welcome to "inside politics." i'm john king. a declassified white house memo that democrats say proves president trump should be impeached for having a foreign government for 2020 election help. the president says that's a joke and that he did nothing wrong. we're likely to hear more from the president shortly. he has a big meeting with japan's prime minister at the united nations. we'll hear momentarily from the chairman of the house intelligence committee, adam schiff. we will take you there live. in the meantime, the memo runs five pages and details that july conversation with ukraine's president. in that call the president

mentions the united states is very, very good to ukraine. ukraine's president then talks about potential military aid. president trump then immediately asks for a favor, for ukrainian prosecutors to investigate something 2016, specifically the cyber security firm hired by the democratic national committee in the aftermath of the russian meddling. and the president asked the ukrainian president to cooperate with the united states attorney general william barr. juligiuliani promises a meeting commits to doing all investigations openly and candidly. it is then when president trump talks about what he calls the other thing, joe biden's son hunter and the abandoned investigation into the ukrainian natural gas campaign. the president asked the president of ukraine to coordinate with attorney general barr. the president then says his personal attorney will call as well as the attorney general. and they with ukrainian

prosecutors, quote, will get to the bottom of it. cnn's pamela brown live for us at the white house, evan perez at the justice department. the president says i did nothing wrong, but if you read this transcript, aid comes up, then investigating biden. >> reporter: the president's talking point is there is no quid pro quo. it is true, there is not the explicit quid pro quo of unless you investigate joe biden we're going to withhold military funds. let's break this apart and keep in mind the context of this president who rarely ever directly asks for anything. michael cohen testified that oftentimes he speaks in a certain language and you just know what he wants. very often in this conversation, the president teed up the conversation by talking about how much the u.s. helps ukraine. he goes on to say the u.s. has been very, very good to ukraine

in comparison to european countries. later on it was president zelensky who alluded to military aid, thanks the president for the united states' help with defense. a it was after that the president said, i'd like you to do me a favor, though. that's when he brings up the first ask which had to do with election interference in 2016, the president asking for zelensky to look into the dnc server from the company investigating everything. that's how this all starts with the conversation. it was after that on page four of this 5-page transcript that the president brings up joe biden. now, it is true president zelensky brought up outreach to rudy giuliani, the president's personal attorney. then the president said, the other thing, there's a lot of talk about biden's son, that biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that. so whatever you can do with the attorney general would be great.

biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution, so if you can look into it, dot, dot, dot, it sounds horrible to me. the president asking to look into this unfounded allegation that joe biden asked the prosecution to drop the investigation of his son. that just gives you a sense of this phone conversation between the president and the president of ukraine. >> before i let you go, in this polarized environment where the democrats say this is terrible and the president says it's nothing, the president just moments ago tweeted about you. what was that about? >> reporter: yeah. that's about this notion of explicit quid pro quo because that is something that republicans really hit on, that the president didn't bring up military aid and say that he would withhold it if ukrainians didn't do anything on biden. certainly obliquely it is referenced because even the president of ukraine did bring

up military aid and the president said i'd like you to do me a favor, though. white house aides say, yeah, but he was talking about this russian interference, ukrainians role in that. democrats have made clear that quid pro quo aside, they view the president asking the president of ukraine to investigate his political rival as enough to open up the formal impeachment inquiry. john. >> appreciate all the reporting you've done. i want to go to evan perez at the justice department. the trump appointed inspector general for the intelligence community sent a refeerrral askg was this a campaign finance violation when the president reached out for help against a potential democratic opponent joe biden? what do we know about that? >> we know that the justice department determined that it did not conditions constitute a crime. that decision was made just in the past week, but it began, as you mentioned, in late august.

