The Impeachment Of Donald Trump; Interview With Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) On Impeachment Trial; Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) Is Interviewed About House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's Decision To Wait Three Weeks To Send The Articles Over To The Senate; CNN Iowa Poll Shows Voters Divided Over Impeachment; Pelosi Defends Withholding Articles, Warns Of Senate "Cover-Up; " Senate Impeachment Trial Expected To Begin This Week.
JIM SCIUTTO, CNN HOST: A very good Sunday evening to you. I'm Jim Sciutto in Washington.</s>POPPY HARLOW, CNN HOST: I'm Poppy Harlow in New York. We're glad you're with us. Thank you for being with us for the CNN Special Report, THE IMPEACHMENT OF DONALD J. TRUMP. It is all quiet on Capitol Hill right now. There is a live shot at the capitol. But that all changes in a matter of hours as the nation gears up for an historic week, perhaps the most significant in the impeachment process this far, Jim.</s>SCIUTTO: And this is a fact. The Senate is set to try the sitting U.S. president on high crimes and misdemeanors as alleged by the House. Trump is just the third U.S. president to be impeached by the House for obstruction of Congress and abuse of power, in this case. The Senate could begin its trial as early as this week. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said lawmakers will meet on Tuesday to discuss exactly when and how to send those articles of impeachment to the Senate. You'll remember, she had delayed sending them in an attempt to pressure the Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell to agree to what she described as a fair format for the trial crucially including calling witnesses. We should note, one key witness, the president's former national security adviser, has volunteered to testify. McConnell, however, has not agreed to those demands. And we should note the Senate is likely to acquit President Trump. However, Speaker Pelosi says impeachment will be and remain a stain on the president's legacy.</s>REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA): We have confidence in our case that it is impeachable and this president is impeached for life. We feel very proud of the courage of our members to vote to impeach the president. There is nothing the Senate can do that can ever erase that. We will have an election if we don't have him removed sooner, but again he will be impeached forever.</s>HARLOW: Our special coverage kicks off tonight with our Congressional Correspondent, Phil Mattingly. Phil, glad you're here. Lay this out for us. OK. What is expected to happen this week, how could this all play out?</s>PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes. So something is expected to happen this week, which is a little bit different than what we've seen over the course of the last three. Here's what's actually going to happen. On Tuesday Speaker Pelosi will meet with her caucus behind closed doors. It's something they do weekly but that is the check-in that's going to be the trigger for the vote that's to come afterwards. Right now our expectations are that vote will take place on Wednesday. And what that vote will entail is essentially the naming of the managers, the Democrats in the House who Speaker Pelosi will select to prosecute the case in the United States Senate. By naming those managers and having that vote, once that vote passes, it essentially triggers the ability for the House to transmit the articles of impeachment to the United States Senate. Now how that's actually going to happen, the managers themselves, guys, will physically walk the articles of impeachment across the capitol from the House floor to the Senate floor to present them to the Senate. Now one of the big questions is how quickly does this kick into gear in the Senate? Well, guys, very quickly. By the next day at 1:00 p.m., the Senate trial will start. Now the first couple of days we expect to be largely procedural. There will be swearing in of the chief justice, swearing in of all 100 senators. We expect the actual kind of nuts and bolts, meat and bones of the trial to start with presentations likely some time the next week. But that's what we're going to see this week, guys.</s>SCIUTTO: So, I know you've heard this from Democrats. We've heard about it on this show. They feel that they gained something from this delay.</s>HARLOW: Right.</s>SCIUTTO: John Bolton volunteering to testify, Democrats will say it exposed other e-mails and communications that draw a direct connection between the president and his decision to withhold the aid. But I wonder if in private Democrats you speak to buy that because clearly some of them in their public comments are becoming -- have been becoming uncomfortable with how long the delay was.</s>MATTINGLY: Yes. There is no question Democrats particularly Senate Democrats were losing patience with the holding of the article strategy. Here's a couple of things, and the speaker laid this all out last week that they believe, Jim, as you noted, the kind of news reports, revelations about e-mails that hadn't been released kind of making clear how deeply intertwined the withholding of the Ukraine aid was with senior officials at the White House. That's something that the House wasn't able to necessarily uncover during its inquiry before the actual impeachment vote. Obviously, John Bolton's willingness to testify was kind of the biggest chip that Democrats believe they now have in the wake of this three-plus week hold. But here's the reality. The speaker asked for Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell to agree to witnesses up front. He did not. The speaker asked for Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell to unveil his rules proposal organizing the first part of the trial. He did not. So in terms of tangible things that they accomplished when it comes to the Senate trial, there's not a lot there to speak for. But in terms of the message that they are trying to get across and basically underscoring that if witnesses aren't allowed that at some point this would be considered a sham trial, the message they believe they have, the actual benefits for what's going to come next, not as much, guys.