The Daily - The Latest: The Week Ahead in the Impeachment Hearings

Episode Date: November 19, 2019

Four witnesses will appear in tomorrow’s public hearings — three of whom listened directly to the July phone call between President Trump and Ukraine’s president that is now at the center of the impeachment inquiry. Plus, impeachment investigators are looking into whether Mr. Trump lied to Robert S. Mueller III.“The Latest” is a new series on the impeachment inquiry, from the team behind “The Daily.” You can find more information about it here.

It started with a whistleblower's complaint about President Trump's contact with a foreign leader. I had a perfect phone call with the president of Ukraine. Like, I mean, perfect. Today, I'm announcing the House of Representatives moving forward with an official impeachment inquiry. Drama expected on Capitol Hill this week with the most crucial testimony yet. At least eight witnesses are scheduled to testify this week in public hearings. Hey, it's Julie Davis. It's week two of the impeachment inquiry, and we're preparing for tomorrow's hearings when we're going to hear from four witnesses all on the same day. And Nick Fandos, our congressional reporter, is going to be there. He's on Capitol Hill right now preparing

to take in all this new testimony and try to digest it and figure out where we are. So I'm going to give him a call and see what he's thinking about what we can expect. How's Daily Press? Hi, can I talk to Nick Fandos, please? One moment. Let me see where he is. There's usually good hold music, let's say. One moment.

This is Nick. Hey, Nick, it's Julie. Hey, Julie. So let's talk about how tomorrow's going to go. Why do we have four witnesses? Last week, on the first day, there were two, Bill Taylor and George Kent. And Taylor really was the standout witness. He was the one who attracted all the attention. George Kent sort of got lost in the shuffle. And then on the second

day, Maria Ivanovich was by herself. You know, it was just her on the panel. And that seemed to really open up a lot of room for Democrats to draw out her story in a compelling way. And so I'm just kind of wondering why call four people on the same day? So I think that there's a couple reasons. The main one being that Democrats just feel like they're in a time crunch. The House is out for Thanksgiving next week, and I think they want to move through a lot of these people quickly. The other thing is that tomorrow there's technically two hearings, one in the morning and one in the afternoon.

And the afternoon is just two witnesses that the Republicans have requested, and they're pretty ticked off, frankly, that those witnesses got shoved into the afternoon. That's when typically attendance is pretty poor for congressional hearings. People aren't going to be tuning in so much. So they're accusing Democrats of trying to bury those witnesses. That happened to them last week with their questioning, right?

Like they didn't get to do the questioning until the afternoon when the viewership was way down. Yeah, totally. And I think it may go into the evening this time. It'll be even worse. So who are these four people testifying tomorrow? How's that going to work? It's Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, who's the top Ukraine expert at the White House and was very alarmed by a phone call that he overheard between President Trump and the Ukrainian president. Another witness worked for Mike Pence, the vice president.

She also listened in on the call. She didn't think it was great and testified that she thought it was improper, but did not raise her concerns in the same way Vindman did. And then in the afternoon, you've got Vindman's boss, Morrison, on the National Security Council at the White House, and Kurt Volker, who was the special envoy to Ukraine and was one of the so-called three amigos who were like deputized by President Trump to run Ukraine policy.

Last week, we really heard about kind of the context in which this call happened. You know, career diplomats who talked about how they felt pushed aside by Rudy Giuliani and Gordon Sondland, and to some degree, Volker himself, in a way that allowed this call to happen. What's interesting to me about tomorrow is it seems like we're sort of circling back to the July 25th call, the thing that started this whole saga, the thing that touched off the whistleblower complaint. You have people who listened in in real time

to President Trump and the president of Ukraine, three out of the four, I think, right, were on that call? Yeah, that's right. So I think we're going to hear really different impressions of that phone call. Vindman was really alarmed by it and went and raised his concerns immediately with White House lawyers and that it fits the frame of a cover-up that the White House immediately tried to move to lock down this transcript because they knew it was problematic. Morrison, on the other hand, is going to talk about how he didn't see anything improper with the call and did suggest that it ought to be locked down, but only because he thought it might be, in this polarized environment, might be politically unflattering to the president.

So we're going to hear a lot about what the White House was thinking during this consequential call that will both kind of push against the president's characterization that it was perfect, and then also maybe lend a little bit of authority behind that claim. So who is the single witness you're most eager to hear from? And what do we want to hear from them? Kurt Volker. He was the first witness who did a private interview with lawmakers

more than a month ago now. And basically at the time told them a lot of details that themselves were not flattering for the president that have helped them assemble their story. But his own conclusion was that there had not been a quid pro quo. And so, you know, a lot of water has flowed under the bridge since he testified. A lot of other witnesses have come forward that have made him look either willfully ignorant, dense, like he may have been misleading the committee. Who knows? So I'm really curious, does his testimony evolve at all? And if so, that could be a big blow to the president and his defense because they've really leaned on him. Or does he stick to his guns and say, I was deeply involved in all of this.

I worked closely with Gordon Sondland. I spoke with Rudy Giuliani. I spoke with the president. And I don't think that there was, in the end, any quid pro quo. And in that case, I think the Republicans will be pretty pleased with him. Great. Well, thanks. Talk soon. Okay. Thanks, Julie. Okay, so I should also mention that the other big story today that relates to all of this is that we learned that lawmakers in the impeachment inquiry are actually investigating whether President Trump lied in the written answers he gave during the Mueller investigation. now. And the reason that that's interesting is because there have been a lot of questions and

there's been a lot of debate internally among House Democrats about whether they even want to go there and deal at all with the Mueller investigation when they get to drafting articles of impeachment about this Ukraine affair. There had been a thought early on that they should stay focused just on Ukraine, just on this clear allegation that they're looking at right now about whether the president abused his power. But now this brings back this question of whether the president's conduct, and in this case, whether the president's actual truthfulness in the Mueller investigation is going to be an issue for impeachment articles in the House. And that's an open question, and we still don't know the answer yet. So we're following that too.

So that's an open question, and we still don't know the answer yet. So we're following that, too. So that's the latest.