all-star tributes. i'll be joined by kelly ripa. i want to hand it offer to chris for "cuomo prime time." >> thank you. i am chris cuomo. welcome to "primetime." the intel committee voted quickly and new evidence explains why they went so fast. phone logs are in here. look how thick this thing is, 300 pages. they show major players making calls to people that are hard to explain away, often at key times. the most important question in any investigation will drive us tonight -- why? you have to look at all the people around the president and all the way to him contacting players and places that were key to pressuring ukraine. and what does it all mean going forward? let's get after it. now, the intel committee vote

was predictable. it was party line, 13-9. but when you look at this report, it cites, quote, overwhelming misconduct and obstruction by the president of the united states, donald j. trump. these are 300 damning pages of the house intel committee led by adam schiff. here's him. >> this report chronicles a scheme by the president of the united states to coerce an ally, ukraine, that is at war with an adversary, russia, into doing the president's political dirty work. >> now specifically the report accuses the president of abusing his power, specifically the power of his office to solicit foreign election interference for his own political gain. quote, president trump's scheme subverted u.s. foreign policy, undermined our national security. then they say it wasn't about just one call. it was a kabal.

senior u.s. officials including the vp, the secretary of state, the acting chief of staff, the secretary of energy and others were either knowledgeable of or active participants in an effort to extract from a foreign nation the personal political benefits sought by the president. now, this report makes the case that the president engaged in unprecedented obstruction. how? ordering witnesses and agencies to defy subpoenas, not to give documents, to be quiet on testimony. quote, donald trump is the first president in the history of the united states to seek to completely obstruct an impeachment inquiry. now, even the three other presidents who went through this process one way or another, johnson, nixon, not really because he resigned and of course present clinton, they all complied at least somewhat with most of the requests. and even then nixon and clinton were still looking at

obstruction counts. so, despite trump's alleged efforts to obstruct, investigators gave us the biggest surprise in these 300 pages, these phone records. over the course of four days in april, the phone logs show -- this is not speculation, these are the calls, when, how long, from who and who whom, all right? rudy giuliani, his indicted associate lev parnas, the ranking member of the house intelligence committee devin nunes and a conservative columnist john solomon. they're all in communication with one another during key times and moments in this story. the report details therefore a coordinated effort to peddle false narratives about the 2016 election and about the bidens. and at least four phone calls or attempted calls between parnas and knnunez including one call on november 12 that lasted more than eight minutes. let's take a look at it with our

in-house investigator andrew mccabe. andrew, thank you so much for being with us tonight, very important. the first question i don't know if either of us know the answer to and i'm going to ask it to a member of the committee later in the show. these phone logs never came up during the testimony. do you think that -- couldn't be an oversight. was there some kind of rule about what could be asked about and what couldn't in that testimony? >> i doubt it, chris. i don't think so. as we've said many times before, this is an impeachment, it's not a criminal proceeding, not a grand jury proceeding. so, in other words, if the phone records were obtained through grand jury subpoenas, there would be some restrictions on how you could publicize that information that's protected by grand jury secrecy. none of that really applies here. i think other factors may have led the committee to stay away from the phone records in those public hearings. first and foremost, many of the folks that are captured on the phone records didn't actually

appear in front of the committee, which we know why that is. and so you didn't have someone there that could you ask on this day when you made this call, what did you say, what did the other person say? that's the sort of evidence you really need to peel down behind the phone records, and we just didn't have a lot of opportunity to do that. >> it's interesting of course, it's going to be interesting for nunes because he is one of the president's chief defenders. he thinks this impeachment is totally a miscarriage of justice. he had known, or maybe he didn't know, but how could he not know that they have him in these call logs with parnas. now look, i'm not saying you're not allowed to talk to parnas, but he is a guy that nunes all but v here's a guy that he vilifies every chance he gets, why is he on the phone with him? >> to think about some of the