that's when the inspector general for the intelligence community first sent this over to this building, to lawyers here from the national security division, the criminal division, some of the public corruption prosecutors all took a look at this over the last few weeks. they also sent a separate referral to the fbi, which then deferred to the analysis that was being done here by the criminal division. in the end what they determined was this did not reach to the level to merit a full-blown investigation. they determined that there wasn't enough evidence here that this was even a crime. so one of the big questions is, is why would this even come over here. and under federal election law, it's illegal for you to accept anything of value from a foreigner. that's one of the issues here, was whether or not this is essentially a thing of value. in the end, the legal analysis done in this building was that it did not reach that. the big question is because bill

barr, the attorney general, was mentioned by the president, what was his involvement? we're told by justice officials that he was minimally involved, that he was aware that this referral had been made but in the end this was something done by the head of the criminal division taking a look at all the legal facts here. according to the justice department, barr did not know that the president had brought his name up, that he didn't make any phone calls to the ukrainian president or anybody else over there to try to investigate joe biden. he didn't have any involvement in any of this, but the fact that the president brought him up obviously makes this a big problem for bill barr going forward. >> to that point before i let you go and i might have to interrupt you, we're waiting for the president of the united states. the president of the united states talking to the ukrainian president about investigating biden then says, so whatever you can do with the attorney general would be great. and he said biden went around bragging that he stopped the

prosecution. biden went around bragging that he fired the prosecutor. that's grossly out of context. the whole western world, all the western democracies wanted this prosecutor fired because they viewed him as the problem, they viewed him as corrupt. to the point where the president says whatever you can do with the attorney general, he's essentially asking the crukrainn president to reach out to the united states justice department on some kind of investigation that involves biden, right? >> that's exactly right. that's what created this problem for the justice department. i should add that barr and the justice lawyers in the past week went either to tover to the whid urged them to release the transcript. >> sorry to interrupt you. adam schiff up on capitol hill. >> the notes between the call between the president of the united states and the president of ukraine as well as the legal opinion drafted by the department of justice in an effort to prevent the whistleblower complaint from coming to our committee.

and i have to say that i'm shocked by both. the notes of the call reflect a conversation far more damning than i or many others had imagined. it is shocking at another level that the white house would release these notes and felt that somehow this would help the president's case or cause. because what those notes reflect is a classic mafia-like shakedown of a foreign leader. they reflect a ukrainian president who was desperate for u.s. support, for military support to help that country in a hot war with putin's russia, a country that is still occupied by irregular russian forces and in which people face a very dangerous and continuing and destabilizing action by their

aggressive neighbor. and at the same time, a president of the united states who immediately after the ukraine president expresses the need for further weapons, tells the ukraine president that he has a favor to ask. the president communicates to his ukrainian counterpart that the united states has done a lot for ukraine. we've done an awful lot for ukraine, more than the europeans or anyone else who has done for ukraine, but there's not much reciprocity here. this is how a mafia boss talks. what have you done for us? we've done so much for you but there's not much reciprocity. i have a favor to ask you and what is that favor? of course the favor is to investigate his political rival, to investigate the bidens. and it's clear that the ukraine president understands exactly what is expected of him and is making every effort to mollify

the president. what adds another layer of depravity to this conversation is the president of the united states then invokes the deputy attorney general of the united states as well as his personal lawyer as emissaries in the case of the attorney general as an official head of a u.s. department, the department of justice that he says will be part and parcel of this. now, i know the attorney general is denying involvement in this, but nonetheless you can see why the department of justice would want this transcript never to see the light of day. you can see why they have worked so hard to deprive our committee of the whistleblower complaint. and in fact, the opinion by the justice department is startling in its own regard, because in that opinion the department of justice advances the absurd claim that the director of national intelligence has no

responsibility over efforts to prevent foreign interference in our elections. that will come as news or at least it should to the director of national intelligence, who is is charged with among other things with detecting influen i influence in our elections. but it is the view of the justice department that the director has no jurisdiction in this area. it is a sad fact that the director of national intelligence would agree to be bound by that view, that the director of national intelligence would adopt the view that he had no jurisdiction over an effort to seek foreign interference in our election. that will be the subject of our hearing with the director tomorrow. what's more the department of justice opinion doesn't even preclude the director from providing that complaint to our committee and yet he has withheld it in violation of the law. but the fact that the president of the united states would invoke the attorney general sends a further message to the

ukrainian president that this is not just me asking, this is not just rudy giuliani asking, this is the united states government asking and we plan to effectuate that through the department of justice. whether those steps have taken place or not or whether those steps have now been prevented by the whistleblower complaint and all that has followed from that revelation. so here we have the president of the united states engaged in a shakedown of a foreign president, a president of the united states even as he is withholding vital military support to an ally, asking a favor of that ally to investigate his opponent. just by way of background here so we know what's at stake, in 1994 we tried to get ukraine to give up nuclear weapons it

