldn't leave a terrible legacy for the future. but the only way you can do that, the only way you can avoid endangering the country is to listen to the evidence, have a real trial, and don't just buy this theory that abuse of power doesn't matter, therefore, i don't need to know the truth. you need to be in the room where it happened with john bolton. and because that book is going to come out anyway, you ought to find out the truth now using all of the tools at your disposal, including cross-examination to get to the truth. but do not be seduced by what i would call fig leaf jurisprudence, covering up the truth, and covering up the

relevance of what really happened when the president decided that he wanted to smear the bidens, even at the cost of increasing the death toll in ukraine. i guess that's what i would tell my fellow americans and every member of the senate. >> let's listen to professor dershowitz explaining his change of mind on this and how he switched from what is your position to his new position. let's listen to this. >> during the clinton impeachment, i stated in an interview that i did not think that a technical crime was required, but that i did think that abusing trust could be considered. i said that. at that time i had not done the extensive research on that issue because it was irrelevant to the clinton case. >> professor tribe, you have also done more research since the clinton case. you've put out this new book, which i want to point out to the audience beginning on page 259

specifically takes on the dershowitz argument. what is it that alan dershowitz is missing here? >> i think he's missing our whole history. he's missing the fact that common law crimes, even though they were not within the jurisdiction of the federal courts in the early 19th century, were regarded as serious. and one of the most important common law crimes was, believe it or not, abuse of power. in the 17th century and in the 18th century and before in england, abuse of power, abuse of trust was the principal constitutional crime that led to impeachment. so i would suggest that professor dershowitz had it much more right the first time. i don't know what he's been reading in the invest, it's not english history, colonial

history, constitutional law. >> harvard law school's professor lawrence tribe, the highest authority i personally know on constitutional law. thank you very much for joining us tonight. i really appreciate it. >> thank you, lawrence. >> appreciate it. and when we come back, tomorrow begins what will be the strangest phase in the impeachment trial of donald trump. that's next. he wanted a man cave in our new home. but she wanted to be close to nature. so, we met in the middle.

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that the lawyers should limit their answers to the senators' questions to five-minute answers. joining us now is andrew weissmann, he's a former senior official at the fbi. he also served as chief of the fraud section of the department of justice. he's an msnbc legal legal analy. and the panel is back with us. junior than alter, susan del percio, and hayes brown. andrew, let me go to you. i want to put up on the screen as we talk the card, the way the senators are going to have to submit these questions. it's on one of these cards. you put your name up there. you say whether it's going to the president's lawyers or to the house managers. you handwrite -- you have to handwrite your question, which means the staff is going to have to handwrite it. then you sign it. andrew, this is the most challenging question format i can think of in this situation. the democrats will be somehow trying to coordinate with the house managers to help them make their points. republicans will be doing the same thing with the president's lawyers. it is such a puzzle to try to figure out how to do this.

>> it is, but it is a great opportunity for both sides. i mean the downside is you don't get follow-ups. i mean that's the real issue. but i think the democrats really can use this not only to rebut because, you know, they haven't actually had a chance to say what they think is wrong with what was presented by the president's counsel, but i think they also can really use this to point out things that strengthen their case for calling witnesses, meaning i think that things are going to really develop. i think even if you find out that the president's counsel is not answering questions, i think sort of repeating questions that they're not putting -- not giving answers to could be very useful. >> hayes, i have a feeling that alan dershowitz is going to get a lot of questions because if you buy the dershowitz position, you really don't have to think about the evidence at all. >> right. and i think that what's going to be really interesting to me is how they manage to -- i think it will be interesting to watch whether or not the democrats

only pass questions on to the house managers, and the republicans only on to the president's lawyers. i want to see if any of the senators are actually willing to actually try and put out some arguments on their own written down through the chief justice, et cetera, but whether someone will be actually willing to talk to dershowitz and write down, so, mr. dershowitz, you argued x, y, z. how do you explain whatever point that he has failed to make in his case. but it is going to be a lot of, well, would you like to rebut what the defense just said in their answer two minutes ago, which is going to be bad television but could make for good trial work. >> and, susan, the most important questioners in the room, if they submit written questions, mitt romney, susan collins, lisa murkowski, lamar alexander. everybody will be watching what they ask. >> and to hayes' point, it will be interesting who they ask it of. what's also interesting is the lack of a rhythm this questioning will have because

it's not done -- it's done by justice roberts, and it's not done with commentary. it's not a hearing format where you get to have the whole buildup. you actually just ask a question. >> no speechifying, no belie bloviating. >> i think it will be really interesting, but i think we're also going to be in for a few kooky ones. >> senate staff is going to be up all night writing questions. jonathan, i think we can expect that adam schiff will be the primary respondent on the managers' side. >> yeah, i hope they ask not kooky questions but ones that are a little bit off the wall. i covered the clinton impeachment. the questions were terrible. they were boring. i hope somebody asks alan dershowitz something to the effect of, you know, you say you have to commit a crime to be impeached. well, how about if the president went to the french riviera for three years, left the white

house and -- that's not a crime. could he be impeached for that? how about if the president put a bust of hitler in his office and said all the jews should be rounded up? not a crime, but does that make him unfit, and would that open the door for him to possibly be impeached? his position that abuse of power is a fuzzy concept is completely ridiculous. both nixon and clinton were impeached for abuse of power. >> mm-hmm. >> it's not some crazy, you know, vague idea like he's trying to convey. so he needs to be pinned down on that, and i think the other attorneys for the defense also need to be asked hard questions, not open-ended senatorial questions but journalistic and cross-examining questions. >> andrew, adam yourself in adam schiff's position, which you would be fully capable of being able to do, especially after working on the mueller report

and that investigation. what is the challenge from adam schiff's perspective in trying to get the message to the senate that he wants, using these questions to do it? >> i think that what you need to press the president's side for is you need to be saying, what did the president -- to paraphrase the nixon hearings, what did the president know and when did he know it? i think here it needs to be what did the president say, and to whom did he say it? unlike nixon where it was what did he know about the cover-up and did he participate in it, here it's going to be exactly what is it that the president did, and what are you basing your information on because, you know, they're going to be saying -- bolton's going to say x, y, and z. do you say that the president said that did not happen, and get him to say it and to make that representation in the senate, not just to the press. >> andrew weissmann gets the last word. andrew weissmann, jonathan alter, susan del percio and hayes brown, thank you all for joining us tonight. really appreciate it. that is tonight's last word. "the 11th hour" with brian

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well, good evening once again from our nbc news headquarters here in new york. day 1,104 of the trump administration, which leaves us 280 days to go until the 2020 presidential election. this afternoon trump's lawyers concluded their defense arguments during our live coverage here. this is the eve, of course, of the next phase -- questions from senators themselves conveyed through the chief justice. with a massive drama playing out on the republican side where tonight their leader, mitch mcconnell, told his colleagues on the republican side there are not yet enough votes to block the democrats' demands for testimony and documents. earlier on this network, minority leader chuck schumer offered up his own vote count. >> i think there are 10 to 12 republicans who are in play, and

these are 10 to 12 people who have never said a negative word about witnesses and documents. >> more on that in a bit. the reports of mcconnell's vote deficit surfaced after his closed meeting with republican senators that was held shortly after trump's lawyers wrapped up their case for his acquittal. >> there is no violation of law. there's no violation of the constitution. there is a disagreement on policy decisions. that is not what the framers intended. and if you lower the bar that way, danger. danger. danger. >> overturning the last election and massively interfering with the upcoming one would cause serious and lasting damage to the people of the united states and to our great country. the senate cannot allow this to happen. >> with regard to what john bolton has said, which referenced a number of

individuals, i don't know what you'd call that. i'd call it inadmissible. >> john bolton is the man of the hour of course. the former national security adviser is at the top of the democrats' witness list. the calls for his testimony have grown even louder following "the new york times" reporting on what's in his forthcoming book and the allegation that trump told him he wanted to freeze that aid to ukraine until ukraine came through with an investigation into all things biden. that directly contradicts trump and his legal team. mitt romney, republican of utah, has said he wants to hear from bolton. today another republican senator seemed to agree. >> mr. bolton probably has some things that would be helpful for us, and we'll figure out how we might be able to learn that. >> bolton got a vote of confidence from a character witness today. former co-worker at the white house, the ex-chief of staff, retired general john kelly.