comments that nunes made and calling them a hoax and a sham and all that stuff and then he sits and listens to the testimony of mari yovanovitch talking about the smear campaign knowing he may have been a player in that very smear campaign. you're right, there's nothing prohibiting nunes for having contacts with the president's lawyer and the president's now-indicted friend and a very conservative journalist john tollman, but it sure does raise a lot of ethical questions about whether or not he should have disclosed that to the committee. >> sometimes media can play it cheap and they ask questions to people but don't ask them to them. mr. nunes is more than welcome to come on and talk about these allegations. i have no problem with that. that brings us to a more important set of allegations. you have rudy giuliani communicating with the white house and omb, the acronym for the government agency that was

in charge of controlling this aid. now, one step backwards. this guy mark sandy came forward. he testified. he left over this to his superiors, to his counsel, and saying i don't know, we're holding this aid. it may be illegal. the decision was taken from him by a political appointee named duffy. duffy takes him out of the loop. then rudy giuliani is making phone calls to omb at about the same time these conversations are supposedly happening with ukraine about the need for deliverables before they get the aid. look, it can be a coincidence but the question is why, andrew? >> that is the question, chris. and the involvement of giuliani who is -- let's remember -- the president's personal lawyer, he is representing the interests of don't j. trum donald j. trump, not the united states of america, not anyone

else, the interests of the president. the fact that he now is contacting omb, it really raises the specter that there is not a single shred of credibility to the claim that the holding back of that aid had anything to do with fighting corruption in ukraine which has been the president and his defenders' last line of defense saying well, yes, he did all these things but he did it because he's concerned about corruption in ukraine. giuliani's involvement with omb and likely involvement with the holding up of that vital aid cuts the legs out from under that defense. >> and how it ties together with mark sandy because the timing is similar. when sandy got pulled off of it, was right around the same time that he in a court of law you're just trying to prove intent, the thing happened. this person had the right criminal intent. you don't really get into motive.

but in this situation why it happened is everything. if the president had legit motives for whatever he did, here.'s nothing impeachable but if he did it for bad reasons, to help himself, that's everything. >> that's exactly right. if he's using the influence of the united states to pressure ukraine to take specific action that he thinks is in lead with u.s. interest, that's called diplomacy. if he's doing it to collect dirt on his political rival, that's called an abuse of his office and that is impeachable. >> and one of the implications that will be billed out from the phone logs is how many people is involved. the narrative from the defense side, the white house side, is this is about one phone call between two presidents, that's the end of it. these phone logs implicated almost a dozen people. andrew mccabe, thank you very much for helping us understand

it through the eyes of an investigator. >> thanks, chris. >> through the eyes of the investigator, great, helps us deal with why. but now you have to look at it in terms of, all right, well, what this means in this process how will this be handled politically. because that's what we're in. that is the only forum we're going to be in. it may sound legal linguistic but it's not a court of law. so we're going to turn to someone who has a big say in all of this, an intel member wo had just voted to turn this over to the judiciary, congresswoman jackie speier, what does she make of the phone logs, and where this goes next. [sneeze and sniffles] are you ok? yah, it's just a cold. it's not just a cold if you have high blood pressure. most cold medicines may raise blood pressure. coricidin hbp is the... ...#1 brand that gives...

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and get one free. a lot of this stuff we process at the same time that we're talking to you about it. these phone logs make a lot of

the questioning that happened during the testimony, some of it makes more sense now, why the democrats seemed to be assuming certain things were connected and certain people were connected. but on another level, i don't understand why they were working so hard, especially when it comes to congressman devin nunes. he was killing them during the proceedings, very righteous, they have is all bunk, this former ambassador, nobody was out to get anybody, theirs no cobal afoot. this was bun one phone call and that was it. he had to know this. he may have been aware during the hearings. now we get to the point of how it will all be put together by the democrats. the allegations are grave. >> it is, i think, deeply concerning that at a time with had the president of the united states was using the power of his office to dig up dirt on a political rival, that there may