inherited from the soviet union. they were reluctant to do so because those weapons might be a guarantee against aggression by their neighbor. that is, by the soviet union. we and our allies persuaded the yukrainians to give up those weapons and we assured ukraine we would help guarantee its territorial integrity. well, russia would invade ycran. in the years since the united states has provided, albeit not enough, support to ukraine. but the most recent support to ukraine was held up by this president, hundreds of millions of dollars, for reasons that the president would not and the secretaries were not able to communicate even to leaders of their own party like mitch mcconnell, who said yesterday that he couldn't find out why this aid was being withheld. well, i think we know why the aid was being withheld, notwithstanding president's now

conflicting explanations, well, it was because we wanted them to investigate corruption. no, it was because we wanted europe to give them more money even though europe has given them even more than we have. i think we know why the president was withholding that assistance. but regardless, ukraine understood exactly what was being asked of it, ukraine understood exactly what they needed from the united states and that the president of the united states would interfere with our national security, would interfere with the national security of our ally and do so for the purpose of his campaign. he would abuse his power to seek the help of another nation in his campaign is the most fundamental betrayal of his oath of office. i'd be happy to respond to your questions, but one final point about the whistleblower.

we still don't have the complaint. now that we have the department of justice opinion, i think it telling that they have released that and yet not released the inspector general's legal analysis that takes issue with it. this is again bill barr's justice department trying to put out a misleading spin, in this case in the form of the department's opinion. but nevertheless, that complaint needs to be provided to our committee, it needs to be provided in its entirety. that whistleblower needs to be given instructions about how to come to our committee and that whistleblower needs to be given the complete freedom to report any allegations of wrongdoing that have come to that whistleblower's attention. we will not brook any kind of interference given how pervasive this coverup apparently is. now i'll be happy to answer your questions. yes. >> the white house says that this call summary proves that there was no quid pro quo because the withheld military aid never even came up in the

conversation. what's your response to that? >> my response is the president of ukraine brought up his country's need for military assistance and immediately thereafter the president of the united states said i have a favor i want to ask of you and would not let the subject goes. there was only one message that that president of ukraine got from that call, and that was this is what i need, i know what you need. like any mafia boss, the president didn't need to say that's a nice country you have, it would be a shame if something happened to it because that was clear from the conversation. there is no quid pro quo necessary to betray your country or your oath of office. even though many read this as a quid pro quo, i'm not concerned whether it is a quid pro quo or not. ukraine understood what this president wanted. he made it redundantly clear, he

made it abundantly clear. he had his emissaries making it clear. ukraine knew what it needed to do if it wanted to get military assistance, and that is help the president of the united states violate his oath of office. >> what specifically do you see as the impeachable offense here? >> well, i think in its most naked form and this is what our inquiry is going to look into, the president has now admitted the notes of this call and we don't even know if these are the complete notes of that call, indicate the president of the united states shaking down a foreign leader, essentially undermining the national security of this country for a personal political gain and one that violates his oath of office. it is very powerful evidence of that kind of potential

impeachable offense, but we want to get the full facts before the american people and we also want to make sure we take corrective action. i want to thank the whistleblower. we still don't know whether this is a subject of the whistleblower's complaint, but i think this single courageous individual may have had the effect of forcing the white house to provide ukraine with this funding knowing that these matters were going to come to light. but this whistleblower has already had a tremendous impact in exposing wrongdoing of the president of the united states and helping protect our national security in a way that his or her boss was unwilling to do. by that i mean the director as well as the president of the united states. >> -- calls for impeachment for some time. yesterday you came out in support of what the speaker announced. after you see what is in this transcript, is there any doubt in your mind that house democrats will move to impeach this president? >> i want don't want to get ahe

oust ourselves here. i think what we have learned, what has been admitted and what we've seen in writing is about as damning as you can imagine. it will be a decision for us when we conclude our investigative work whether to bring this or other matters in the form of articles to a vote. and we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. no one should have any illusions about the seriousness of what is already uncontested and that is the president of the united states has betrayed his oath of office and sacrificed our national security in doing so. that i think is quintessentially what the framers were concerned about. i think it's quintessentially what the framers thought was the sum and substance of what might warrant a president's removal from office. so i don't want to understate the significance of what's