during a speech monday evening in sarasota, florida, kelly told the audience, quote, if john bolton says that in the book, i believe john bolton. every single time i was with him, he always gave the president the unvarnished truth. trump lawyer rudy giuliani is also speaking out about bolton. you'll recall impeachment witness fiona hill is the one that testified that bolton had called rudy, quote, a hand grenade who is going to blow everybody up. here's what giuliani just told cbs news about bolton. >> he never said to me, i've got a problem with what you are doing in ukraine. never once. never winked, never sent me a little note. he is a personal friend, i thought. so here's the only conclusion i can come to, and it's a harsh one, and i feel very bad about it. he's a backstabber. >> while democrats pushed for bolton and others, republicans argue they ought to be able to summon their own witnesses in

that case. some have even floated a one-for-one witness exchange. >> if we do call witnesses, we're just not going to call one witness. we're going to call a bunch of witnesses. hunter biden was not called in the house. to those who say it's not relevant, i could not disagree with you more. >> i think the idea that's been expressed in the media about having each side be able to choose a witness or maybe more than one witness on a prepared basis has some merit. >> late today democrat chris murphy of connecticut said that's out of the question. >> this isn't major league baseball, right? we're not trading draft picks for prospects. the idea that you're going to trade one witness for another is preposterous, especially because what the senate republicans are trying to do here is essentially turn the senate into an accomplice of the president. >> tonight politico is reporting the white house is warning republican senators that if they don't stand firm against impeachment witnesses, the trial

could drag on for months and jeopardize already skittish incumbents' re-election chances. but the number in a new quinnipiac poll today was devastating. 75% of registered voter respondents say they support hearing from witnesses. that includes 49% of republicans surveyed. amid all this, the president held his first rally since the start of the impeachment trial. he was down in wildwood, new jersey, tonight along the southern shore of that great state, and a big show of support for jeff van drew. mr. van drew was a democratic congressman who voted against impeachment, later switched, became a republican, now has an enormous target on his back. there were the familiar attacks on democrats and on the investigations that have clouded the trump presidency. >> while we are creating jobs and killing terrorists, the congressional democrats are obsessed with demented hoaxes, crazy witch hunts, and deranged

partisan crusades. the american people are disgusted by the washington democrat witch -- and you see it. you see it. which is worse? the impeachment hoax or the witch hunts from russia? >> on that note and here for our leadoff discussion on a monday night, kimberly atkins, senior washington correspondent for wbur, boston's npr news station. ashley parker, pulitzer prize-winning white house reporter for "the washington post." and jeremy bash, former chief of staff at cia and the pentagon and former chief counsel to the house intel committee. good evening to you all and welcome. ashley, i'd like to begin with you and your beat. is there self-awareness inside the white house for the danger john bolton poses not just for the next couple of days, elongating, extending the process, but poses to the

presidency? >> there both is and there isn't. when those bombshell disclosures in his book, the manuscript was given to the white house first came out on sunday, there was a growing send of unease and anxiety and frustration. you had the president's lawyers telling allies and senators on capitol hill that they didn't know about this far in advance, that they too were frustrated, that they might have gone with a different strategy and there were sort of frenzied discussions sunday night and monday morning about if, in fact, they should change their strategy. but i go back to something a senior republican official told me for a story i was reporting, and this is something that everyone, despite the understanding of what bolton's manuscript potentially means, takes solace in. and they sort of likened these new disclosures to a boat on choppy waters and said, look, it may be unpleasant, but it's not -- it's very unlikely to be fatal. so, yes, will there be some

seasickness? will it not be fun? sure. but chances are no one is going to die, and by that they mean they still believe that the fundamentals don't change, and the president will be acquitted. >> kimberly, tonight in south jersey, the president ran through his familiar greatest hits. mexico's paying for the wall. he referred to his predecessor as barack hussein obama. he talked about draining the swamp. but a kind of a new look since impeachment, relatively little on impeachment. does that indicate anything to you as someone who covers this place? >> yeah. look, this is something he's clearly not happy about. he is not happy he is a president who is currently being impeached, whose impeachment trial is ongoing. that's the last thing that he's going to want to talk about except to the extent that he wants to use his political adversaries from that impeachment to blast and insult them. he tends to do that more on twitter. we see him talking about the impeachment managers and other people and even some republicans if he doesn't think they're

expressing enough fealty toward him. but this is where he wants to be. the campaign trail is sort of where he has always taken solace. he likes being up in front of that crowd, and he's going to keep delivering those greatest hits as he goes into 2020 because he thinks that's the same message that is going to protect him with the voters, and that's also what's protecting him with senators, republican senators. you know, he used to say that he could shoot someone on fifth avenue and he wouldn't lose any votes. it appears he can stand on fifth avenue and say, i did a quid pro quo, and for the most part he's not going to lose the solid republican support that he has in the senate right now. >> jeremy bash, let's talk about the democrats. where does their muscle come from to be able to speak with some strength against the idea of what's been called a hostage exchange, a witness-for-witness swap? and is there strength coming from the notion that at the end

of the day, republicans will stop and do a gut check before voting to call either biden or adam schiff across the aisle to do a deposition and testify? >> well, i think the strength of their argument really comes from the concept of relevance. we're in a trial. we're trying to determine what evidence is relevant to determine the president's guilt or innocence on the charges of high crimes and misdemeanors. they can try to call all manner of individuals who don't have firsthand knowledge or even secondhand knowledge of whether the president used his office to shake down the president of ukraine or whether he withheld military assistance as ukraine fought russia. now, they can try to call someone like hunter biden, but again this trial is not about whether or not adult children of politicians leveraged their parent's last name because if that were the case, we'd be calling eric trump and donald junior and a whole host of other trumps who do that very same thing. and i don't think that's what

senate republicans want, and frankly i don't think it's relevant to the ultimate question of guilt or innocence of president trump. >> ashley, as no one needs to remind you, so much of this is through the looking glass. you had lindsey graham, former champion of ukraine and a guy who very much looked up to a guy like bolton. lindsey graham, rand paul today were floating out the notion that bolton wants to get rich, that that's bolton's real motivation. do you think that look, do you think that kind of talk is going to really stick? >> well, i will point out it's not just from lindsey graham and rand paul. you had the republican national committee the other day sending out talking points, slamming john bolton, who while people have criticized him as out for himself and a wily infighter, has been a lifelong republican who i believe has served in every single republican administration since ronald reagan. you had fox news, home of john bolton, going out and attacking

him. and so i think it may potentially stick when you have the president's allies and loyalists entering this echo chamber where someone is not toeing the exact line that they want him or her to do and they're not falling in line with the president, there's just an onslaught of an attack in a way that i think would stun people. as you said, lindsey graham is someone who shares john bolton's world view. but when he is under that sort of assault, i think it will resonate at least with, again, trump's core supporters. >> kimberly atkins, you mentioned the president's twitter account. we did some checking. at 9:25 tonight, he said this. no matter how many witnesses you give the democrats, no matter how much information is given, like the quickly produced transcripts, it will never be enough for them. they will always scream unfair. the impeachment hoax is just another political con job. one point of order and one question.

we never got the transcript. that's a summary. >> yep. >> it says on it "this is not a transcript of the call." the question, does this show a little mindfulness of mitch mcconnell's situation perhaps? >> i think so. i think it absolutely does. look, without question there is the potential that john bolton, if he does testify, that his testimony will be very bad for the president. it could be potentially devastating in helping the democrats put together the final pieces that the president used his influence to try to get political dirt on an opponent. now, on the other side, we don't know what he might say about that might be harmful to the democrats' case either. but it's clear from the president's twitter account that he's aware of this. he's aware of the peril that he is in. i think that mitch mcconnell is certainly signaling and rallying the troops. i don't buy that he thinks that he doesn't have enough support to block these witnesses, but he

certainly wants over the next 24 to 48 hours to be in lockstep with the white house as he announced he would be at the beginning of the trial and to pressure as many people to stay in line as possible. the white house signaling that they don't want this drawn-out fight, which after sitting for a week in this trial, i don't think most republican senators want either. so i think they are trying to line up their messaging and get that in a row. but i think between now and friday is a political eternity. we don't know what happens, and i think there will be -- there's still a lot of unknowns. >> jeremy bash, let's talk about mitch mcconnell. he chose to seat his entire republican caucus in a relatively small room for the task, probably hoping to instill in them a sense of history and loyalty. what do you think his next move is, and if witnesses go through, aren't we looking at a brave new world and a much longer procedure here?