</s>HARLOW: Yes. Phil, thank you for the reporting. A busy few weeks for all of us. We appreciate it. We have just heard from the White House in the past few minutes, a White House official telling our Jeremy Diamond, quote, "We've been prepared since before Christmas and we remain prepared," of course, talking about their response in a Senate trial. This is after nearly a month of waiting for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to deliver those articles of impeachment to the Senate. Let's bring in Jeremy Diamond. He joins us at the White House. How much should we make of this? I mean, they're not really disclosing any new details from what they said a few weeks ago.</s>JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: That's right. Well, Poppy, look, the legal team for the president has spent the last several weeks finalizing the president's legal defense. So there has been some work that's been done over the last several weeks. But there's also been a lot of waiting, frankly, over here at the White House. That, however, is expected to end this week. And this is when we start to see some of the White House's first official legal response to those impeachment articles. Once the House votes on those House managers, something that's expected to happen mid of this week, the White House will then have a process over a couple of days where it formally answers a Senate summons for the president to appear at his trial. That is where we will see the White House argue that these charges in these articles of impeachment do not rise to the level of high crimes and misdemeanors. And we're also expected to see by the end of this week a legal brief from the president's legal team, which will outline essentially its core arguments as it relates to the president's legal defense. Now there is still some work that needs to be done. And part of that is because the White House has been waiting to see who exactly the White House -- sorry, the House Democrats will name as their impeachment managers, how many of them they will name. That will determine how many attorneys for the president actually go to the Senate floor to argue on his behalf. As of now, though, Jay Sekulow, the president's outside attorney will be one of those lawyers, and Pat Cipollone, the White House counsel, will really be leading things from the Senate floor. But then we do have this tweet from the president to throw into the mix. And that is the tweet from the president saying, "Many believe that by the Senate giving credence to a trial based on the no evidence, no crime, read the transcripts, no pressure impeachment hoax, rather than an outright dismissal, it gives the partisan Democrat witch hunt credibility that it otherwise does not have. I agree." So there the president suggesting that he would rather not have a trial at all in the Senate. That certainly not what appears to be happening at the moment.</s>SCIUTTO: Yes, it was one of his favorite prefaces there, right? Many people are saying. Oftentimes it's him who is saying that.</s>DIAMOND: That's right.</s>SCIUTTO: Jeremy Diamond, at the White House, thanks very much. Let's bring in our experts, Dana Bash, CNN chief political respondent, John Dean, CNN contributor, former Nixon White House counsel, of course with his own famous testimony, and Sophia Nelson, former House GOP investigative counsel and opinion contributor at "USA Today." Thanks to all of you. Dana Bash, let's step aside from all the political posturing here from Democrats, from Republicans, from the president. The fact is the Senate will sit in trial beginning this week of a sitting U.S. president for only the third time in the country's history. Place that into context today.</s>DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: It's hard -- it's important that you said that, Jim, because we have been going back and forth, will she send the articles, won't she send the articles? In some ways it's a bit anti-climactic in that there was so much drama around this as the House was voting before Christmas. But you're exactly right. This isn't routine. This is or at least certainly hasn't been up to date in American history. And there is a reason why it is still pretty unclear exactly how the Senate is going to go forward because during the Clinton years they wrote the rules for the first time in a hundred years. There are processes, there is a general road map. But this is so unusual, that is why we are waiting to see how it goes out. The one thing I will say just briefly about what Jeremy just read from the president about, you know, some people are saying that there should be a dismissal. Some people are also saying and sometimes that is even people close to and around the president, depending on what day you get them, that they don't want that. They want an acquittal for, if nothing else, then just to have that but also, for a political year, to have that as an ad, to have the chief justice of the United States, you know, hit the gavel and say the president of the United States is acquitted.</s>HARLOW: Yes. And have that, perhaps, Dana, by the State of the Union on February 4th.</s>BASH: Right. February 4th.</s>HARLOW: John Dean, if we could just take a moment to talk about John Bolton here because, again, just to reiterate, he could tell the world everything he knows now. He doesn't have to wait. But he is constrained and will see the reality of the constraint by executive privilege, right? I just think a lot is being made of John Bolton is going to talk if they call witnesses. But isn't executive privilege going to tie his hands on a lot?</s>JOHN DEAN, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Poppy, there is no way the president can stop him from testifying if he wants to testify. Executive privilege is something that has got to be very specifically invoked. It can't be just a general injunction against testimony. So, Bolton has a lot of freedom to do what he wants to do if he is subpoenaed. And the president has very limited power if Bolton wants to actually tell the story.