already been revealed but i also don't want to get too far ahead of us. >> do you expect to hear from the whistleblower as early as this week? what more do you expect to learn from him or her or from the full complaint that you can't already glean from the memo of this interaction between president trump and his ukrainian counterpart. >> i hope to hear from the whistleblower as soon as this week and perhaps as early as tomorrow after the director testifies. that whistleblower is trying to make sure that whistleblower is not subject to further retaliation. i say further because the president has already retaliated against him or her, retaliated by suggesting that the whistleblower is disloyal to our country, maybe they're representing some other country, that they're a partisan hack, that they have some hidden bias. so there's already been retaliation by the president. i would have thought and hoped that the director of national intelligence would have spoken out publicly in defense of his employee or contractor. that is someone reliant on the

director to protect them. so i don't know whether it will happen tomorrow or not. i can tell you the whistleblower, i think, is eager to come and meet with our committee. this is already a month overdue, at least a month overdue, and we are determined to make sure that that whistleblower has an opportunity once more that no one is sitting next to them trying to put a gag on what they can say. >> i know the election specifically is not your foremost concern. if i'm not mistaken, today is 3 131 days until the iowa caucus. how aggressively do you and your colleagues need to move so that you're not interfering with a presidential election? is that a concern? >> i don't know what the timeline will look like except that we all feel a sense of urgency here. the inspector general -- and this is, by the way, not

contested in the department of justice sham legal opinion. no one has taken issue with the fact that this is urgent. doj comes up with this completely contorted rationalization that the director of national intelligence has no responsibility over foreign interference in our elections, which is completely bogus. but nevertheless, they don't take issue with the urgency here. i'm not talking about the statutory definition, the fact that this needs immediate attention. so we need to get to the bottom of this whistleblower complaint as asap. in terms of ultimately how long it's going to take us to develop the full facts, i don't know. i would not have imagined things would have moved as swiftly as they did over the last week. but the cascade of admissions by the president, by rudy giuliani, who now gives a bizarre explanation that the state department was involved in urging him to undertake these

activities on behalf of the president to investigate his rival. if he's being truthful there, and obviously that's a huge if, then there's a whole separate scandal involving the state department, whi by the way there probably is given the circumstances of the firing of the u.s. ambassador to ukraine. but i can't tell you what the timeline looks like. yes. >> you've been listening to chairman adam schiff of the house intelligence committee. he's a key player now that the democrats build what they say is an impeachment inquiry. chairman schiff said he didn't want to put the cart before the horse, but making clear he believes the democrats do have threshold evidence that the president violated his oath of office, he said a classic mafia shakedown of a foreign government. democrats will continue to push for the whistleblower who complained to the inspector general that he believed the president had done something

nefarious, something that at least involves this phone call. nia malika henderson, jeff zeleny and margaret talib. you might have seen on the bottom of your screen there president trump signing some documents with the japanese prime minister. that's the first step in a trade agreement. they're having a meeting now. we may still hear from the president. at that first signing he declined to take questions from reporters. michael zeldon, if you just look at this five-page rough transcript. it's not a verbatim. there are a couple of ellipses in there that make you curious. if you just look at this, the republicans say no "there" there, no straight-up quid pro quo, go away, leave the president alone. democrats say it's the building block for an impeachment case. impeachment is not a legal issue. if you were a prosecutor, kwowo

you see the seeds of a crime here or not? >> there are two possible crimes that this memorandum outlines. the first is a pure campaign finance crime, which is that the president seems to have solicited from ukraine information on biden. that would be a thing of value. you could put it into the opposition research category of value. that in and of itself standing alone is a theoretical campaign finance criminal law violation. the second is extortion bribery. that's where this quid pro quo language comes up. that is if you do this for me, i will do this for you. i think you can read implicit in this document the notion that trump is saying if you do the biden investigation, we will release the military aid that we promised you and the senate approved long ago. there are two independent crimes that we need investigation on this memo. the third point, of course, is that abuse of office, of