>> yeah, i think we were at an inflection point in this proceeding, and i think it's really borne out for three reasons. one is the bolton revelations. send, it's because of the strength of the house managers' fact-based case. and third, i think it's based on the extraordinary weakness of the law-based case that the president's lawyers put forward. and i just want to address for a moment my old professor alan dershowitz's argument that it's got to be enumerated crime in order to be a high crime and misdemeanor. imagine this, brian, if the president had called the president of ukraine and said, if you don't build me trump tower in kiev, you're not going to have a productive relationship with the united states. i think we'd all agree that was corruption plain and simple, and abuse of office, a high crime. this case is so much worse because what he was demanding is not just build me a hotel, sort of basic corruption. he was saying interfere in a u.s. election. that affects all 300-plus million americans. it affects the very foundations of our democracy. so i think mitch mcconnell's got his hands full tonight as do other republican senators,

looking down the barrel of a possible set of witness testimony from john bolton and others. >> ashley parker, the secretary of state made a curious choice of all the reporters to get aggressive with. he chose mary louise kelly of npr, who happens, as we pointed out, on top of her harvard degree, to have earned a masters in cambridge on european history. so after that dustup and the ramifications are still going on, npr's reporter was banned on the secretary of state's last overseas flight -- the president in the east room today with bibi netanyahu, so an impeached president hosting a prime minister under indictment, chose to give a shout-out to his secretary of state. we'll play that. >> the great secretary of state mike pompeo. [ cheers and applause ] that was very impressive. that reporter couldn't have done too good a job on you yesterday.

i think you did a good job on her actually. that's good. thank you, mike. >> ashley parker, maggie haberman immediately tweeted, should help get suburban women back. what do you think? >> this is the challenge for president trump. what he said there, it reminds me to start with of something not that dissimilar that we see him say in his raucous rallies, where he sort of encourages the crowd or a security crew to rough up a protester. and he sort of took that dismissive, you know, bordering on violent attitude into the sanctity of the west wing to praise how mike pompeo treated a reporter. and this is one of the things you do hear from those sort of swing voters, suburban women voters, is that there's a lot of stuff that president trump does that they don't approve of and they don't like and they're not comfortable with, and it is sort of laying the groundwork for if democrats can put up a strong,

formidable challenger -- and that very much remains a real open question -- that there are some people who not just for that one moment, but for the totality of all of those moments from the campaign on to these past three years, may just say, you know what? i don't like that, and i'm willing to try something new. >> to my partner here in new york, kimberly atkins, ashley parker and jeremy bash down in washington, our thanks to all of you for being with us and starting us off. coming up for us, after days of sitting in silence, the senators themselves are about to get in this game, albeit indirectly, this being the senate after all. and later, six more days until iowa voters have their early say, and one of trump's opponents is under intensifying scrutiny. "the 11th hour" is just getting started on this particular tuesday night in view of the capitol dome. i remember thinking about things i did and wondering

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during the question period of the clinton trial, senators were thoughtful and brief with their questions, and the managers and counsel were succinct in their answers. i hope we can follow both of these examples during this time. >> senators who have so far been forced to observe this trial will get their chance to participate tomorrow. democrats and republicans will take turns questioning the house managers and the president's lawyers. however, they still won't get a chance to speak. everything will be written down

on these cards, the same way it was done during the clinton impeachment. questions will be read aloud by the chief justice, answered by those managers and lawyers. to talk about this, we're happy to have ron klain back with us. among his many titles, former chief of staff to senate judiciary, former chief of staff to al gore during the clinton impeachment, and former chief of staff to joe biden, whose campaign he's been informally advising these days. so, ron, what are the rules? how does this work, and let's be real about it. are these questions drawn up by democrats' counsel as part of a choreographed concert, or do senators really say, here's the one i came up with. where does it fit in our presentation? >> well, so what are the rules? the rules are kind of as you stated, brian. the senators are given these little cards. it kind of looks like a 1970s talk show on television where the senators have to handwrite down their questions and sign them, indicate with a check mark who the questions are for, and then the chief justice gets a

big pile of these cards. he takes turns, one democratic card, one republican card, and he gives each set of lawyers five minutes to answer the question. over the course of the day, there will be about 30 questions from the democrats, about 30 questions from the republicans. now, who's writing these questions? some of them are indeed from the senators. i'm sure there's some coordination between the white house lawyers and the republican senators, perhaps between the house managers and the democratic senators. but, look, as you said a minute ago, these senators, they're used to talking. they've been sitting for four long days of listening. i think they have no shortage of questions they want to put to both sides. >> excellent point. let's talk about the fix mitch mcconnell is in. i think it probably took a lot for him to say they don't have the votes to stop witnesses and documents as of earlier this evening. he could put up with two defections. let's say gardner and collins said, boss, we've just got to go against you. he could say, you're fine. i've got your back. three makes it really rough.

four is very bad, so four may grab five and six to make that less hurtful. where are you expecting to go? >> so i used to work for the leadership staff in the senate. there are many reasons why you boast you're going to win a vote even if you don't have the votes. there are few reasons to brag you're going to lose a vote. that's a rare thing for a leader to do. and i think there's a couple reasons why senator mcconnell may be doing it. the first is there's no question that democrats around the country are lighting up the senate switchboard demanding witnesses. this may be a bit of a call to trump's base to try to phone in and pressure republican senators to vote against witnesses. i think he's also setting up a big signal flare to the white house. the votes aren't here. if you want a short trial, if you're expecting this somehow to end before the state of the union next week, it's not going to happen. so i think mcconnell is trying to send some signals to the outside world. that's why he made this

announcement in public, not in a private senate caucus. so this message is much more for the politics and the dynamics of it than i think it really is for managing the senate. >> and part of that subset question, do you agree that it's -- being number four really hurts, so number four would rather come in with his or her friends, five and six? >> yeah, look, i think there's a couple ways this could play out. i agree this is not going to play out on a 51-49 vote. if there are five republican senators who are going to cross the line, there are probably ten. they probably are meeting together, caucusing together. i also think this is an appeal perhaps for some sort of negotiated solution. will they accept just two or three witnesses and where will the votes be? mcconnell is trying to game this out through a combination of inside game and outside game. but i don't think it's going to

be a 51-49 vote. >> so feinstein gave an interview that sounded squishy on impeachment today. california was about to secede from the union. she dialed back the quotes. crisis avertded, they think. but to name three, jones, manchin, sinema, could be squishy on some aspects of this. we should be asking you, is schumer going to be able to hang on to all 47? >> well, look, i think that that's a question really to ask after the end of the trial. and senator jones, for example, he's in a very tough race, but he's been strong saying there need to be witnesses. there needs to be a full trial. it's hard to know how these bubble democrats play out. we know how the process plays out and what kind of testimony is heard, what kind of procedure is used. >> do you promise you'll come back on with us and tell us what the hell is going on? >> anytime, brian. thank you very much for having me. >> ron klain, our thanks as always. coming up for us, the conditional terms of the president's defense team when

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even if a president, any president, were to demand a quid pro quo as a condition to sending aid to a foreign country -- obviously a highly disputed matter in this case -- that would not by itself constitute an abuse of power. let me repeat. nothing in the bolton

revelations, even if true, would rise to the level of an abuse of power or an impeachable offense. >> about that right there, "the washington post" reports a number of senate republicans are seizing on that argument from one of the president's impeachment lawyers, quote, alan dershowitz said it was not impeachable said senator roy blunt, top ally of the senate majority leader mitch mcconnell, and i don't disagree with that. "the post" goes on to report the new talking point stands in stark contrast to a key argument trump's most ardent defenders in congress and his own legal team has been making, that a quid pro quo never happened. as recently as tuesday, trump's defense team was calling into question the notion that the president pressured ukraine for a probe at all. back with us tonight to sort this out, frank figliuzzi, former fbi assistant director for counterintelligence. frank, i was watching chris matthews tonight, who got briefly angry at what he sees as the new need for journalism.

