Sondland Ties Trump, Pence, Pompeo, To Pressure Campaign; Rep. Denny Heck (D-WA) Is Interviewed About Sondland's Hearing; White House in Crisis: Impeachment Inquiry.
HILL: Before Ambassador Sondland even finished his testimony, it was being called the John Dean moment of the Trump presidency. Just like Nixon's former White House Counsel, Sondland took an oath before a congressional committee and delivered testimony that implicated the President in serious wrongdoing. If history is prologue, what exactly does this mean for the current President? Tim Naftali presidential historian and co-author of "Impeachment: An American History" is here with me. Also famed Watergate journalist Carl Bernstein and CNN political analyst Elaina Plott. And Carl -- I want to start with you. Would you agree that this was a John Dean moment? You would know first hand.</s>CARL BERNSTEIN, JOURNALIST: No, I think that John Dean was a perfect witness who was privy to a lot more than Mr. Sondland was. Nonetheless, Sondland was a devastating witness and I think that what was revealed to day is that the level of corruption of this president has now been revealed in a way that's very, very hard for the Republicans to deny. And secondly, that we have seen now the wheels coming off the coverup -- the coverup led by the President of the United States. And once those wheels come off we now see in stunning detail just what the real conspiracy to undermine our electoral process by the intervention of a foreign power solicited by the President of the United States has been. It is a really ugly tale.</s>HILL: A really ugly tale. You also pointed out that John Dean was a much better witness. Tim -- as we look at this, that is something the Republicans quickly jumped on. Yes, he may have said quid pro quo in the opening statement, but there was a lot that did not seem as damning in their eyes. And Republicans were pointing out, there's so much that he couldn't remember. He doesn't have notes and he doesn't have any of this from his meetings. How damaging is that?</s>TIM NAFTALI, CNN PRESIDENTIAL HISTORIAN: Well, first of all, let's keep in mind that it's only later that you really understand the implications of a John Dean moment. As Carl knows better than anybody, John Dean's testimony did not lead immediately to impeachment hearings. John Dean's testimony actually lead to a rephrasing, a reframing of the conversation about the President's role in the coverup. But it's the tapes, it's the tapes that changed the whole nature of the struggle. So what I'm saying is Sondland's testimony -- Ambassador Sondland's testimony, as Carl mentioned, not only added dots but connected some and it is now clear that Sondland was not some kind of rogue elephant, that Sondland was implementing a policy that was coming directly to him either via Giuliani or from the President himself. And that the President's main concern was a corrupt intent. That's very clear. And that's what's so devastating about his testimony. Now I don't expect Republicans to say, oh, give up. It's over. Sorry. Oh, we're totally wrong. No. What I'm expecting to see is the pressure building on others perhaps to come forward, and I'm looking to people who plan to run in 2024 because you don't want to be supportive of this kind of foreign policy. We Americans have a tradition of very serious, very important foreign policy. We don't want to be associated with the kind of "three stooges" foreign policy that involve black mail. So I'm anticipating that as more details like this come out which all confirm the whistleblower account, that it's going to put a lot of pressure on senators who care about foreign policy to think about what is the right thing for future presidencies.</s>HILL: I want to get to the senators in a minute. But I just want to pick on what you were saying about the tapes. One of the things that we don't have, or that we -- or lawmakers don't have, that they haven't seen are a lot of these documents. What we learned today actually is that Ambassador Sondland doesn't even have access to some of his own documents. In fact, I just want to play a little bit of what he had to say today when he was asked multiple times about his recollection about his records and what he did have. Take a listen.</s>GORDON SONDLAND, U.S. AMBASSADOR TO THE EUROPEAN UNION: I can't find the records. If I don't have records, schedules. There are lots of notes, records, readout of calls, I can't get to them. I don't recall. Again, without all these records. Again, based on my lack of records. I just don't have all the records. I wish I could get them.</s>HILL: So Sondland making the point there that the State Department, the White House keeping these documents out of his hands and suggesting, obviously, they're not just keeping information from Congress there. Elaina, obviously Democrats jumping on that. Is it also something that there's a sense they could be using as they try to make a case for obstruction?</s>ELAINA PLOTT, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Absolutely. I mean here's the key thing -- Erica. Right now sort of the main line of defense Republicans have for President Trump right now is that Ambassador Sondland's testimony was ultimately a wash because he did say prodded by Mike Turner, prodded by Jim Jordan that he was never actually told directly by the President that this aid was being withheld for the explicit purpose of getting Ukrainian officials to launch an investigation into Joe Biden.</s>PLOTT: What's particularly ironic, of course, is that with Republicans saying that nobody who has testified thus far has firsthand knowledge of this is that they won't allow -- this White House won't allow people who could plausibly have firsthand knowledge of this. As Sondland pointed out today, people like Mick Mulvaney, Secretary Pompeo, Vice President Mike Pence -- these people were right in the middle per Sondland's testimony in this, you know, entire saga. But those are people who this White House has, you know, forbidden from testifying. So the firsthand account defense that Republicans are running with, I think starts to weaken by the day as Democrats start to say, if that's what you've got, then let us hear from those who would have the firsthand knowledge.</s>HILL: Carl -- what do you think the chances are that we hear from any of those people? In fact, we have quite a list we can put up of the people that we haven't heard from -- most notably Mick Mulvaney, Secretary Pompeo, John Bolton, of course. A lot of people would love to hear from John Bolton.