violation of the public trust, which is what impeachment is all about, does not require criminal activity at all. one can violate their public trust and be clean of criminal law violations and still be impeached. and in this document it does appear as if the president is using the powers of his office for his own personal benefit at the expense of national security. that is military aid going to ukraine as passed by the senate and promised to the ukrainians. i think there are three things here. they relate to one another, but they also are independently viable. >> there's the legal question. then there's the political debate over impeachment, which you don't have to break the law to be impeached. that's a political decision to be made by the house of representatives. we see already everybody going immediately to their corners here. let's talk a little bit about

the political reaction. you see chairman schiff right there saying breach of oath of office, the president has violated his trust with the american speaker pelosi says the notes confirm that the president engaged in behavior that undermines the dignity of our elections. my question is, the democrats have enough votes. i think what changed yesterday is there's no such thing officially as an impeachment inquiry. pelosi for months has said if we impeach and the senate then fails to act, the president will say congress found me not guilty. now they have set up a scenario where if they don't impeach him, the president will say even house democrats have found me not guilty. so they are on a path to impeach him. the question is can they get the country there? >> i think that is the central question. one thing, if we step back from

all this, we thought a few hours ago that the release of this transcript was going to undermine speaker pelosi's argument for an impeachment inquir inquiry. it has done anything but that. it has fuelled the fire. any democrat that was wavering are sure now. they believe there is enough in this document to justify and validate what speaker pelosi did. the white house is banking on one thing. they are hoping to get it all out there and then say it's not true. the president is going to have a press conference today at 4:00. he wants to put a bow on this and drive this narrative. we don't know what the politics ultimately will be. there's no question now the attorney general is going to be part of this, rudy giuliani is going to be part of this. what we've learned this morning, so much more than we thought we would just a couple of hours ago. >> this document gives you, if

you are looking into what happened, every reason to bring rudy giuliani up to talk about his meetings, every reason to ask the white house for the additional phone calls between president zelensky and president trump, to ask is it believe bab that the attorney general's name comes new this conversation bup but it never makes it to the justice department. the president does not say investigate biden or you don't get your money. but he does say i need a favor right after the ukrainian president asked for aid. whatever you can do with the attorney general would be great. this is the president of the united states involving the united states justice department, the government in this conversation. that is where democrats are going to say it's abuse of power. >> adam schiff there used the

word depravity when talking about that aspect of this. if you're the democrats, you think this is very easy to understand. you see this phone call, adam schiff saying it was much more damage thing than he thought it would be when it came out. you hear him using phrases like reciprocity and then going into the favor. at this point in terms of where the public is in terms of impeachment, it's about 37%. it's been as high as 41%. for clinton, it was never higher than 30%. democrats aren't fully on board with impeachment. about a fifth are not where the house is right now in terms of full bore impeachment. so far they haven't been so convincing, democrats in bringing the public along. but they sure have fallen in line. if you look at the beginning of the week it was 137 or something

like that and it's almost 200 now. >> we're going to take a quick break. we're waiting for chuck schumer to speak about this. we're waiting for the president of the united states. he's in a meeting with the japanese prime minister. we may hear from him before then. also a debate back and forth within the trump administration. the justice department says no big deal. the inspector general for the intelligence community says, yes, it is quite a big deal. you wouldn't accept an incomplete job from anyone else. why accept it from your allergy pills? flonase sensimist. nothing stronger. nothing gentler. nothing lasts longer. flonase sensimist. 24 hour non-drowsy allergy relief

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welcome back. republicans are for the most part so far sticking with the president, insisting this memo about a call with the president of ukraine contains no smoking gun or no reason for the impeachment inquiry launched by democrats. instead they say this is partisan overreach by the democrats. let's get up to manu raju. the republicans, most republicans saying no "there" there. >> that's exactly right. you're hearing republicans fall in line from the top republican in the house on down to the rank and file, saying there's no explicit quid pro quo, there's no explicit threat by the president to withheld military aid in exchange for investigating biden, the circumstantial evidence that the democrats say is abundantly clear. kevin mccarthy, the house republican leader, made clear he saw nothing wrong with the transcript. you talk about the bidens in that call. is that okay, mr. leader?

