♪[music] >> battle lines are drawns president trump faces m impeachment. robert costa. welcome to "washington week." >> the actionsf the tru presidency rev rled dishonorable fact of the president's betrayal, of his oath of office, betrayalf our national security, and betrayal of the tegrity o our eleleions. therefore, today, i'm announcing the house of representatives is moving forward with an official impeachment inquiry. >> a whistle-blower complaint sparks action in the house. under scrutiny,xchanges bebeeen president tmp and the president of ukraine. did esident trump abuse his power? republans fight back. >> this phone calls a nothing in terms of a quid pro quo. the president of t united stat not remotely sugge to the ukraine, on you do

my political bidding, i'm gonna it's a joke.y off. impeachment for that? >> but the acting director of dr national intelligence did not dismiss the complaint. >> i believe that the whistlblower and the inspector general have acted in good faith throughout. >> we go inside a mentous week, next. ♪[music] >> this is "washington week." funding is provided by... ♪[music] >> kevin. >> kevin [applause] >> kevin! >> advice for life. life well planned. learn more at raymondjames.com. >> additional funding is provided by the yuen foundatn. committed to bridging cultul ences in our communities.co

thoration for public broadcasting. and by conngutions toour pbsbs station from viewers like you. thank you!k >> once again, from washington, moderator robert costa. >> it was a>> chaotic scene at e capital this week following spear pelosi's announcement of an internet impeachment iuiry. wheyou could sense thematusting, times uneasily, to the new political dynamics and to the seriousuestions now facing congress and the trump administration. at the heart ofhe debate, a seven-page while-blower complainhi that claims president trump misused his fffice personal gain and endangered national security. and thawhite housewh officials trd to keep his conversations with the ukrainianresident, volodymyr zelensky, a secret. the complaint alleges thatp mr. tr pushed the ukrainian president in a july 25 phone

to investigate democratic presidential candidate joe biden and his son, h cter, all as hundreds of millions i m u.s. military aididor ukraine yet to be released. the president, the whistle-blower wrote, was, quote, using the powerf his offi to solicitnterference from a forgn country in the 2020 lection. the istle-blower goes on t say, the record of the call was put on a separate computer system as a way of shielding it from wid view. joining me tonightyamiche alcindor, white house correspondent for the pbs nehour philip rucker, white house bureau chief for the washiton post. ncy cordes, chief congressional correspondent for orcbs news.it and n collins, white house correspondent for cnn. let's begin with spea pelosi's decision. here isaihat she sd thursday. >> it's a sad week for our country. very prayerfully andate oticly, we had t-- pat

patriotically, we had to come to a decision to move forward with an impeachment inquiry of the president of tf united states. this is notng that w take lightly. we wante o have a fuller understanding of the facts. >> why was this complaint the democrats?oint for house nancy, you've been on pitolpi hill all week. i've seen you in the hallways. why now? for speake pelosi? >> a couple of reasons. number one, this complaint, this ise, democrats feel, is easier for the ameri public to unrstandhan the russia issue. it g os to the heartf thert president's actions, wreas the mueller investigigion that we all lived tough for two years had to do with a lot of people around t president, lers removed from the president. this was the president himself in a phone call wit the ukrainian president. also, withdi h military aid and that gets to the heartf national securityoreign fairs, something else that's

deeply troubling to democrats and privately to soms republics well. inside the white house, do they feel the se way, that this i momentdifferent? >> yes. they didn't at the beginning of the week. they were dismissin t it ass was starting to develop, starting to take shape. it was just, you guys are ofn playing ithe media. i democrats are taking advantage of it. a lot of that changed after nancy pesi launchedhis formal impeachment and then the next day -- or thatay, t release that transcript a itto came out the next day and it w much whese than thought it was goingngo be. so people who typically in the past have dismissed everything, they weathered the developments in the russian investigation, they realize thisres dif. and it's making them nervous. >> i wonder what was part of that tipping point forhe democrats. you look at the o ed. some of the moderates. was that on speaker pelosi's mind as she moved forward? >> the soues ialked to told me very much what nancy just long time, democrats were articulating this ide t felt that the presidet was

using the office wrongly, that was doing thingspl cely out of the norm, that he w profitingrom the president, that he was essentially just a bad actor in the white house. but this week they got something that they could explain to american people. it was ts really, really short thing to s. thhopresident was on the with a foreign leader, trying to get them to meddle in the 2020 election. that's it. that's the argument that democrats are making. that's a lot different than the mueller report and all the things going on there. so i think nancy peli also felt, i think, a little pressure from her caucus, because we saw john lewis, theonscience o america in a lot of ws, come to the house floor and say i a now in favor of an impeachment inquiry. what we saw wasohn lewis going pelosi.re nancy so she was following her caucus. this. of people were ready for >> phil, you cover president trump, day o in, day. when you read the whistle-blower complaint andaw how he had h an