we have to stop every night every time we encounter this and say, not true. wrong. not true. what is going on out there? >> this is what happened when people have sold their soul to something that isn't going to resonate with the american people. so lawyers call this arguing in the alternative. what we've heard dershowitz say today absolutely undermines everything we've heard the president say before. no quid pro quo. no quid pro quo. what we heard today was, well, this guy john bolton's manuscript is concerning us. he's going to say there was a quid pro quo, so guess what? you know, even if there was a quid pro quo, it wouldn't be impeachable. my question is what would be impeachable? give me something that would be impeachable, and i'm convinced today that the defense team for the president wouldn't even come up with anything. >> and join us in watching this little bit from mr. sekulow. >> in his summation on thursday night, manager schiff complained

that the president chose not to go with the determination of his intelligence agencies regarding foreign interference and instead decided that he would listen to people that he trusted, and he would inquire about the ukraine issue himself. mr. schiff did not like the fact that the president did not apparently blindly trust some of the advice he was being given by the intelligence agencies. >> that was from saturday's argument. it stood out to us. the snide way of asking this is, when you raised your hand and took your fbi oath, did you mention rudy, lev, and igor? what's going on there? >> for this old counterintelligence guy, this has been a disturbing period of time for me to try to get through. we heard first in the house impeachment hearings this regurgitation of russian intelligence propaganda on the floor of the house, and now the circle is complete. we've heard it now on the floor of the senate from the president's own defense team. and i can tell you back at the kremlin, back at russian intelligence headquarters, when

the guy in charge of russian propaganda is having his performance appraisal with his boss, he's going to say, hey, boss, i've got a quarter million people following fabricated russian facebook accounts. i've had our propaganda spit out on the floor of the house of representatives, and now i've had it regurgitated on the floor of the u.s. senate. this guy gets a bonus. >> there's something else, and my bias on this is i'm a cold war baby, son of a world war ii era veteran, and this really got my attention. i'm going to quote from "the kansas city star." this is about radio sputnik. a kansas city area radio station can broadcast russian state-owned media programming, the type that u.s. intelligence called a propaganda machine, for six hours a day through a lease greem agreement struck by a local radio operator. this is an american station owner or chain of stations,

presumably knowingly agreeing to plug a wire into their programming for a local kansas city audience that is radio sputnik. this gets your attention. >> it's got my attention, and it should get the american people's attention. this is russian propaganda now broadcast in the heartland of the united states. and you say, well, do they really know what's happening? this owner of this station was forced to file a foreign agent's registration act. he knows darn well what's going on. and so now this is information warfare coming to the middle of america, and americans have a choice to make. they either need to be far more sophisticated at tuning out what is going to be a barrage of propaganda, or they need to become numb and forget what they stand for as americans. >> is there a role for municipal types, a mayor, a member of congress, local protesters?

>> i think, you know, we've moved from thinking government was the solution. ordinarily you'd say, well, the fcc, the fbi, the doj. it's time for local citizens to say, we don't want this station here. we don't want to listen to it. we don't want russian propaganda here. we want you out. >> and one more you weren't expecting on your dance card tonight. just around dinnertime tonight we learned 50 traumatic brain injuries suffered by american men and women in uniform during the rocket attack, the back and forth volley with iran. this is a whole new big number. this is the signature wound of our last two wars. >> well, we just finished talking about russian propaganda. the question we have to ask ourselves is, is this white house giving us propaganda about injured u.s. service members? why did it take so long? i understand fog of war. i understand they need to quantify the injuries. this has taken way too long for the truth to come out, and the

credibility of our entire system is at stake. >> i hate what we have to discuss, but you're the best at it. thank you very much. >> thank you. >> frank figliuzzi here with us tonight. coming up, why is fox news so concerned about whether the democrats are being mean to bernie sanders? we'll take on that when we come back. who doesn't love a deal? i do. check out the united explorer card. savin' on this! savin' on this! savin' in here. rewarded! learn more at the explorer card dot com.

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president's favored cable channel because as they see it, as this theory goes, he's the beatable candidate among the viable candidates. but with six days to go until iowa, some are sounding the alarm. the headline of jonathan chait's piece in new york magazine reads, running bernie sanders against trump would be an act of insanity. over at "the atlantic," trump critic david frum puts it more directly. bernie can't win. neither man has exactly been bathing in the warmth of bernie nation these past couple of hours. with us tonight from iowa, two of our very best. shaquille brewster is an nbc news political reporter, and katy tur returns to our late-night airwaves. she is of course a decorated veteran of the '16 campaign who lived to tell about it, lived to write about it and is the host of her own show each afternoon here on this network. shaq, we'll begin with you.

what do you think is going on here, and does team bernie have self-awareness that all this talk is going on surrounding that? >> i think they do. you know what? you're really seeing from the sanders campaign and from his supporters are they're trying to just brush this aside. they feel like they're in this moment, a unique moment for this campaign. when you look at the polling, they feel they're surging, they're rising, they feel good about the position they're in. but they also acknowledge they know they are making some people nervous. that was the tone you heard from senator sanders the last time he was in this state. remember he's been in washington, d.c. the past two days sitting in on that impeachment trial. but when we heard from him at a big rally in sioux city on sunday night, he said, hey, all of a sudden president trump is tweeting about me. you have the republican establishment sending out press releases about me, and you even have some in the democratic establishment getting nervous. he celebrated that and he lived in that moment and that's what you're hearing. they feel the energy right now.

they feel like they really are surging and they like the attention they're getting because it shows people are watching as opposed to not watching, which that's how they felt a couple days ago -- or a couple weeks ago, excuse me, brian. >> katy tur, in the '16 campaign that you covered, we kept hearing trump praising bernie, and we chalked it up to the enemy of my enemy is my friend. but what are they saying this time around, and do they buy into any of this reverse fox news, oh, he's the guy we fear the most psychology? >> well, let me say this. i was just having a conversation with somebody who is quite close to the president and involved in the campaign, and they were having a debate about who they thought was harder to run against. was it joe biden, or was it bernie sanders? they said both had their pros and cons. but on the subject of sanders, this person admitted that sanders has very loyal support. he has very dedicated support. he has the kind of support that donald trump has. they admitted that there is some

crossover support there from 2016. they believe, though, that that crossover support is not as strong as it was back then. so there is some awareness that bernie sanders has some momentum. i'd also point out that on fox news last year, bernie sanders had an extraordinarily popular town hall where he surprised many of the fox news hosts with his health care answers and what the crowd at the town hall answered in response to questions. 2.5 million people watched that town hall, so bernie sanders is something of an unknown quantity to how he would actually stand up to donald trump given what happened in 2016. but, again, they are still worried about biden, and you can see that from the way the president continues to attack him. >> katy, miracle of the jet age, i was still amazed to learn you spent the evening following at least one u.s. senator around who was in the jury when they gaveled it to a close today, made it out to des moines.

i believe it was amy klobuchar. what's it like to watch someone literally make up for lost time? >> you know, i got the heads-up from the campaign a little earlier today that they were going to make this stop, and we were planning on staying in the des moines area relatively close to here. we picked up our sticks and start the driving to council bluffs, which is about two hours away, to meet her there. and we did pull her aside just after she landed. she told me, listen, she understands this is not ideal for her to be stuck in washington. she understands that potentially having witnesses called is not ideal for her because it means she'll be stuck in washington for the caucus, and who knows, maybe even the new hampshire primary. but she said it's her job, and she has to do it. took a bit of a swipe at buttigieg when she was saying that it's her job, she can't just go home and watch cartoons. but inside this bar, which was, you know, called to attention four hours earlier, she had 150

people or so packed into this bar, waiting for her. and she came in to cheers. she opened with a lot of impeachment talk, which got a really good response from the crowd. we keep hearing that nobody wants to hear about impeachment. well, she talked about impeachment, and they did want to hear it. and then she made the case for her candidacy, and there were folks that walked out of there that said they were on the fence about her, and they believe that they are going to caucus for her on monday. it shows you the value of having that face-to-face interaction. she's somebody who stands to really benefit from it because she did not have the funding to organize a ground game here as early as the other candidates. she's playing catchup. so this face time is really necessary for her. it's probably why she is the only one of the senators that made the haul out here at the last minute. >> and, shaq, you know, joe biden is there every day, a very simple slogan. vote biden, beat trump. no messing around. it's four words.

it's easy to see and memorize. but it really does matter that some of these senators in this race have to sit as jurors in that senate chamber, and they must be going just as crazy as klobuchar was. >> that's exactly right, and they're not hiding the fact that they want to be in iowa and not in washington, d.c. they go straight to the cameras every time and say, i would like to be in iowa right now. and what you see with many of these campaigns, despite the fact of not having the principal out here, you're not having the top candidate out here, you're having their surrogates flood the zone and flood the field campaigning on behalf of these candidates. so, for example, today actor kendrick sampson was at a bernie field office talking to people who were knocking on doors, people who were making those phone calls saying the work that you're doing is important especially because the senator is not here. tomorrow jane sanders, bernie sanders' wife will be back in the state. you have michael moore, ben and

jerry. you have these people going out for senator sanders, crisscrossing the state, drawing their own crowds. i was there last weekend when you had congresswoman alexandra oi kaszio cortes. that's an advantage that senator sanders has, and that's what these senators are trying to do even if they can't make it here and they can't have that time on the campaign trail. they're trying to show their energy is still there and sending the team of surrogates out in their place as they sit silently in washington, d.c. >> a couple of points here. des moines is so empty, i can hear shaquille's words bouncing off the buildings, but i see one woman has pakked up behind him. loose meat sandwich. while you're there. i know it's late. i know you're weary. i know it's cold. thanks to two of our best, shaquille brewster, katy tur. see you back here. thank you very much. coming up for us as we continue, a trimmed down version of week one of the trial we have