be evidence that there were members of congress complicit in that activity. >> okay. democratic congresswoman jackie speier has called for the republican congressman to be investigated. she joins me now. so happy to have you tonight. >> thank you, chris. >> all of these questions are actually real. i don't know the answer to any of them tonight. first of all, these phone logs, why didn't you ask about them during the testimony? it's not a krit similar. i just don't understand. they're so useful. >> because the persons that were in the phone logs weren't being interviewed, weren't witnesses before the impeachment fact finding that we were doing under the intelligence committee. and much of this is part of an active investigation that's going on now. what's interesting about this, i mean, you can't make this kind of stuff up. you had devin nunes actually criticizing adam schiff because he said he knew the whistleblower, he had met with the whistleblower, all of which

was false. and yet it appears that devin nunes was in conversations with lev parnas who is now an indicted individual because he gave foreign money to president trump's political action committee, some 325 thousand dollar. >> parnas has, and i hope that's it. but with nunes, if you know he was on the call log, are you allowed to ask questions of other members? >> no. it's absolutely not appropriate. they're not being sworn in to testify. >> so you knew this was out there? >> actually, i didn't personally know this was out there. there was what's called a dump of phone records that was made to both the democrats and the republicans. and it was a matter of sifting through it. and this is just a small part of

what is a fairly lengthy, i've been told, dump of data. now, of course this isn't the actual calls. this is just the fact that an individual had a conversation with another individual. >> it's what we looked at as metadata. >> exactly. >> but now you've got the people attached too. it wasn't just a phone number. there are going to be things to find out. there were some there were just a few seconds. with mr. nunes, how do the house terms work in terms of policing the behavior that has become suspicious about him, whether it's foreign travel, whether or not it happened, whether it was knowledgeable of these efforts that were going on, whether this was him making these phone

calls? >> so, the phone call. my concern with mr. nunes, if in fact he made that trip last november to vienna or to europe -- we do know he went to europe. he spent $65,000, had staff members fly as well. and there's some speculation that he met with mr. parnas and maybe even mr. choken. >> that's the allegation from parnas' lawyer. they could not be telling the truth. that's why i invited him on the show to give his side of the story. but is there anything wrong with any of that other than unethical and being disingenuous with the american people in terms of how he presented himself? is there a line of right and wrong for members of congress? >> well, yes there is if he was using his office for a political purpose and spending taxpayer

dollars to make that trip to dig up dirt on biden, yes, for sure. that would be something the ethics committee would want to look into. >> now, one of the things that stands out to me in this report is how many people you guys believe were material in the activity that you're looking at with the president for impeachment. you know, the president's story is this was really just one phone call between two presidents, and it was perfect. you guys seem to see it as a matrix of about a dozen people, half a dozen agencies, the media as well. >> and this is, in my view, a potential criminal enterprise that went on for many months. i don't think it went on from just july through september. i think it goes back to 2018 when then president trump had a fund-raiser which lev parnas came to it, contributed to it,

and then the following day all of a sudden ukraine stopped cooperating with bob mueller and his investigation. and then two weeks later, parnas gives $325,000 to donald trump's political action committee. so, this has been in the works for a -- i would say over a year. and bringing john solomon into this to do the interview with inseineco that trashed the ambassador. it's a huge puzzle and every day there's another puzzle piece that comes into clarify for us. this is just the end of the beginning in my view. >> let's play on that. the end of the beginning or the beginning of the end.

their report bears no resemblance in terms of reckoning of the two totally different sets of points of view on it. the party line vote was today, 13-9. there's no anticipation of any movement by republicans in the house in terms of moving across the line and away from this president. what does that mean about the efficacy, the worthiness of this process? >> well, the process is clear. there was bribery that took place by this president. he in his official capacity used his office to gain an investigation into one of his opponents. he withheld money for an ally that was fighting one of our adversaries. so, putting that aside though, you really have a beginning still because we haven't been able to get any information out of the administration. if the president had a perfect phone call, if there's nothing to hide, why is it 12 present