interaction with the ukrainian president,t,hat did it reveal t you about h he uses his power? >> it revealed a patrn of behavior in such granular dinail that whistle-blower complacot. it wasn't just the whistle-blower. it was corroborate based on the whistle-blower's ctacts within the government,t, other white house aides, other officials who werere alarmed by the presidents behavior, d it documented president who really sees himself as above the law. we havwe just hadwe ar two-y tional conversation about how it is illegal and improper for a presentr government official to seek help in a campaign from a foreign government or a foreign leader. and yet that's what the document shows president trump tried to doith his ukrainian counterpart. >> if that's what it shows, why did the white house chooseo relee a memo about the call? >> it's interesting to see of mo wanted it out out there. secretary of stae pompeo saying don't do this, advising the president that it was going to set a badredent. but the attorney general, bill barr, was pushing for it,

saying, yes wehould just release it. it's going to dispel some of s thisma. then, of course, it comes out and you see how many times the president was telling the ukrainian president to get with the attorney general and it left a lot of people in trump world wondering why they pushed for it. me say they think barrr realized it was going to be ugly no matter what and he wanted to just get it out tre and not have the d drip, drip of information. but it's still confounding to people. >> congressional republins were pressuring the white se as well, becausee they w wondering, why the president delayed the a. $250 million, set aside by the pentagon, by congress, for ukraine, held up by u the president. even if it wasn't a quid pro ry aboutrepublicans w the aspect of foreign interference raised by this memorandum? >> aely. and the fac that we learned of the senate, s republican mith mcconnell, who should ordinarily be a top ally of this

that he was left in the dark about why that aid was withheld. fo months. he says he spoke to the secretary of state. heke so the secretary of defense and was given no explanation. so you really saw the leader of the senate puttiti some distance between himself and thehi president on ts issue. all, saying even i didn't know what was going on. and yes, that is troubling to republicans, because they a see huge strategic advantage an alalance witale ukraine. they believe that the u.s. needs to protect ukraine against russia and that made thi whole situation more troubling. >> this was nor than -- more than ahone cal you talk to rudy giuliani all the time as a reporter. >> ha ha! [laughter] >> but he was mounting a pressure what alarm did tha t raise among democrats when they readathe

report and maybe even somen publics? >> rudy giuliani is claiming that the statele department c him up and said, we need your help with ukraine. so that in and off its is rudy giuliani essentially saying that states to be a diplomat tonited ukraine. that pro pematic to democrats. they say, hhe is president's personal lawyer now acting as a sort of ambassador to the it's alsoecause, of course, he's theresident's personal lawy s. so wha is the president releasing the democrats -- putting his own political interests in front of the national interests of this country. you also haveiu in rudyani someone who is saying now that testify before icongress. anhink that's going to be an interesting decision on his part, because democrats are very, very eer to talk to rudy giuliani. they'ralso eager to talk to, i think, a number of other people complaint.nhis i think, like the mueller report, what we sees in t complaint is a wholeho number of people around the president doing two things. either, one,elping h actions

along, if you're rudy giuliani, or two, trying to mitigatet w he's doing by giving ukraine advice by saying, lhok, thi is you can navigate the president, telling you to do this, to investigate theidens. >> it's interesting to see the debate play out about whether th suld have giuliani testify. on onestif hand, obviously he'st the heart of this controversy. there is no one whonows more about how all this went on the other hand, if his apance before congress is anything like his cle news appearances, it's gon be, you e, y, ankly a little over the top. and democrats do worry that it has the potential to sort of turn the entire impeachmentes pr which they'd like to be very seriousnto something of a circus. so that's theff tra >> and at a certain point, there y start to be questions within the trump orbit about whether rudy giuliani is eectively serving as the president's lawyer in this case. he is n an actor and a principal, a subjecthi of

investigation, andha at point does tha t become a distracti d for the president? at what point is h too focused f on explaining his own actions with ukraine that he's not focused entirely on defending the president? >> what aboutsshis of a separate computer server? who do we know about that, mbe shielding information from ldinrs in the administration? >> that's what's so ieresting about what happened today. you saw the preside p questioning this whistle-blower. a lot w of what in this complain has actually come to match what the white house confirhed. one of thest parts we learned in the complaintas that the transcrip of this conversation with thekrainiant presids moved from where these calls with heads of setes typically stored. it was put on a server where you have to eentially enter code word to be able to access this information. it's typically for n nional security information, really sensitive stuff, not just