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they said should you move this to the meadowlands? i said no. i want to be in south jersey. we want to be with our friends. but we could have filled up the meadowlands arena two or three times. maybe we'll do it during the summer. should we do it during the summer? >> president trump tonight whipping up the crowd in the red part of a blue state, putting the wild back in wildwood, new jersey. alas the aircraft we all pay for brought him right back to washington afterwards, the site of his ongoing impeachment trial. tonight puts us, as we mentioned, at the eve of a new phase in all of this. questions from the senators. the opening arguments are now closed. democrats took 21 of their allotted 24 hours. the republicans took only 10 hours out of their allotted 24.

we will close tonight with something of a summation of the case, a two-minute drill comprised of the key arguments on the defense and the prosecution. >> president trump withheld hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid to a strategic partner at war. >> at war, time matters. >> to secure foreign help with his re-election, in other words, to cheat. >> in a perfect call, the president would not threaten the well being of a highly respected american ambassador and say that she was going to go through some things. >> mr. giuliani and his agents could now apply direct pressure to the ukrainian government. >> mr. giuliani was no rogue agent. he was acting at the direction of the president. >> tif the president was fightig corruption, if he wants europeans to pay more, why would he hide it from us?

>> the president used his awesome power to help himself and not the american people. >> the constitution is not a suicide pact. it does not leave us stuck with presidents who abuse their power. >> and you know you can't trust this president to do what's right for this country. if you find him guilty, you must find that he should be removed. >> the counsel for the president have 24 hours to make the presentation of their case. >> like war, impeachment is hell. >> they basically said, let's cancel an election over a meeting with the ukraine. >> the ukrainians were not even aware that the security assistance was paused. >> mr. giuliani is just a minor player, that shiny object designed to distract you. >> why was hunter biden on this board? >> do we have like a biden-free zone? you're going to impeach a president of the united states

for asking a question? >> nothing in the bolton revelations, even if true, would rise to the level of an abuse of power or an impeachable offense. >> impeachments should be evaluated in terms of offenses against established law. >> have a removal of a duly elected president based on a policy disagreement? if you lower the bar that way, danger, danger, danger. >> the two-minute version of where we've been going and to tomorrow's new phase. nicolle wallace and i are back on the air with all of it noon eastern time. for now, for us that's our broadcast on a tuesday night. thank you so much for being here with us. good night from our nbc news headquarters here in new york. can my side be firm?

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in 1968 when richard nixon ran against democratic incumbent president hubert humphrey and beat him and the nixon/ago knew ticket ascended to the white house for the first time, nixon's campaign chairman in that election was a man named john mitchell. in a somewhat unusual move after he was sworn in as the 37th president of the united states, nixon then named his campaign manager john mitchell to be the next attorney general. that's not a natural evolution in terms of political jobs going from campaign chairman to attorney general. but nixon went ahead and did it and installed john mitchell at

the top of the u.s. justice department which turned out to be one of nixon's many disastrous early decisions as president. john mitchell, of course, would end up being up to his neck in the watergate scandal, specifically in the cover-up as well. ultimately, john mitchell would go down in history as the first u.s. attorney general to ever be convicted of multiple felonies and imprisoned. but at the height of the watergate scandal, at the height of the inquiry, the nixon administration must have thought that john mitchell actually gave them kind of an ace in the hole when it came to the watergate investigation because before he ever served as nixon's attorney general, before he ever served as nixon's campaign chairman, john mitchell had become friends with this man. this is howard baker, republican -- we have howard baker? howard baker, republican senator from tennessee. and when the senate formed its special committee to investigate the watergate scandal, howard

baker was appointed to be the top republican on that committee. how handy, right? how handy for the nixon administration that the top republican on the committee investigating watergate was this close friend of john mitchell, right? campaign chairman during '68, had been a linchpin in the whole scheme and in the whole cover-up, was then serving as attorney general, right? i mean, having howard baker be the top republican on the watergate inquiry, it wasn't quite like having a guy on the inside for the nixon administration, but it was close. and what was worse is that howard baker at the outset really considered himself to be the nixon administration's guy, their inside guy in the senate watergate investigation. senator baker sort of considered himself to be their ace in the hole. he was delighted to be named to the committee, specifically because he thought he could help nixon out. he later admitted that he fully intended at the outset to use

his prime position on that committee basically to get nixon cleared because coming into it, howard baker thought the whole watergate scandal was just a scam and just a put-up job by the democrats. he was glad to be there as part of the investigation, as the top republican in the investigation basically so he could make sure that nixon's interests were taken care of against those dastardly democrats. and even worse than that, senator howard baker let nixon know that. it's interesting. it was never recorded in the white house diaries and schedules and notes about who the president was meeting with that day. but on february 22nd, 1973, howard baker secretly went up to the white house and took a meeting with richard nixon specifically to tell him that the president should be reassured, that he had an ally on the senate watergate committee. that the top republican on that committee, he, howard baker, was essentially team nixon. and nixon, of course, was delighted to hear that.

and there is a tape of the interaction. it's one of those nixon white house tapes. it's kind of too garbled to hear. this is the audio. it kind of sounds like a coin operated version of space invaders being played inside a washing machine. but it is senator howard baker and richard nixon on that tape. nixon at one point on the tape can be heard saying, if it does get rough, you may have to turn and get away from this. you are going to have to get away from this. that's president nixon coaching the top senate republican, that howard baker is going to have to figure out a way to shut the investigation down if it goes in a way that's too adverse to nixon at any point. right? so that's a secret meeting at the white house, top republican on the committee and the president who's under investigation. that's bad, right? in terms of this idea that this was going to be an impartial open-minded, just seeking the facts inquiry, i mean here's the top republican on that inquiry

later admitting that he considered himself to be secretly in cahoots with president nixon from the outset. and he was intending to steer the thing as much as he could to protect nixon's interests. except as howard baker would later explain, things veered off for him in an unexpected direction. notwithstanding that initial sort of attitude that he had toward the watergate scandal, the initial way that he saw his own role as a nixon loyalist republican on that committee, things didn't work out that way because at that secret meeting at the white house where howard baker went up there to go tell president nixon, don't put this on your schedule, let's meet off the books. i want to assure you i'm going to take care of you on the committee. when he went to the white house to go meet with nixon in that meeting, something happened that changed howard baker's own course when it came to

watergate. something happened at that meeting that in fact changed the course of american history. watch this. >> when the committee was constituted, i felt, well, you know, it's just a democratic effort to embarrass him, but the election's over. and that's what i thought. and indeed i called president nixon on the telephone. i said, mr. president, i am the senior republican on this committee, and i would like to come down and talk to you. and he said of course, and i did the next days as i remember. and he was in the office in the old eob, the old executive building across from the old office. and when i walked in, i said something like, mr. president, i'm the senior member of this committee, and i want you to know i'm going to protect your rights. i'm your friend and i'm the senior republican. he said, i thank you. and we chatted for a few minutes. and then i said this, i guess, the most important point in my

life. i said, i do hope my friend john mitchell doesn't have any problems. and nixon said, well, howard, he may. and a light bulb when off in my head and i decided, you know, baker, you don't know as much about this situation as you think you do, and you better just put your head down and charge into this thing and let the facts fall where they will. that was the -- it's not often when you find a single moment, a defining moment when you make a decision of that magnitude. but that was such a moment. and i decided that notwithstanding my personal relationship with nixon, that he had campaigned for me, that he was the republican president and i was the senior republican, not withstanding all of that, this was a very serious matter and i didn't know very much about it, and i'd better find out. that's when i decided to do that, and i hope it does not sound vein of ain of me to say t i think we did a pretty good job with it.