and past persons within his administration who have been subpoenaed have not participated? why is it not one document from the state department, from the energy department, from the white house has been submitted as it's supposed to under article one and our authority to do oversight over the executive branch? so, if you have nothing to hide, why are you preventing people from talking to us? >> if there was one thing that the president would want them to give to you, it's whatever the state department has that validates the existence of that september 9th phone call because that is the only piece of evidence, potentially, that would clear the president from having not said the wrong thing every chance he had. that's the one time with his little note of papers where he said all the right things. i don't want a quid pro quo, use that phrase, i don't know where he got it. i know the whistleblower used it. i want him to do the right thing. it's fine. with e don we don't know that phone call

exists. congresswoman, thank you for helping us understand the nuance of these things and where it's heading and why. we've got to keep drilling down because i have to be honest. i didn't know they had anything like these phone records. as you just heard they never came up in the testimony, right? it seemed like they were reaching to make connections. they had the connections. and we're going to trace the trail of the calls and put them into the timeline because when things happen and with whom really helps understand why this was going on. next. let's be honest, every insurance company says

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the impeachment report has a welcomed surprise, new proof in the form of phone records. they raise some questions but more importantly, they answer others. about what? knowledge, involvement of people around this president and trump himself and his chief defender, the ranking member of the very committee doing the investigation, republican devin nunes. now, in the $435 million suit that mr. nunes filed against cnn today, he attacks us for reporting anything that could from giuliani associate lev parnas. he calls parnas a fraud and a hustler. if it's not okay to get information from parnas, how does mr. nunes explain this, four separate phone calls with parnas with his name on them? why didn't he mention them when he kept arguing there was nothing to any of this talk about parnas and rudy and his

efforts? i guess it tells a lot. the timing is key. two rounds of phone calls, april 10, april 12. why? same time trump mouth piece and fox employee john solomon starts publishing stories hyping the russian-backed fiction. ukraine actually messed with the 2016 election, not russia. solomon was working the phones with giuliani. giuliani was in touch with folks in the white house and the omb. mick mulvaney still runs it. he's the acting chief of staff. they're in control of when the aid goes. that's early april. after mueller's finding went to the doj, early april, but before the full report came out. but the question is raised, were they hustling to create a distraction from the mueller report? ukraine is behind this election interference, forget the russia report. then less than two weeks later on april 23rd and april 24th, eat series of calls between giuliani, parnas, and white

house officials. so, one thing's for sure, this parnas is not just some guy on the outside who doesn't know anything. he's in there. now we know rudy took credit for getting the u.s. ambassador removed. but the day she was ordered home, he talked to the white house eight times, all right? the next day, joe biden announced he's running for the white house. we now know for sure what the president wanted. the question for the democrats is can you show that's why aid was withheld. now, that takes us to august 8th. mark sandy at omb, the agency that controlled the aid, remember, he testified. he says at about that time trump's political appointee at omb took control of the money that was supposed to be going to ukraine. why? sandy complained that the hold on that aid may be illegal. august 8th, giuliani made some 19 calls or texts with either

the white house or omb. around the same time sondland, volker, giuliani, they're talking deliverables with ukrainians, same time he's with omb about who controls the money. they're talking with ukraine about who gets the money. the only piece of evidence that muddies what seems to be a clear effort to pressure the ukraines to get after the bidens and conspiracy theory is one phone call, this mysterious september 9th phone call where the president said all the right things to sondland. remember, he made those notes, checked every box. he even used the latin phrase that the whistleblower did in the complaint that wouldn't come out until later but was already known about by the president. the intel report points this out. a call on september 9th, which would have occurred in the middle of the night is at odds with the weight of the evidence but, more importantly, not

backed up by any records the white house was willing to provide ambassador sondland. if that call didn't exist or whatever, is confused with another call, then what proof is there that this president wasn't doing exactly what it looks like. if mueller had phone records like this, who knows what else he would have brought to bear in that probe. now, they once again inform the obvious. this wasn't one perfect call. it was a highly imperfect alliance of lots of pieces, players, all in the service of a potus with a poison pursuit, one that appears to have started as a cover for the mueller report and culminated with a president abusing his power by pressuring a foreign power to help him politically. now, if there are other explanations for the calls and the testimony, we welcome it. this is about the truth. but choosing to ignore all this only makes what it looks like look more obvious.

