>> edtonight on newsroom, 12 democratic presidential candidate faced off this week, we will look at the statof the race amid the growing impeachment inquiry pick >> also we will hear from bay area congressmen, rowe, who serves on one of the committees investigating president trump. plus survivors of some of northern californis most destructive wildfires are up against a key deadline to file claimsagainst pg&e. good evening and welcome to kqed newsroom. i ly we begin tonight with the democratic idpresential debate and impeacisent investigation. week, house democrats pressed ahead with their impeachment inquir against president trump. nt theyviewed several key witnesses about the president's

efforts to persua ukraine's leader toinvestigate former vice president joe biden, and his son. meanwhile, on tuesday, 12 candidatesquared off in a democratic residential debate, held in ohio. reinecting her surge the polls, this time it was eltaabeth warren facing a x from her rivals. especially over her support for medicare for all. raise taxes on the middle would class, to pay for it. itor for politics and ior government, scott shaver. joining us via skype from the nation's capital, is tall coping, the washington correspondent for the san frlccisco chronicle. e to you both. >> thank you. >> let's start wi you, scott. you were in washington this week and you spoke with several members of california's congressional delegation, several ofthem are players in this impeachment inquiry, what did you learn? >> adam is of course leading the charge along with nancy e house intelligence air of

committee, and we met with him after a long meeting he had with the spea r. he has become the target of republicans and the president in particular. who arclaiming they are attacking the process could not so much defending what the on president dithat phone call with the president of ukraine. they are saying this is an unfair illegitimaterocess. in terms there was no houseboat on this. this is all happening orhind closed and what adam schiff described, is what exactly is happening behind closed doors. in his telling of it anyway, the democrats on the panel, get g an hour of question these witnesses and the republicans get an hour and they go back and forth like that for hours on end. cording to adam schiff, all the questions they want to ask can be asked of these witnesss. so in hitelling, it is a very fair process, and it will become public once this portion of the behind closed doors parth is finished. e will be, transcripts released, testimony, some of these witnesses may come back for public inhe. >> to you in washington,

republicans of course want to force a vote against intelligence share, adam schiff, what are the grounds for justifying such a vote? >> reporter: procedurally, if enough of th sign a petition, they can force a vote. we expected tofail the democrats will vote to table it and move on. the point republicans are arguing, is that they say that adam schiff is not conducting this fairly as scott was mentioning. they have taken issue with some of his statements for example he has gone hit by the fact checkers. he made a comment saying no one had spoken th the whistleblower essentially and we found out later, that in fact the whistleblower had approached his staff and got the adce to go aheaand move forward with the whistleblower complaint which is the proper comment srt of saying that this hadn't occurred. they also take issue with this sort of purity of the phone call that he read as an openg statement, innot hearing, over

the whistleblower. he made ry clear that was recounting the presidm words. but, they are hitting him for it and they are repeating the presidents language accusing him of lying and at type of thing. >> another big development this week was the meeting between president trump and speaker nancy pelosi, this was the th first time had met in months and ended in explosive fashion, you had nancy saying that with trump, all roads lead to putin. what you make of that? >> that is a pretty remarkable thing for her to say to the presidents face. you know, we have ard her say it in press conferences, but she is a woman who respects the political process, she has worked with multiple presidents as a leader of her party. she is generally very respectful of the office, and so for her to tasort of that shot at the president in that meeting, i think is a bit of an escalation of the relationship

you sebetween the two of them, but we also hear from democrats that the president was insulting her to her face and calling her a third rate politician or a third grade politici. you know, so clearly for a mutual respect between the two of them at least for dithe ity of their office. as we move forward with this impeachment inquiry, that seems to be fraying quite a bianmore even we have seen in the past. >> well, scott, you had an opportunity to sit wn with one of the freshmen democrats, who is in a purple district. katie porter of irvine, she has certainly made a e splash in last year, since she got to washington, but i have to as what does she tell you about how this impeachment and her support for this inquiry, has affected her chances of winning. is she woied? >> i n't think she is worried at all. she first of all was one of the very first freshman to coin out support of impeachment inquiries. so, i don't think that, she is