>> i hope it doesn't sound vain of me but i think we did a good job of it. we all know how that turned out. that was howard baker speaking 35 years later. talking about that defining moment when he realized that his preconceptions about watergate, his hope and his expectation even that his old friend john mitchell wasn't implicated in this scandal, his sort of partisan self-assurance about the president's innocence and the scandal being some democratic invention, this moment when he realized, you know what? maybe i'm wrong about all that. and so he decided to drop his preconceived notions and his plans to use the inquiry to try to protect the president, and instead he decided in that moment, he said, like a light bulb went off. he decided in that moment that he would actually be humble about it. that he would stop assuming that he knew everything there was to know about this and, instead, he would try to find out the facts and to follow them wherever they would lead. >> the central question at this

point is simply put, what did the president know and when did he know it? >> that's the same howard baker. his famous crystallizing question from the watergate inquiry. what did the president know and when did he know it? you know, even at the time he asked that in the watergate trial -- in the watergate investigation, howard baker didn't know the answer. he didn't know at that point when he asked that question what nixon knew and when nixon knew it. at that point in the investigation, howard baker was still hoping that nixon would be shown to be out of the loop, that the facts would prove that nixon was unaware of what was going on in this scandal. but, in fact, he agreed to follow the evidence as it came to light and howard baker and the rest of the watergate committee, republicans and democrats, would go on to discover that there was important new evidence they needed to look at. that shed light on the president's direct involvement in the scandal, including the tapes that were made at the white house. and despite all of his

preconceptions, which he later copped to, his preconceptions his prejudices, his intentions coming into it, howard baker followed the facts and ended up joining with the democratic leadership of the watergate committee to demand that the white house tapes be handed over, and in so doing, the watergate inquiry produced evidence of the president's guilt beyond any reasonable doubt, and that is why richard nixon resigned the presidency rather than be forced out of office by a certain bipartisan vote in the u.s. senate. >> i decided, you know, baker, you don't know as much about this situation as you think you do. and you better just put your head down and charge into this thing and let the facts fall where they will. >> the lesson of howard baker from the watergate scandal, i think, is often told as a story about sort of nonpartisan, country-first bravery. but when howard baker himself described it, though, when he looked back on it decades after

the fact, he told the moral of the story in a way that was -- i guess it was a little more subtle than that. i mean the way howard baker described that himself was that it was this crucial inflection point in watergate, this moment when he decided he'd better take this inquiry seriously, he'd better follow the facts. that was when he realized he didn't actually know the whole story. he couldn't confidently predict what was going to happen next. things might not end up the way he and his colleagues predicted they would go. that was the inflection moment when he realized it was important to be real about whether or not he really knew what was going on. when he realized it was important to be humble about the fact that there were parts of this he did not know, that was the inflection point. that was when the light bulb went off. impeachments of u.s. presidents are not like unicorns, right? they're real. but they are rare and odd enough

that we really don't know what's likely to happen next in any one impeachment. it was definitely true with watergate. it was true with the clinton impeachment. i think we know enough of the history to say it was probably true with the johnson one as well. but it is certainly true with this one. i mean, tonight "the wall street journal" was the first to report that the republican leader in the senate, mitch mcconnell, says he doesn't have enough votes to block the introduction of witness testimony and other evidence from the president's senate impeachment trial. they need 51 republicans to vote no, to vote against hearing witnesses and introducing new evidence. "the wall street journal" was first to report that they don't have those 51 votes. since then, that reporting has been matched by "the washington post" and "the new york times." all of these reports are citing mcconnell's comments to his fellow republican senators in a closed-door meeting that happened today after the president's defense counsel dramatically cut short their presentation of the president's side of the case. they ended their arguments to the senate with more than 14 of

their allotted 24 hours left unused. now, again, these reports about whether or not mcconnell has the votes or not, about introducing witnesses and bringing in new evidence, these reports are sourced to multiple sources describing something that happened behind closed doors. nbc news has sort of contrary reporting tonight suggesting that while senator mcconnell doesn't have those votes now, republicans think they might yet get them when it comes time to actually cast and count them a few days from now in the senate. i don't know. i mean, ultimately we'll see. if we have learned one thing from the american history of impeaching presidents, it is that humility is in order when predicting next steps, when predicting ultimate outcomes. maybe the votes in the senate will be there to hear from witnesses. maybe they will not be there. we will know when they actually vote. in terms of predicting stuff from here on out, i would be cautious. stuff happens. things change. twists develop in plots, right?

in that same spirit, i would like to offer a piece of context for the debate over the impeachment scandal and what the senate is likely to do next. i'd like to offer a little piece of news and context about that debate that you might not be expecting to hear from me, which is that if you take an honest look at the record here, there is a fairly large contingent of republicans in both the house and the senate who, i think it's fair to say, have behaved pretty heroically on the issue at the heart of this impeachment scandal. and maybe heroic isn't exactly the right word. maybe they were just being diligent, sort of, you know, patriotically doing their jobs with a little bit of bravery. but there is an important piece of how we got here to this impeachment of this president, to this crux in the debate right now as to whether or not we're going to hear from witnesses. there is a through line in the recent history of how we got here that is being ignored by everybody on both sides because

it doesn't fit the narrative of republicans versus democrats and some sort of evenly divided mirror image split on the politics here and the disagreement on the basic facts. but i honestly think this is a very important piece of recent history in terms of how begot he -- we got here. take it from me, rachel maddow on msnbc, i hereby want to praise some famous republicans, more than a handful of them, for having earnestly pursued the defense of america's relationship with ukraine and our supposedly unshakeable support for them as a matter of u.s. foreign policy. and having done so in ways that required them to confront the president and confront the trump white house in very recent days. and i don't know why this history is being written out of the way we got here, but i think we should stop doing that. i think this is worth paying attention to. the night that the senate impeachment trial of president trump opened, a freedom of information act lawsuit resulted

in the publication of these documents from the white house, from the office of management and budget inside the white house. american oversight had filed a foia lawsuit to force the release of these documents from omb. they're documents having to do with ukraine over the time period implicated in the president's impeachment scandal. and most of these documents were ridiculously redacted by the white house. but we did, in these documents -- again, that came out the night of the first -- the first night of the impeachment scandal, right? we did get to see the full text of a whole bunch of republicans in the house and the senate contacting the white house, contacting omb in august of 2019 to try to find out why the trump white house was holding up aid to ukraine. why is this aid being held up? these multiple republican members of the house and members of the senate contacted the trump white house to ask about the holdup on the aid and to demand that the hold be released and that the aid make its way to kiev. for example, there's this one to

michael duffey, omb, from staffer in republican senator rob portman's office, dated friday, all 24th. michael, i work on national security affairs for senator rob portman. as you may know he's worked closely with the armed services committee on securing security assistance and is interested in ensuring ukraine has the military capabilities it needs to defend itself against russian aggression. i understand omb has placed a hold which could impact pending equipment contacts. if you're not the right point of contact, please put me in contact with the right office. in a related email chain a few hours before that, blunt letter of concern from rob portman's office gets sent up the chain at omb. we find that republican senator james inhofe has sent a similar inquiry. quote, thanks, jason, flagging for another staffer as well. we got a similar inquiry from senator inhofe's team.

oh, really? senator portman and senator inhofe sending similar inquiries. then there's this. august 22nd, 3:42 p.m. chief of staff to republican congressman mac thornbury sends a similar inquiry. i heard that omb has put a pause on expending funds authorized for ukrainian security assistance. is there somebody there i could talk to to understand why? signed chief of staff to republican congressman mac thornberry. here's another one and this one's not just an email or a call. this one's on proper congressional office letterhead from republican congressman paul cook of california, sent to mick mulvaney in his position as white house chief of staff. quote, we strongly urge you to direct that all ukraine security assistance funding proceed to execution as planned. this funding is critical to support the ukrainian armed forces against russian aggression. actions by omb that delay implementation of this critical funding could undermine our

clear national security interests, slowing implementation of resources appropriated for the safety and security of ukraine could undermine our relationship with ukraine and our regional strategy. again, these documents, this evidence of republicans, republicans in the house, republicans in the senate expressing earnest concern about why the white house was screwing this up and hurting our own national security by doing this -- these documents were only made public the first day of the senate impeachment trial. but it exposes these republicans for having sort of done the right thing here and having been willing to stand up to the trump white house to do it. this is all their communications to the trump white house, to omb, to the white house chief of staff. hey, what's going on here? this isn't right. i need to get an explanation here. this isn't right. this is bad for the united states. i need an explanation. but it's not just those republicans within those few days in august from which we have those documents. within a couple of weeks of

those letters to omb, here's more. here's republican senator rob portman and republican senator ron johnson. this is september 3rd, writing with a bunch of democratic senate colleagues to mick mulvan mulvaney. we write to express our deep concerns of reports that the administration is considering not obligating ukraine security assistance. quote, we have worked hard in a bipartisan manner in the senate to provide funding for a security assistance program for ukraine that is effective and transparent and fiscally responsible. we strongly urge you to direct the defense department to obligate these funds immediately. two days after that, september 5th, another republican, congressman mike mccall, top republican on the foreign affairs committee, writes to mick mulvaney and to the head of omb, russell vote. he says, quote, we write to express our deep concern in support of ukraine's defense. regarding reports that omb is holding up significant security

assistance funding in support of ukraine's defense, we urge to you make these funds available for obligation without delay. i mean there's all these republicans who have been acting somewhat heroically, who have been getting up on their hind legs and demanding answers from the trump white house, questioning the trump administration, demanding that ukraine needs to get its aid, right? standing up for how important that is, how crucial it is as a matter of us keeping our word. what a central matter it is for u.s. national security. ultimately when the aid was finally released in mid-september, you might remember at the time we finally found out the aid was being released in a sort of weird statement from republican senator lindsey graham. >> what about the ukraine aid? what exactly happened either today or yesterday with the ukraine aid? >> i don't know. >> but you said that it was -- >> i still don't know. >> it had been freed up? >> yeah, last night. you need to ask them.