so who could be in trouble and how? cuomo's court weighs the potential legal ramifications, the potential acts for impeachment next. have you ever worked with dr. francis? oh yeah, he's ok. just ok? guess who just got reinstated! well, not officially. nervous? yeah. yeah me too. don't worry about it, we'll figure it out. i'll see ya in there! just ok is not ok. at&t has america's best network, now with our best plans, at our best prices, starting at $35 a line for 4 lines. new from at&t. (danny) 12 hours? 20 dogs?asy. where's your belly rubs? after a day of chasing dogs you shouldn't have to chase down payments. (vo) send invoices and accept payments to get paid twice as fast. (danny) it's time to get yours! (vo) quickbooks. backing you.

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called the evidence of misconduct and obstruction, overwhelming in their report. potus, however, wasn't the only one accused of wrongdoing. who else might have legal exposure here. cuomo court in session. ellie, in what we learned today with the phone calls and the report in general, how tangled is the web that has been weaved with first the practice to deceive? >> mighty tangled, chris. i have prosecuted and tried bribery cases, and i would have zero hesitation in charging this against donald trump if he was chargeable, rudy giuliani and others. i think to really boil it down to its essence, i think there's two things that cannot be reasonable disputed here. number one, donald trump and his administration held back vital foreign aid to ukraine and, number two, donald trump asked ukraine to investigate his political rivals. and the million dollar question is were those two things

connected. the answer is no question about it. we heard it from witness after witness. we heard it out of mick mulvaney's mouth and we can see it on the july 25th call between trump and zelenski. >> what's the basic defense, jimmy? >> there's just no valid basis for bribery or treason or any of the things that would reach the level of impeachment. >> why isn't it a bribe? >> it's very easy to say in the context of a hearing where hearsay evidence is let in, anything they want to throw against the wall is let in. the rules of evidence don't apply. and none of that matters here. >> that's a process your party had no problems with under clinton. so i don't want to talk about the process. why isn't it a bribe? >> there hasn't been a secret grand jury. >> why isn't it a bribe? >> there hasn't been a process that matters. why isn't it a bribe? at the end of the day if the conduct of hunter biden -- let's think about what was asked for here, an investigation of hunter biden, not to convict him

without a trial, not to go out and say he's a criminal, but to go and investigate hunter biden for something a lot of folks are scratching their heads saying why the heck was this guy getting paid all this money to sit on a board he wasn't qualified for? if that happened here with donald trump, jr., people here would be going crazy. >> jimmy, you're making your own point. you're making the opposite side's point. >> it didn't. >> if it happened here -- jimmy, look, if you want to filibuster, filibuster. elie is to you. if you wanted to go after hunter biden or former v.p. joe biden, fine. have your pal lindsey graham do it in the senate where you have the control, go to the doj and say it, say it to all of us on tv. but he went to ukraine and he asked them to do it. why? >> and one other telling detail i think which is consistent with that is what did they really want? the deliverable? that phrase keeps getting used.

and the deliverable was not an actual investigation but an announcement of an investigation. this came up time and again. what they wanted was president zelensky to go to a microphone to do the cnn interview and announce that he was investigating joe biden and hunter biden. let me ask you this -- i think mr. schultz is a former prosecutor -- if you really wanted to do a corruption investigation and make a dent against corruption, would you ever get behind a microphone and announce, hey, we're investigating so and so for corruption. that's the last thing you would do if you were serious about rooting out corruption but the first thing you would do if you wanted a political benefit. >> go ahead jimmy. >> if congress was really interested in conducting a true investigation here, they would have actually conducted an investigation in a way that a grand jury would take it, not leak, leak, leak, not turning over transcripts, not just setting the table for this political stage, not starting with the process. >> what does that have to do with the substance? >> it all matters, chris. all of the facts, all of the