</s>SCIUTTO: Sophia, so, Mitch McConnell has said on the question of witnesses specifically that let's hear the arguments first, in effect. Let's hear the case first and then consider the question of witnesses. And he says that that follows the format of the Clinton trial in the Senate in 1999. Is that an accurate comparison? And how exactly will that play out?</s>SOPHIA NELSON, FORMER HOUSE GOP INVESTIGATIVE COUNSEL (1997-1999): Jim, we've talked about this a number of times before and it is an accurate comparison. What they did, Dana is exactly right, that it was the first time in a hundred years back when Clinton was impeached that the Senate had to write the rules. And it's very important, I want to talk about Senate rule number one, and it's something everybody ought to go read. And, again, I'm referring back to what we have as the model now which is the Clinton impeachment. And that rule is very specific about what has to happen. And it's a shall command, I want to deal with the president's tweet. He is acting as if the Senate really has some type of way to not do this or to dismiss it. I disagree. Rule number one makes clear that once the impeachment process is triggered, the secretary of the Senate shall, then it has to receive the managers and receive the articles. And then there is a process that takes place. They have to be sworn in, the senators. So I don't think the senators have an option which is really important that I think the public understand. This is a shall command. I'm not talking about what the Constitution says. I'm talking about what the Senate rules say. So I think that this issue of whether or not we'll get witnesses, I have been saying all along, I think we will get the witnesses, I think they are going to follow the Clinton model, and I think it's going to become very difficult for the Republicans to dismiss this with a motion out of hand. And I don't think that Susan Collins, Mitt Romney and at least four Republican senators will allow that to happen. I have faith in this process with everything we've seen, I trust the process. And I think that you will see witnesses just like you did in the Clinton impeachment. It's just going to take us a minute to get there.</s>HARLOW: Dana, it seems like Nancy Pelosi's rhetoric has changed in the last 24 hours it's changed. Right? The fact that she said, and we played it earlier, quote, "The president is impeached for life. No matter what happens in the Senate he's impeached for life." And then also listen to this, listen to what she said about McConnell and essentially she is also talking about Senator Josh Hawley here who presented the legislation in support of dismissing all of this. Here's what she said about that, calling it a cover-up.</s>PELOSI: I am telling you that he signed on Thursday to a resolution to dismiss the case. Dismissing is a cover-up. Dismissing is a cover-up. If they want to go that route again, the senators who are thinking now that voting for witnesses or not, they will have to be accountable for not having a fair trial.</s>HARLOW: You know, accusing sitting senators of being in the middle of a cover-up, Dana. What changed?</s>BASH: Well, several things. One is I thought it was interesting that she was kind of using Trumpian rhetoric there.</s>HARLOW: Yes.</s>BASH: You know, kind of trying to, as my understanding, is that she calls this kind of thing jiu-jitsu where she takes, you know, somebody else is trying to do to her and she does it to them. But second of all, my understanding is that this past week in one of the private meetings that Democratic leaders had, they were presented with polling, polling in the six battleground states. And they were told that the term "fair trial" really plays. And that's why we hear her and other top Democrats repeating that over and over again. And what it means is that even if -- their understanding and their belief is that even if a senator is not going to vote yes to convict the president, to impeach the president, and vote no on acquittal, at least between, you know, now and that moment they should be held accountable for that term fair trial. Now what is a fair trial? That is obviously in the eye of the beholder. But she is trying to set those parameters by talking about the need for witnesses and obviously at the bare minimum not do a dismissal.</s>SCIUTTO: Right. I mean, the question of witnesses, John Dean, is central to this demand for a fair trial there. I just wonder, Mitch McConnell, he's a tough sucker. Right? You know, we've seen it in a number of instances here. After hearing the case, will senators necessarily get a vote on whether to hear witnesses, or could -- is it up to McConnell? I mean, can McConnell block that and just decide, you know, I haven't heard anything convincing, I'm ready to move to a vote?</s>DEAN: A couple things. First of all, 51 senators will control the process once it starts, while the chief justice does have -- he presides, he really has very little influence, and is more of a symbolic fixture than actually running a trial. But what's going to happen is really because of what Nancy did. Hindsight is forgetting the situation she was in before they voted on articles of impeachment. McConnell was talking about having a trial before Christmas, and at worst case, before the end of the year, and just dismissing this thing. So her withholding the articles really has upped the stakes and made the fair trial a real issue.</s>HARLOW: Thank you all very much. I'm sorry we are tight on time, Sophia. You'll be back very soon.</s>NELSON: OK.</s>HARLOW: Of course, Dana, John, we appreciate it. Still to come, as we ramp up to the potential start of the Senate trial this week, we will talk to two sitting senators about what they expect.</s>SCIUTTO: Yes. They're going to be sitting jurors in a number of days. Plus, new polling shows voters in Iowa, the first state to vote, divided over impeachment. This as we are days away from the last presidential Democratic debate before those Iowa caucuses. You will hear from people in that state, what they think about all this, ahead.