>> yeah, yeah. last night it got freed up. you need to ask them. it's a weird statement, right? but that was lindsey graham. he was the one who confirmed to reporters and thereby confirmed to the public for the first time that for some mysterious reason that he didn't even know, this longstanding and increasingly troublesome hold on aid to ukraine had finally been lifted overnight. what he doesn't talk about now and what has been somehow lost in the sauce of this impeachment scandal is that the reason reporters were asking them, lindsey graham, is because he, lindsey graham, had taken a stand on this issue. lindsey graham and democratic senator dick durbin that very day had been working together on an amendment that would have confronted the trump white house on why that aid was being held up. the amendment essentially would have forced their hand to make them release it. so lindsey graham was getting asked about the aid finally getting freed up because lindsey graham was a key part of the effort to force the aid out, to

force the white house to do the right thing, to confront the white house on this hold they had put on ukraine's aid and to make it stop. republican senator john kennedy of louisiana suggested to cbs news that same day that he would have been with lindsey graham and dick durbin on that as well, telling cbs news when they asked him about it, quote, we support ukraine, period, end of discussion. good for you, senator. right? and none of this is all that long ago. this is all within the last, you know, four or five months in which all of these republicans in the house and the senate were somewhat heroically at least earnestly and aggressively standing up to get in the way of the trump administration messing with ukraine. standing up to the white house, to aggressively push back on this mysterious white house effort to try to mess with ukraine, right? all these republicans in the house and the senate standing up to try to protect ukraine against these weird machinations of the trump white house that were as yet unexplained.

standing up for our national support for ukraine, pointing out that our national support for ukraine was undergirded by a huge bipartisan vote in the united states congress to direct that aid to them. which had been signed into law by president trump and therefore shouldn't be screwed up by anyone. mac thornberry, michael mccaul, paul cook, ron johnson, john kennedy, james inhofe, they honestly have all been in the lead here. they've at least been willing to stand up alongside democrats to do the right thing here. they have all been white hat good guys standing up against the trump white house and demanding answers in terms of the mistreatment and the messing about of our ally ukraine. they have all been doing the right thing here until very, very recently. i mean it's only been a few months since they all stood up

on this issue to do the right thing, and we've got the receipts. we've got the details of it. have they since lost their convictions on this matter? i mean does it turn out this is something they don't really care about? they were faking caring about it a few months ago for some reason? or have they all decided that, yes, it's important that we support ukraine, but it's more important that the president demand that ukraine announce investigations of joe biden. and if they don't, we can let that aid slide. is that really what they think? i doubt that all of those republican members of the house and members of the senate have changed their mind very much on the importance of u.s. aid to ukraine. i doubt that any of them feel less strongly about it now. but where are they now? and where are they going to be as this goes forward? impeachments are unpredictable things. we may or may not be about to head into the witness and evidence portion of this trial.

that itself will be unpredictable even in terms of the process. be humble in anticipating what might happen next here. the facts are still coming out. i mean just tonight as i sat down, i was just handed this. this is yet more documents that were just pried loose under another freedom of information act lawsuit tonight. this stuff was just pried loose by american oversight from the department of energy, and we're just starting to go through it. yet more documentation released just tonight. but, you know, as this story continues to develop and the scandal continues to be exposed, at the heart of it all. >> referee: individual elected officials, republicans among them, who know about and care about and have fought for the real issues at the heart of this scandal. and no matter what you think about any individual politician in terms of how this fits into the rest of their politics and the rest of their biography, they all know that in all likelihood, their behavior in this impeachment of president donald trump is going to end up in the first paragraph of their

obituary someday when they finally leave this earth. they all know that. and the human conscience is a powerful thing, and i think we do all know that every member of congress, every senator associated with this scandal and with this impeachment will all want to look back at this moment as something that they get to brag about 30 years down the road, not as something they will hope people will forget about them. we'll be right back. >> he had campaigned for me in my races for the senate. that he was a republican president. i was the senior republican. notwithstanding all of that, this was a very serious matter and that i didn't know much about it. i'd better find out. and that's when i decided to do that, and i hope it does not sound vain of me to say that, but i think we did a pretty good job with it. times i wish i had legs like you. yeah, like a regular person. no. still half bike/half man, just the opposite.

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joining us now live is congressman adam schiff. he is the chair of the house intelligence committee. he's one of the house impeachment managers. he's been at the center of the impeachment trial. mr. chairman, thank you so much for joining us tonight. it's a pleasure to have you. >> thank you. good to be with you. >> so there's been some

reporting sort of on both side as to whether or not senate majority leader mcconnell has the 51 votes he's trying to get to block any witness testimony at the trial, whether he really doesn't have the votes or he doesn't have them right now, we're not sure. what is your understanding of the state of play right now? >> i think it's still in flux. i don't think the senate leader can be all that confident of how it's going to turn out. i think it's increasingly hard every moment every day for republican senators to say, we don't want to hear from this witness who was at the center of things that had the president's ear, that the president talked to about the heart of what the president is charged with here. and, therefore, we come to the end at least of this beginning of the trial where we thought we would be once we presented our case and the president presented his case, and that is the president's team basically has admitted that donald trump acted corruptly, withheld this money, tried to cheat in the next election, used the money to

coerce or extort the leader of ukraine into doing his political dirty work. so all we can fall back on now is, so what? the constitution doesn't allow us to do anything about it. and for that argument, their savior is alan dershowitz, a criminal defense lawyer who admits in his statement that his view is out of the mainstream. indeed, jonathan turley, who is the republicans' own constitutional expert in the house, has said now again publicly dershowitz is wrong. but you don't need constitutional law professors to tell you that this whole theory is wrong. you just have to apply common sense. are the republican senators really prepared to say that a president who compromises our national security, uses hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer money for military gear and weapons to help an ally defend itself against an

adversary, to coerce political investigations into his opponent? are we really prepared to say that that conduct is compatible with the office of the president? >> tomorrow begins a new phase of the trial. you said this is sort of the end of the beginning. we're going to start tomorrow, 16 hours of written questions from senators on both sides. and i went through all of the questions that were submitted in the clinton impeachment trial. i saw the remarks today from chief justice roberts that he wants the questions to be framed in such a way that they could be answered in five minutes. i wonder how you and your team are preparing for this next stage. you obviously don't know what you're going to be asked and you need to be prepared to answer in fairly short bites on any number of things that you might get from each side. >> well, we've tried to divide up the topics so that members can focus in on specific subject matter areas and so if the questions relate to that area, we have, you know, a manager to go to here or there. it's difficult to divide them up

precisely, and of course you can't anticipate everything you're going to be asked. but we can anticipate a lot of it. i looked too at all the clinton questions. a lot of them would ask, you know, the side that, you know, supported the case that the senators believed had been made, and then the other side would ask the other -- either the managers or the president's lawyers if they wanted to respond to what had just been said. both parties i think used it to expand their case but also respond and rebut arguments made by the other side. so i would anticipate that's largely what will happen, but we'll have to see. >> congressman schiff, if you have a sencond, i have a couple other things i want to ask you about, including some of the latest reporting on john bolton, his prospect as a witness if you could stick with us? >> sure. >> great. stay with us. stay with us - cut. liberty biberty- cut. we'll dub it. liberty mutual customizes your car insurance