readoutsf calls with foreign leaders. that was really interesting to people. and tt -- the white house hadn't commentedn it. but today the whistle-blower's complaint said white housese lawyers directed sff to move itda there. y we got a statement from the white house sayg it was a national securit council lawyer who told officials to move it there. what that tells you is the white saye didn't have anything to do with this. it was a national securityco ho did it. that's something people are going to be payayg attention to. >> we learned that the house foreign affairs commiee has subpoenaed the secretary of state, mike pompeo. could we learn more about this whole operation if he's called to capitol hill? >> absolutely. what they reallolutant from pompeo is documen. they want to kno more about foreign affairs t officers at embassy, in ukraine, who apparently expressed concern about rudy gt ruani's freelancing in that country as a sort quasi diplomat. d, you know, what exactly the

concerns were that they were pressing. they want to know more about, you know, giuliani is arguing that he thisll at the behest of the state department. and so dememrats have been asking for an enormous cache of document from the sta department. they haven't gotten anything so far. so they took t next stehisp week. they now say that the secretary state has a wk to turn the documents over. let's see if the administration is more receptive to this tactic w than it has been in the past. grappling with the substance of the complaint. there' also the politics. acti dni joseph maguire testified before congress thursday to address questions t about whistle-blower complaint and why he and the white hse delayed handing it over.er. political battle lines were quickly drawn. the chairman of the house intelligence committee, adam schiff, laid out the democratic argument. >> the president of the united states has betra bd his oat office, betyed his oat to defend our national securit and

betrayed his oath tour defend constitution for his personal political benefit. >> ranking repnglican devin >> the democrats' mania tocase. overturn the 2016 elections, everythinghey touch gets hopelessly politicized. with the russian hoax, office our intelligence agencies. now today, the whistle-blower process is the casualty. w t a pivot point foi president trump. his entire presidencyn theli . impeachment now on capitol hill. changed his own viewf how he' going to move forward in the nex year? >> he doesn't seem to have changed his way. he'sollowiwi a traditional playbook that we've seen from discredit the accusers and then to counterattack and kick up a lot oft dust, c toate distractions, in this case around biden, to divrot attention the facts about his own conduct. this is probably gonna continue.

the problem that faces i is that the white houseat is understaffed right now. in se respects, they'rehe demorarazed over all of the heat that they've been facing. they don't havel a f operation. they don't have a war rm in place. >re there tensions h to move forward strategically? >> there's aually talk about bringing in an outde team that can handls t p.r. battle and the legal battleal so that other people in the white house cane ngcus on gover but .member, there's an acting chief of staff right now. the press secretary is holding three jobs at once. it is not fully running machine at the moment. >> w>>l there be a war room? >> less talk of a war rm, more of a team that couldnotentially behe inse or outside that uld he strategize communications. essentially fight back against the democrats and provide them with someo who could spearhead strategy. what's been interesting is there are peopleho arear outside the white house now, from trump's campaign world, that are trying >> trying to step in.ing to --

corey lewandowski, t present's fmer campan manager, a few other officials. they've got a list. there have been conversations starting this in the white house. they haven't made it up toes the ent yet. ltiple people s s the president is kind of in denial about the situation he's ihe oesn't realize the gravity of iravi he essentially doesn't thinke needs a team tike thiso help. there are main stays inside the white house also pushingeack be it's a very territorial westouing. ofe, he's going t need someone to help himp pus back. >> he'll try it all himself, as he always does. we saw on twitter this morning him launching a series of attacks that he presumably thought of himself. >> this political war of the white house, what abo demoats? can they keep this impeachment narrowly focused on >> nancy pelosi says she wants to kee this narrowly focused. part to just talk about this call instead of saying, well, let's really try toack up

hunter biden. let's try to make the casee that biden wasn't corrupt. let's try to see if d jr. and all the issues with the whether or not they're profiting frhe president's tenure here. they don't want to have all those conversations. i think they learned in the mueller report that there were so many ifferefe avenues to go down that the president threw things on the wall and the american people frankly gotra confused. if you jus keep saying, look, he was onhe call with the president of the ukraine, he's pressuring him, pressurg him, democrats want that message. but on the war room aspect, i've been talking people inside the white house, asthe all have, and they sound like they justti are trying to formulate what to do. but thenn when you talto the trump administration, they're saying, well, we're going to be putting outillions of ads to yo fight t in tv ads. what they have is essentially a war room operating in the trump campgn but that is set up to re-elect the president, not to