testimony has to be admissible in a court of law if you were there. >> no, it doesn't. >> you're not there. >> we're not there. >> this is a political process at its core. >> that's what it is. that's what it is. it's created as that. >> it's what 218 congressmen say it is. >> jimmy. >> so, at the end of the day this is nothing but politics. >> jimmy, that's always what it's been. you guys started with a land deal against clinton and wound up with a sex act. jimmy, you're the one asking for it both ways. >> you can't have it both ways. >> you're the one asking to are it both ways. >> you can't have it both ways. >> jim, are those two things connected? is the foreign aid connected to the ask for investigations? yes or no? >> well, here's the thing, you know what? the evidence at this point in time, there's no direct evidence that shows that. it's a bunch of hearsay testimony. >> so coincidence. >> i don't think anybody's come to a conclusion at the end of day that that's valid.

>> well, mick mulvaney told us they were connected. >> what about what mulvaney said? >> it's not up to you, it's not up to me, it's up to the senate. it's clear that the house -- that the democrats in the house have made up their minds and made up their mind six months ago. >> jimmy, i don't have you on to talk about politics. the reason i'm shutting you down is because i must reject in cuomo's court any assertion that the process here is unfair. >> if we were in a real court of law, you would be rejecting everything the democrats did. >> that's not true, though. >> it's a red herring, as we call in the law. it's a bogus point. you guys with clinton, you did a completely secret investigation that nobody could touch until you wanted them to. the president had more limited access at the judiciary level than you you were asked to have here that you rejected and you know it. so forget the process. you can't argue process here. i won't allow it because it's irrelevant. but what i will ask you is -- >> because you had a legitimate investigation back then. >> ken starr started out looking at real estate. he started looking at real

estate and wound up with a sex act. that's legitimate? that was the worst. let's never compare anything to that if you want any leverage. >> you're the one that raised it. >> i'm raising it that you guys are living that hypocrisy. this is what i want to ask you. elie says you don't see any connection between the aid and the deliverables. you say nah, it's all hearsay, all hearsay, even though that's bs because we're in a place where hearsay is okay. why was rudy giuliani talking to omb -- >> because the process is flawed. >> why was rudy giuliani talking to omb at around the same time that mark sandy says who was at omb he was worried about the aid being held up and mick mulvaney who was running omb says there was a quid pro quo. how do you explain all that away? >> look chris, at the end of the day, all of this testimony like i've said time and time again is going to come down to, you know,

there was no legitimate investigation. there was no testimony. >> forget about it. that's process. how do you explain what i just said? >> process matters here, chris. >> no, the process has been fine. you guys had half the room -- you had half the room working as counsel for the president in that intel committee hearings. we've never seen anything like it. >> half the room with an arm tied behind their back and you know it. >> i have to leave it there. we'll see what happens with the judiciary tomorrow. it's really a historical play but once it starts to move, i love having you guys in to explain it and make the case to everybody else. but not process. you will not argue process here no matter how handsome you are. a whole lot of people are caught up in the president's mess. it's not one phone call. there are a lot of people with a lot to explain. it may never happen, though. what's it going to mean for different people in the end? if you want to ignore the obvious, you can, but you must explain certain things.

we'll lay them out next. [sneezing]

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so here's where we are. if you want to ignore the obvious, then you need to explain it away. if the president isn't obstructing as it says in this big report from the democrats on the intel committee, why aren't the democrats that he and you say on the republican side will make all this go away -- why aren't they being released? if it was really just about one phone call, why are so many people including your ranking member on the committee making calls to people that you say are irrelevant and to places that you say had nothing to do with this? why are there so many calls to those people and places? if it's just about foreign policy and not about the president's political fortunes, why is rudy all over the place talking to everyone at key times and apparently driving the and apparently driving the agenda of exposing ukraine and not russia as the 2016 bad guy and going for the bidens? how about the vice president? why won't he produce a single document about his call with

zelensky? the veep is called in the report either knowledgeable of or an active participant in an effort to extract from a foreign nation the personal political benefits sought by the president. same goes for the secretary of state who all of a sudden said, hey, if there are legitimate questions about the ukraine, we have to ask those questions. you know there are no legitimate questions about ukraine. where did you get that? the secretary of energy, the acting chief of staff, what do these people all know about this because they won't come forward and testify. and i've never heard of a situation where someone says, i did nothing wrong, and i can prove it, but then refuses to put up any of the proof. secretary pompeo, did you know anything about this campaign to get one of your diplomats? were you okay with it? who was telling giuliani and company that it was okay to get her out? where is the evidence of the september 9th phone call? did it really ever happen?