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>> rachel, i really don't want to get into our strategy or what our fallback plan may be if the senators refuse to call for john bolton, but i will say this. you were asking earlier about the questions senators will have for us. i won't have a chance to ask the senators questions, but if i did, the three that i would ask the senators are, would you agree that john bolton has relevant testimony? and if you do, why don't you want to hear it? and how can you have a fair trial without witnesses? i may not get a chance to ask the senators that question. i won't get a chance to ask them that, but their constituents will. and i think those are very difficult questions for the senators to answer. so, you know, i want to keep the focus where it is right now. john bolton should come and testify. i think that's abundantly clear. the president's lawyers tried to contest what john bolton has to say. they claim that this was about a policy dispute, that the president is being impeached over a policy dispute. this is not a policy dispute. john bolton, i think, will make clear the aid was withheld not because of any policy reason but because of a corrupt reason,

because the president's desire to use that money as leverage to get help, improper, illicit help to cheat in the election. so that, i think, is really what's at issue here, and i just don't want to get into strategy beyond that. >> we, of course, don't know what's in john bolton's book. the reporting from "the new york times" says that in the manuscript, bolton asserts that president trump specifically told him that he didn't want to release any aid to ukraine unless ukraine announced investigations into the bidens. that's actually the core claim at the heart of your case for the president's removal from office. is that the core issue that you would plan to ask bolton about, or is there more that's directly relevant to the question before the senate that you'd like to ask him about as well? >> you know, there's certainly a lot more we'd like to ask. john bolton, after all, as dr. fiona hill testified, said, you go tell the lawyers after this meeting on july 10th at the

white house in which sondland basically blurted out in front of the ukrainian delegation, hey, we've got a deal here with mulvaney. you make the announcement of these investigations, and you'll get your white house meeting. we'll give you a date. and john bolton says to fiona hill, go talk to the lawyers. tell them i don't want to be part of whatever drug deal sondland and mulvaney have cooked up. obviously we want to ask him what he knows about that drug deal. that was in july. purportedly in this book, john bolton confronts the president or has a conversation with the president the following month in august about the other quid pro quo involving the military aid. that is certainly the most serious allegation against the president, now proven by the house in its case. but this is further direct evidence in addition to the direct confession by mick mulvaney that he talked to the president, that the president told him that, yes, the investigations, or one of them were part of why he held up the money. sondland also, another firsthand

witness, said that while the president said no quid pro quo, on the same call also said, but zelensky's got to go to the mic, and he's got to want to do it and announce these investigations, basically described a quid pro quo. so bolton is another confirming witness. there was also abundant circumstantial evidence during the trial, witnesses who said based on all the facts, the only conclusion they could reach, two plus two equals four, is that this is exactly the corrupt scheme the president was involved in. so a lot we want to ask him about, but, yes, that's the most serious allegation. and it comes apparently in a direct conversation with the president. >> congressman adam schiff, one of the house impeachment managers at the center of the impeachment trial. i know the next couple of days are going to be long days when you and your fellow managers are going to have to be on your feet for a long time. good luck. keep us apprised, and we'll hope to see you back soon. >> thanks very much. >> we've got much more ahead tonight. stay with us. ith us

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banner headline of "the new york times" yesterday morning on monday. "money to ukraine tied to inquiries, bolton book says." "the washington post" led with it too. manuscript leak spurs calls for bolton testimony. "wall street journal," bolton claim ties trump to aid freeze. "the miami herald," trump tied ukraine aid to inquiries that he sought, bolton book says. those were headlines yesterday morning, monday. now today for a second day in a row, still dominating. "the new york times," bolton's account fuels senate push to call witnesses. "washington post," bolton revelations roil gop senators. the "los angeles times" above their understandably giant headline about the death of lakers star kobe bryant, there it is on the left hand column there. bolton claim rattles trump lawyers. usa today. bolton book adds to call for witnesses. politico, taking up the entire front page. bolton sets off trial frenzy.

here's the tampa bay times, all caps. bolton's book steals spotlight. here's the minnesota star tribune. bolton book upends gop strategy. "the des moines register," six days out from the iowa caucuses, right? going with a huge headline above the fold. bolton sought as witness. here's "the charlotte observer" in north carolina. gop defends trump as bolton book adds pressure. the bolton news is sticking. i mean two days in a row of front-page headlines about ambassador john bolton's potential testimony in the impeachment trial. it is not going away. amid questions tonight about whether senator mitch mcconnell has the votes to try to block john bolton and all witnesses from testifying and what the white house might do to try to stop that testimony even if mcconnell does have the votes. how much muscle the white house could bring to bear in their own efforts to try to foreclose the prospect of bolton telling his story. the question of what the white

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while we wait to see whether senate republican leader mitch mcconnell has the votes to try to block testimony from witnesses at the impeachment trial including john bolton, while we wait to see what the white house will do to try to fend off that possibility, here's something intriguing. published today at just security by ryan goodman and andrew

weissmann. the headline, why the white house may not dare fight on executive privilege. joining us now is andrew weissmann, former federal prosecutor. mr. weissman, thanks for being here. i appreciate it. i feel like you and mr. goodman have deny a service by pointing out that everybody's talking about executive privilege when it comes to the power that the white house has to block witnesses, but you're essentially saying that's kind of a bluff, that they're never going to actually assert it. >> i'd be surprised if they did. we started thinking about this when we heard senator murkowski say that she was concerned about just how long it would take if they called john bolton because it may just be a long, drawn-out process in court. and we thought, okay, there are two issues to that. one is waiver because now we've seen the president himself and authorizing other people to talk about what it is that happened or he claims happened with john bolton. and the other is that if you actually go to court and you ask a court to, you know, defend that bolton shouldn't be able to talk because of executive privilege, the court is going to

look for whether it's waived or whether there is crime fraud because that is an exception. the whole point of executive privilege is that you want good advice from your -- and legal advice from the people around you. >> literally legal advice. >> exactly. in both sense of the words. if you're doing this and you're actually making these -- having this conversation in order to commit a crime, the court obviously is not going to say that's protected by the executive privilege. >> and that came up in watergate as well, right, when the white house was threatening to invoke executive privilege as a reason for things not to be admissible. that was part of the problem is that these conversations were about crimes or covering up crimes, and therefore they couldn't by definition be privileged. >> some judges might duck it by saying it's waived. i don't need to reach this issue. but a lot of judges at least in the argument phase will explore all of the different issues. so you can imagine a district

court judge saying, i want to talk about waiver, and now let's talk about crime fraud. this by the way came up in the special counsel's office with chief judge barrer ill howell. when he spoke to his counsel, we made a motion that said that should not be privileged because of crime fraud. the judge asked for all the evidence and made a decision that crime fraud applied. that's the same court that the senate republicans or the white house would have to go to in order to -- >> in that -- just to be clear, in that part of the manafort case, he wanted that evidence withheld from the court on the basis of privilege. the judge ruled, nope, crime fraud means it's adadmissible. >> politically, unlike the manafort case, politically for the president, it would not be great to obviously -- it's like stating the obvious -- to have a

court make a finding. it wouldn't then just be the democrats saying we're alleging something's improper. you have a court making the initial determination that i find crime fraud applies and thus executive privilege is not going to block this. >> bottom line here, this is very helpful. there is a lot of nonsense being said about what the white house can do or will ultimately do to try to drag this thing out and i think it's worth calling their bluff on some of it. thank you very much. we'll be right back. stay with us. as a struggling actor,

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capitol and the white house and the trump hotel. it was paid for by republicans for the rule of law, a group of self-proclaimed lifelong republicans who have been rallying against this president. the reason this thing has a giant picture of the vice-president's face on it is because this truck is supposed to convince republicans who might be on the fence about removing president trump from office that going ahead with doing so might not be so bad. if you look clearly, it says there "remove trump for wednesday" on the one side, and it says "pence, it could be worse" on the other. i'd also point you to a website, presidentpence.com, where they seem to be testing out a possible campaign slogan for a president pence. quote, well, i guess he'll do. here's their pitch for president pence. quote, dump donald trump. get mike pence. mike pence is a bland, boring typical ordinary conservative republican from indiana. and if the senate does its duty, they'll make him the next

president of the united states. if donald trump is removed from office, mike pence, not nancy pelosi or hillary clinton, becomes the president. and, you know, we could do worse. i didn't say it, they did. that does it for us tonight. we will see you again tomorrow. now it's time for the last word with lawrence o'donnell. good evening, lawrence. >> look who's here. >> it's weird. >> it is weird. i don't know how to do this. >> you hold this in front of your face. >> could you get in a box somewhere? so much for overturning an election. if donald trump is removed from office, you get the other guy that people voted for when they voted for donald trump. >> um-hmm, you get donald trump's personal choice of the guy he'd most like to succeed him. >> this turns out to be harvard law professor versus harvard law pro percent.