>> how many times did he mention biden? he mentioned it one time. who brought it up? you watched the president of ukraine brought it up. >> so in the transcript itself it says that the president of the united states is the person who first mentioned the bidens. in fact, trump says in this trump, the other thing, there's a lot of talk about biden's son, that biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that. whatever you could do with the attorney general would be great. biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution. so if you want to look into it, it sounds horrible to me. those are the words from the president of the united states about the former vice president. other republicans are making clear that they say that the conversations with the ukranian president about investigating the bidens was simply about draining the swamp. that's the words of mike conway

of texas. while we're hearing some republicans, the usual who have been critical of this president including mitt romney saying he's very troubled by the transcript. for the most part we're hearing republicans falling in line defending the president and making clear they believe the impeachment inquiry is an overreach. >> just as a student of body language, the leader is walking away as quickly as you can. that tells you something about his interest in the subject and his willingness to answer tough questions. i don't say that to be snarky. if you could stand there, look the camera in the eye and take questions about everything in this memo, it's not a transcript, it's a memo, you would stop and talk. they don't want anything to do with this. they want to get away as fast as they can. i want to come back to the point manu made. impeachment is a political exercise. this document, there's plenty in

here. i don't care what your politics are. there's plenty in here that's worth further inquiry. the only republican at the moment is now senator mitt romney. >> i don't know that i've focused so much on the quid pro quo element as perhaps some do. there's just a question of -- and i said this in my first reaction, which is if the president of the united states asks or presses the leader of a foreign country to carry out an investigation of a political nature, that's troubling. clearly if there were a quid pro quo, that would take it to an entirely more extreme level. >> just the pressure, senator romney finds troubling and says we need to get the facts here. why aren't there more republicans saying perhaps democrats are without over their

skis, they already want to impeach, but let's get the facts here? >> romney says that one of the reasons why is because the republicans want to stay in power and they're concerned that if they speak out against the president, they could lose power. one thing that is really telling to me as i read this amalgamation of a transcript is that the president is coming into a conversation with the new ukranian leader that has obviously already been started. so when he begins to talk with him about former vice president biden, he just says biden. you know, there's a lot of talk about biden's son. well, if you were like bringing up a conversation for the first time, there would be some preamble. i've got some concerns about the former vice president. i hope i could bend your ear for a minute, we're all worried about corruption. but he just picks up in the middle of the last time they talked about it. >> he mentions giuliani.

this is the middle of a conversation, not the beginning or end. >> zelensky says stuff like, oh yes, i know that what you're talking about or we're fully informed about that. it is the picking up of a middle of a conversation. i think that is going to raise pressure both in terms of knowing more about the totality of the whistleblower's complaint and if the ukranian president has already agreed to have excerpts of their calls released and there were other conversations, as a reporter i'd like to see the rest. the other thing is i've had a couple of full length sitdown interviews with the president. maybe he just talks shorter in more concise sentences with foreign leaders. but we have all had that sitdown time with him. >> this is not his language. >> if you listen to the president of the united states every single day including earlier today when he went on at

this word salad, that's not how he talks. this is a summary, book report of the phone conversation. but you're right this is not the language that the president uses. >> we already know from various people on the hill that the i.g. presented that the whistleblower's complaint was not based on just one event. there's the assumption out there that this is part of a puzzle. you asked me why aren't members of the gop seeing the facts here. in this situation it's taking a side. if you're saying let's see the facts, you're essentially saying let's see the whistleblower's complaint which means that we don't accept the argument this is a question of privilege and a question of what the president can and can't see to foreign leaders and that congress has no business seeing that. >> they have said we want to see it, but we want to see it behind closed doors. >> to make this sort of thing

publicized in the same way this transcript summary is publicized would be to essentially take a side in the argument. that's why you're stuck if you're a member of the gop who doesn't want to krocross the president here. >> even just to say they find it troubling that the president would raise a democratomestic pl issue with another foreign leader, we're told some republicans did go to read this memo before it was released. we're going to take a quick break. a lot of moving parts to this story. we're still waiting to hear from chuck schumer and the president of the united states. and the democrats have an impeachment inquiry. most believe it will carry over to 2020. what do the democratic kan candidates think about it?