fight impeachment. >> and corey lewandowski may be ready to go to the bricades, but wha about senate republicans? are they going to dohe same? >> well, there are two camps. there are republicans who are still stilding b the president, anytime you ask them they say this whistle-blower jt has secondhand information. >> that's what they say publicly, nancy. what do they say to you privately? >> well, there is a gup that is standing by him. they say it'snfair and all democrats care about is impeachmt. there is anothis group of senate republicans who feel deeply uneasy about the president's strategy, who frankly are worn out after defending him for several years, but who can see where this islleaded. at's the reality. they can see now this is going to land in the lap of the senate, whether they like it or not. and in fact, mcconnell himself has said we go i iediatelyo an impeachnt file. >> what's your read on mcconnell? he's walking a fine li here.-

he is someone who, in the past, has always stood by the esident if he can find any rationale whatsoever. he really tries to, you know, parsrs out the times when hes lor distance with this prident, because that's not a very comfortableo place be, particularly in this party. i do thi for t first time, republicans appear toth be king about what could poibly come next. ieahat's several steps down the road. but the reality is this is no longer just a p.r. war. we're now looki at real lifee developments. the ambassador essentially to ukraine has just stepped down. democrats in the house are planning toonduns deposit with fivee state department officials just in the next two weeks. so we're going to see a snowballing effect here. >> how significant a a thets statem by senatorenat sass of

nebraska, the senator of utah, raing ccerns as republicans >> they're president significant because i c think it'sar that they speak for a number of their lleagueses who are just afraid to say so. the dynamic can change quickly. if you have more evidence cominr fo in this impeachment on the house, if you have a vote on the house floor to actually impectua the president and it kicks over to the senatd it co be a very different calculus. the democrats do not need all the senators to vote to convi the president. they only need -- it's two-thirds majority of the ch'sber. and the world in which could actually happen. >> and trump has always been deep t mistrustful ofse people. a lot of people privately don't like the president. there are these s mainy establishment republicans who the president has made life very difficult. so i agree i don't think it's likely but i just don't think it's guaranteed

that he'll be fine. >> and part of the thing thaty en these cracks wider,s public opinion. for w, a new pbs newshour poll shs americans are still divided on this start of an impeachment inquiry. 49% of adults surveye nationally approve. 46%isapprove. the divide is more srk when broken down a lng partyes. 88% of democrats approve. senator ernst of iowa, coreye. gardner of colorado, all up for re-election in 2020. when you're talking to your white house sources, are those the people they'reaying attention to o the republican side? is it the senators who are retiring, like alexand of tennessee? maybe all of them? >> i can imagine that the white house is loong at all of these people. i think of representative turneo fro in the meeting with joseph maguire. he says, look, i have a messa for the president, this isn't ok. i think the white house is in some ways keeping their ears

open for all republicans thin tng abouts. i also think it's i important, we've asked people in that poll how muchf thiss is going to impact how you vote in 2020. the majority of people sotd it wasoing to have any factor. like 58%f them. so it's important to also note that as republicans think about how this might impact the, electi're already getting a sense from people that this going to impact the vote. this was a historic week in washington. >> how is this different than we've seen imp ichment beforen american history? you now have twitter, cable news. you have a conservative infrastructure out there that's echoing the president at every turn. does that buoy the white house that the feel like even if republicans are cracking at times, they have a wider universe of support? >> well, with trump in w particular, he's got something about him that has helped him evade things that would have brought any other politician down. of course, there are s many stories over the lastrs few y since he's been in office, since he's been on the campaignwi tra. the t president, we're

talking about having a tea t to help him strategize, publicly defend him. he may not need tt, because of course he's the'sresident. got his twitter. he's sometimes his own best okesman but he alsoas entire news channels that typically are in his favor. he's got rad shows, a huge twitter following of people ready to defend him.p that could h potentially. that's still something that's an >> nancy, when you're on the, hill talking to democrats, reeblicans, what's ime line? >> the time le reall depends on whion democrat you yalk to, because there are some, rticularly from swing districts, who don't want this to ove ohadow the agenda for the next six months. they believe that thawould be very difficult politically for them. so i was talking to one swing district democrat this week, who fm just kind of come over the other side, and was nowas supporting an impeachment inquiry, who sai thate thought that perhaps they could vote by the end of this week.

ha! [lauauter] >> so there are democratsemho want to get this over andet done with. d then there are others who say look at this whistle-blower report. weave 17 new leads to fwlow. names to track down. so much more investigating to do. and ey want t follow everyry thread to the end. and be able to put together the st air-tight case possible. so the reality is, i think spear pelosios herself has said multiple times that shehe w ttso be expeditious. that was her word this week, expeditis. >> expeditious? >> ha ha! >> expedious is what this show haseen. is has been quick. it is already the end. >> what? thank you for sharing our evening with os. we will continue the conversation on the "washington weekxtra." we wil look at how the impeachment debate affects the 2020 presidentiaac catch ih on our website, facebook or youtube. i'm robert costa. have a great weekend! ♪[music]

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