certainly you want to provide that. it is the only thing that has this president saying things that are not damning. so where is it? rick perry, one of the so-called three amigos, the energy secretary who just left. what did the president tell you he wanted in ukraine? mick mulvaney, double duty as the head of omb. boy, isn't that convenient? why did this political appointee hijack the money, take the ability to do the job from mark sandy and others, who were appointed to do it, who did that and started to overtake the process of when it would go to ukraine. why? and what in the world was the president's personal lawyer doing with that office on speed dial? why would giuliani be talking to omb? devin nunes, why are you on call logs with lev parnas? you say the man can't be relied on. why? why did you call him so many times? why did you sit there and say

everything is wrong? remember this? >> what was the full extent of the whistle-blower's prior coordination with chairman schiff, his staff, and any other people he cooperated with while preparing the complaint? >> i have no problem with those questions. however, what about your prior knowledge of and your prior contact with allegedly, on this phone log, to the extent it's true? you won't talk to us about it. isn't that something you should have brought up? there's a lot in this 300-page report. you've got credible testimony. you've got hard evidence. this is not a court of law. it is a political process. that's all it's ever been against any president or anyone else who's ever gone through it, ever. so don't compare it to one and say, this isn't as fair. it's never been anything but this. you don't get to ignore that. that's a fact. it matters. don't undermine the process. beat the process. raises the question, if this is what we know, what are we missing? all along we've been asking, if

the president did nothing wrong, why isn't he demanding that these people with the information come up and clear him? we've heard him say before he'd love to testify. no, he wouldn't. he doesn't even trust himself to tell the truth. but if they don't put up people who they say explain it away, how long can his party ignore the obvious? that's the argument. all right. coming up, understandably this would be a time for the president to be somber, reflective. you've got tomorrow's new phase of the impeachment hearings. instead, well, watch for yourself.

it's rukmini here from the new york times . hey, you see this?

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[ dramatic music ]ing ] ahhhh! -ahhhh! elliott. you came back!

the president is in london for nato meetings and it's going

as expected. there was a weird moment with the french president, macron, when he joked about turning over isis fighters. president trump later offered, you know, something that is just -- you're going to have to judge for yourself about the next phase of impeachment. >> what advice are you getting on impeachment? >> we are winning so big. hopefully in a very long distant future you'll have a democrat president, you'll have a republican house, and they'll do the same thing because somebody picked an orange out of the refrigerator and you don't like it. i learned nothing from adam schiff. i think he's a maniac. >> what would you want to learn if he testified? >> i think adam schiff is a deranged human being. i think he grew up with a complex for lots of reasons that are obvious. >> the president of the united states, ladies and gentlemen. that's where we are tonight. let's bring in "cnn tonight's" d. lemon for a look at the state of play. i thought it was a little odd that he picked an orange of all things that might be taken out of a refrigerator.

you know, i did a little quick looking here -- >> if the fruit fits. >> good one. i can't find the leader of any nation ever talking about their own nation like this. >> no. >> and i even looked at nations that were under siege at the time. >> yeah. >> like where there were real coups going on. they still talk about the prevailing wisdom of their constitution or whatever they're holding in high regard. and i've got to tell you, if people listen to his words, don, i think that his party saves him. i don't think there's any real doubt about that at this point. they're going to choose trump over the truth when i think the only real discussion to have is consequence, not the facts. i don't think it will ever get to that. but what he just said, basically hoping that when the parties switch they do the same thing to somebody else. >> yeah. >> what's your take? >> well, like i said, if the fruit fits.