</s>BERNSTEIN: I think that what we need to do is not speculate. And I certainly don't know who we're going to hear from. I know that Fiona Hill, we're going to hear from tomorrow. And she is in a position to tell us an awful lot of things including about John Bolton. Now, one of the things that is so extraordinary about what we have seen is we have a president of the United States who, at every turn -- and this is part of the Ukraine story as well -- has served the interests of Russia, a hostile foreign power. And we're going to hear about that, I suspect, in some of tomorrow's testimony. It's also what makes this so different than Watergate and perhaps worse in some regard because Nixon never tied the fortunes of the United States to a hostile foreign power who he was susceptible to. In this instance whether wittingly, half wittingly, or unwittingly, that is what Donald Trump has done throughout his presidency. One other point I'd like to make here about the tapes that were mentioned -- the Nixon tapes -- which eventually led to the smoking gun after many, many months of investigation, here we have begun with the smoking gun. The actual transcript or summary of the July 25th conversation that the President himself ordered released is the smoking gun. And what we saw today is how many people were in the loop, as Mr. Sondland put it. Those closest to the President of the United States in many regards -- his lawyer, his secretary of state, his chief of staff. In the loop was quite a phrase to hear, and indeed convincingly, Sondland showed us that they were. So this in some ways is worse than Watergate, particularly also in regard to this aspect of a foreign power.</s>HILL: Carl -- you said earlier this week that Senate Republicans who had confided in you were deeply disturbed by what they had witnessed. That was Monday, I believe. That was before all of the witnesses that we've heard from and certainly before Ambassador Sondland. A, have you heard from any of them after the testimony Wednesday? And B, do you have a sense that any of this is moving the needle for them to say something publicly?</s>BERNSTEIN: First of all, I think I also said how craven those senators have been in not being willing to publicly say what they are saying in private about how disturbed they are. And I have not talked to them -- any of them today. I think it's really important that we point out that I don't think any of us, even the best of the reporters involved in covering this story, know where it's going to go. It can go anywhere. We do not know how the first term of Donald Trump is going to end -- whether it is in a Senate trial and what happens in a Senate trial, the dynamic of that trial. Right now it does not look like it would be a conviction certainly, but anything can happen and that also includes the way and the effect of a trial on the election. If Donald Trump is the candidate, this is going to be a hell of a trial unlike anything that we've seen. Very different than the Clinton impeachment trial. So let's not get ahead of our skis --</s>HILL: Right.</s>BERNSTEIN: -- as journalists here and -- but there also is great work here. There are so many leads that have been developed in this investigation through the testimony of others and through earlier reporting. This is a real opportunity for reporters and journalists to develop this story further, particularly going after some of those same people who have not been allowed to testify, we sure as hell can try talking to.</s>HILL: Absolutely. And that picks up on something that Tim -- you and I were talking about briefly in the break. And that you would really hate to see the public hearings and even the investigation end at this point because you feel there is still much more to be learned.</s>NAFTALI: Well, I'm certain that there's much more to be learned because we get that when we listen to a professional like Laura Cooper. And she says -- first of all, she told us that the Ukrainians knew much sooner than we understood and that matters because one of the talking points that President Trump's loyalists have used is that, well, this wasn't black mail because the Ukrainians didn't know they were blackmailed. She's made clear, no, in fact they did know that there was a hold on security assistance. What she doesn't know, and she's just telling the truth, she doesn't know why there was a hold. No one told her. They said, there's a hold. There are people in our government who know why there was a hold. And it would be unfortunate not to have the documents produced by those people, email -- or their testimony. So I think we could get to the bottom of this and I think that the -- what we see now as a pattern of corruption but we need more information. And one of the things about an impeachment that people have to keep in mind is that this is not a criminal investigation. This is about the conduct of one person. All this is about is whether that one person, that's the President of the United States should be removed from office. And we still need more data from the people next to that president, the people who talk to the President. We just heard today, for example, that senators called the President to ask him to remove the hold. What did he say to the senators? Who are those senators? Did he explain to the senators his rationale? There are a lot of people who probably know why the hold took place and they probably could testify that it was the President who had it placed but they haven't talked yet. Ambassador Sondland is the first with some direct connection to the President who has put him at the center of the story but there are others who could. And then we would have, as Carl has alluded, then we would have the real story. And whether we get it or not is unclear. I hope we don't rush -- I hope the House doesn't rush the investigations.</s>HILL: And to your point, one thing we all need to remember, that it's far different, you know, decades later is that people have an expectation of immediacy --</s>NAFTALI: Yes.</s>HILLA: -- and that is not always the way things get done and certainly not always done well. So we need to remember that. Appreciate all of you being with us. Elaina, Tim, Carl -- thank you very much. Impeachment, of course, was the first topic at Wednesday night's Democratic presidential debate. Five potential impeachment jurors on that stage. How the candidates are taking on a White House in crisis next.