Congressmen Mark Meadows And Jim Jordan Informally Helping White House Lawyers In Impeachment Inquiry; Washington Nationals Pitcher Declines Invitation To White House
WHITFIELD: Welcome back. House Democrats, they're building their cases for impeaching President Donald Trump through a succession of closed-door depositions. And a pair of Trump's closest allies on Capitol Hill are quietly offering guidance to the White House lawyers responsible for crafting the president's defense strategy. Here now is CNN's Pamela Brown.</s>PAMELA BROWN, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, my colleague Jeremy Diamond and I have learned that a pair of President Trump's closest GOP allies are quietly offering guidance to the White House lawyers responsible for crafting the president's defense strategy. Congressmen Mark Meadows and Jim Jordan have been informally helping White House lawyers in the Counsel's office here sort through publicly reported aspects of the policy to the extent they can under House rules according to four administration officials. Now, Meadows and Jordan are two of the only GOP members that have been in every closed door testimony until the end, and their conversations with the White House, we're told, is primarily aimed at helping the lawyers here get a better grasp at the allegations being leveled at Trump that are leaking out from the closed-door testimony, and identifying any potential weak points as the White House crafts its legal strategy to defend Trump during his impeachment trial. Mark Meadows told CNN that he has only shared brought characterizations and is not sharing specifics of the testimony with the White House, pointing to those House rules preventing him from disclosing details of the testimony. He says he has guided the White House in what he views as mischaracterizations coming from Democrats after the various closed-door testimonies. Jim Jordan, for his part, telling CNN he has never divulged information to the White House that should not be divulged, and will not answer questions that in any can get to the substance of the depositions. And when some witnesses such as Tim Morrison just recently backs up aspects of the president's defense or hurts the Democrats' strategy in their view, these lawmakers have pointed that out publicly, but, as we've seen, have been careful not to divulge too much. They're certainly walking a fine line here. Pamela Brown, CNN, the White House.</s>WHITFIELD: With me right now, Steve Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas School of Law and a CNN contributor. Good to see you, Steve. So what do you make of the strategy by the White House, getting informal guidance from a few Republican members of Congress?</s>STEVE VLADECK, PROFESSOR OF LAW, UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS SCHOOL OF LAW: In one sense I think it's not at all surprising given where we are. In another sense, I think it's a pretty telling and sober reflection of where we are. We're supposed to have the separation of powers, not separation of parties. Yet here we have members of the House who are supposed to be playing the role of grand jurors basically helping the putative defense. It's not, as Pamela said in her story, it's not against the rules as long as they're not divulging the contents of this testimony. But it still doesn't exactly help the appearance that there are just two sides here and no one is actually trying to necessarily convince people on the other side that they're right.</s>WHITFIELD: It almost sends a message of a conflict of interest. Your role is oversight, as a member of Congress, and then to, I guess, split up the team on whether you're going to live up to your sworn duty of protecting democracy, or not.</s>VLADECK: Well, I think, again, it goes back to what's your role? And I think the founders when they wrote the Constitution they contemplated it would be the House's job to decide up or down on whether to impeach someone, a federal official like the president. I'm not sure the founders would have contemplated members of the House actively working with the official under investigation to get their strategy on the same page. But it's the times we live in where I think we're seeing over and over again signs that what's much more important in Washington these days is which party you're in as opposed to which branch you're in. The institutional interests really have been overrun by the partisan political ones.</s>WHITFIELD: Wow. And then there's this "Washington Post" reporting that an increasing number of Republican senators consider acknowledging that there was quid pro quo on that July 25th call, but that Trump's actions were not illegal, and that it may have been lacking of a certain intent. So what do you make of that defense?</s>VLADECK: Yes, it's remarkable to watch the goalposts move. I think the first line was, well, everything the president did was fine entirely because there was no quid pro quo. I think there are plenty of folks who thought well, no, that's still not a real problem if the president is soliciting foreign interference in our own domestic politics. But now the argument is, oh, and there was a quid pro quo, and it's fine. Man, it's easy to be --</s>WHITFIELD: But the intent wasn't there, that too --</s>VLADECK: But Fred, I think it's still pretty easy to be cynical about this strategy. And once again, why is it these members of Congress, in this case the Senate, who are supposed to be the jurors. We have someone like Senator Susan Collins from Maine who won't comment publicly on any of the allegations against President Trump because, she says, my job as a juror might be compromised if I were commenting publicly, contrasted with the story where you have Republican senators actively involved in trying to figure out what's the best strategy for trying to create a case to vote not to remove the president. My concern, Fredricka, is what precedent are we setting going forward for Congress' ability to function as an independent branch of government as opposed to just for whoever has the most votes being able to do whatever the heck they want.</s>WHITFIELD: And House Democrats want to talk to a lot of people. Among them, former National Security Adviser John Bolton, outgoing Energy Secretary Rick Perry, both have really set conditions. Bolton saying, OK, if you subpoena, then maybe. Perry saying, not private in the form of the depositions that we've been seeing but only in a public platform. Can you do that?</s>VLADECK: So can you did do that, versus can you do that legally? Those are two different questions. Bolton and Perry have a fair amount of leverage if the question is can they be brought in to testify soon. They might actually lose eventually in court if they try to resist a subpoena, and the grounds that they invoke for resisting turn out to be bogus. But that's going to take a while to sort out. And so I think the question is can the relevant House Committees reach compromises with these prospective witnesses where they'll agree to testify, whether under subpoena or not, or are we going to see more stonewalling that is going to just push more and more of these cases into the courts.</s>WHITFIELD: Steve Vladeck, thank you so much.</s>VLADECK: Thank you.</s>WHITFIELD: Iowa voters will cast their first ballots in the 2020 election in just over 90 days from now. And right now, more than a dozen Democrats are trying to win over these undecided voters. What do the voters want to know?