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the release of this memo detailing the president's phone conversation with the president of ukraine and the decision yesterday by the speaker nancy pelosi to call what the democrats are doing in their impeachment a formal impeachment inquiry reverberating. from elizabeth warren, this transcript itself is a smoking

gun. we need to see the full whistleblower complaint and the administration need to follow the law now. senator kamala harris saying they admit it, trump pressured the ukranian president to work with the u.s. attorney general to investigate a political possibility. julian castro, this is the smoking gun. congress should cancel recess and begin impeachment proceedings immediately. senator amy klobuchar, the record of this call is deeply disturbing. the president prioritizing his personal gain over the national security interests of the united states. beto o'rourke says i would like you to do us a favor, though, essentially tweeting what the president said to the ukranian president. my question is, is a washington consumed by impeachment good or

bad? there's two issues there. one is to win the nomination. and then what is the impact on the general election? >> to win the nomination, probably is good to be out front of this. but in the long-term, we don't know. it depends where it goes. we know a couple things. one, all this talk about joe biden and nothing's been proven et cetera, it's still not exactly what you want at this moment of the campaign when he is no longer the sole front runner. overall i think that one thing speaker pelosi has managed to do is unify democrats, which we have not seen for quite a while on this. that probably helps in this primary fight. long-term, democrats have no idea if they're walking into a trap on this or not. >> a lot of things being said by the president and republicans are not true or exaggerated. however, hunter biden was a consultant for a natural gas company there. he did other consulting work.

it's fair to say, is it not, just like the trump children traveling the world trying to build business while their father is president that there is swampy behavior here that is perfectly fair game, right? former congressmen become lobbyists, people trade on their names and they try to get influence. >> that ee's what the trump campaign is betting on, that in some ways you can try to turn biden into clinton. they're saying it's donald trump who wants to drain the swamp and go after corrupt folks. i think that would be news to a lot of people, that he is somebody who really wants to root out corruption in the world and the united states. we don't know what the impact of this will be. you can look at what happened to bill clinton. he did well in the midterms, better than a sitting president would do. but then his sitting vice president didn't do so well in 2000. we also don't know about the

timing of this. they keep saying it's going to happen expeditiously and they can clear the decks and move onto 2020. hard to believe they can do that. >> kamala harris is on the committee. she's talking about the attorney general, who if you read the memo about this call, the president of the united states repeatedly tells the president of ukraine get in touch with attorney general bill barr as you investigate joe biden and joe biden's son, essentially saying call the justice department, not just my personal lawyer. kamala harris tweeting i asked attorney general in may did the white house ever ask him to investigate anyone. he wouldn't answer. barr needs to come back to congress and answer that question again under oath. this time he better have an answer. let's go back to that exchange. here it is in may. >> has the president or anyone at the white house ever asked or suggested that you open an investigation of anyone, yes or

no, please, sir? >> um, the president or anybody else? >> seems you would remember something like that and be able to tell us. >> yeah, but i'm trying to grapple with the word suggest. there have been discussions of matters out there that they have not asked me to open an investigation. >> perhaps they've suggested? >> i don't know. i wouldn't say suggest. >> hinted? >> i don't know. >> this kind of goes towards what we're talking about right here, like is it black and white very clearly something stated do this investigation or in the context of this phone call here is your quid pro quo or is it innuendo and hints and nuance that are not subtle at all. you're seeing a lot of maneuvering around that. there are two ways of interpreting what signals have been given. >> i don't think the attorney general is going to come to the hill and answer everybody's

questions. >> if there are actual articles of impeachment, he may have to. >> he's been pretty skillful on the stand so far. i do think no quid pro quo is going to become the new no collusion. we'll hear it again and again. >> thanks for joining us. come back tomorrow. we'll continue to track this story. brianna keilar picks up our coverage after a quick break. ju. they took $12.8 billion from big tobacco. juul marketed mango, mint, and menthol flavors, addicting kids to nicotine. five million kids now using e-cigarettes. the fda said juul ignored the law with misleading health claims. now juul is pushing prop c, to overturn san francisco's e-cigarette protections.

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stimulant laxatives forcefully stimulate i switched to miralax for my constipation. the nerves in your colon. miralax works with the water in your body to unblock your system naturally. and it doesn't cause bloating, cramping, gas, or sudden urgency. miralax. look for the pink cap. we begin with this bombshell transcript, what some democrats are calling a smoking gun of a july 25th phone call between president trump and the newly elected president of ukraine. this is the call that was part of an official complaint by a whistleblower in the intelligence community. the intel community's independent ninspector determind this was an urgent complaint. what the call transcript clearly shows is president trump