an attorney, she taught law. i think she understands the everything pretty well. a lot of these freshmen also, they are not necessarily care politicians. they didn't necess office because they wanted to make a career out of it. so the prospect of not ecgettin red is not that troubling to some of them. i think katie porter just feels this isthe right ing to do. her district although yes it was held by a republican that she defeated, orange county is not a particularly frienaly place to trump either. i think she feels confident and comfortable being supported of the inquiry as it goes forward. house resolution, on syria. on the u.s. withdraw from syride , obviously spearhby president trump. you had tremendous republican support for that resolution, bipartisan effort here. rned in terms of republican ide support and backing for president trump? >> i am not sure how much you can extrapolateom this

particular vote. one area we have seen our republicans being willing vote witmocrats is on some of these military issues. so, we do see a rebuke of the presidents foreign polid military moves, especially in this area i think this has been one of the strongestew reof that to date. it harkens back to what we saw in terms of saudi arabia is support for campaign and yemen that is causing widespread famine and mass de casualties. that was another instanere we saw this, but you erhave melike lindsey graham of south carolina, a senator, very close with the president. very vocally against his moves to withdraw from syria and allow this istuinvasion. the next day he is going to go back to defending the president on everything else. i don't know e that you seeing a flood of republicans off the sidelines, but certainly on this issue, and s perhoader foreign policy issues. they are not afraidreto ke the president in this way. >> well, let's turn now to the democratic debate this week

in ohio,d scott we had elizabeth warren sortof with a target on her back during that debate. should she feel threatened by that, or flattered? >> i don't think she is threatened by it. she is the target because she appears to onbe the runner or at least with joe biden, the co-front runner at this point. so, she probably was exp a lot of incoming and she got it. i think by and large, she held a pretty well. she did have some trouble around the queson of how she going to fund her medicare for all. and whether there would be a middle-class tax increase, to fund that. pa teeth inicular i think did her on that. job we didn't hear a lot from harris. she made a point about not talking, why are we talking about woaln's reproductive as well. but by and large, you can see this field rrowing, in terms of who is tting attention, how much time that they have during the debate, and is pretty much coming down to biden, sanders, warren, pete,

to a certain extent and some e harris, but all thothers you know have to get there time in and it just alludes the whole process. i think it is hard foviewers and voters to really you know, take the full measure of these candidates. >> how do you think elizabeth warren did? >> i think to scott'point, what we saw on that deba stage was a passing of the mantle so to speak of the front runner status. we saw her front tad center, ng incoming from several candidates, i mean you saw those candidates who are pulling in the single digits, you know, deit is warren and sanders and a big gap between the rest of the field. every single one of them came th in knowing would have to do something to change their fate, and several of them decided that something was going to be going after elizabeth warren. you know, did she handle evecy attack pe? maybe not. did she show that she is cable of withstanding some onslaught? auditioning for the role of going up against donald trump, you have to be able to take

some onslaught. soooyou know she up there and took it. i think, i don't think we will see anything in the polls that trajectory of this race, which right now has her picking up steam against all her rivals. >> scott, we have to talk abrrt , and she has definitely seen her star fall, but interesting to see biden faltering as well these last couple of weeks. how might she be a plan b for some of his space? >> well, for joe biden, his firewallamas been african- ican voters. epecially in places like south carolina and other state in the south. so the question is if biden continues to drop whe do those votes go? might they go to harris? or cory booker, the two african- americans in the race? or could they ? to warr i think those votes will be up for grabs. we are going to see that w weeks. lay out in the next >> scott shafer, our politics editor here, thank you both so mu. >> thank you. >> thank you.

three house committees are acspearheading the iment investigation into president trump. one of them, the oversight and to post mmittee, several current and former trump administration officials this week. meanwhile on thursday, nicole veiny e president acti chief of staff, suggested at a press conference that's nearly $400 million liin ry aid to ukraine, was held up, to pressure ukraine to investigate democrats. hours later, mulvaney tried to walk those comments back, saying nthere wasquid pro quo for the release of the eight. with us now is silicon valley congressman, khanna. he serves on the reform committee, and the armed services committee. thank you for being here congressman. >> thank ngyou for hame on. >> i want to begin by asking ck you about mi mulvaney's press conference yesterday, in which he suggeswad that there in fact a quid pro quo with ukraino , what is reaction to that and how does that impact the

impeachment inquiry? >> it was shocking to have the white house chief of staff admiing that the united states of america withheld aid from ukraine to advance the presidents personal agenda. i mean the president is asking ukraine to investigate a conspiracy theory somehow allegedly help the democratic party win elections in 2016. that is absurd. it has been dee nked. yet president is tying our aide asking ukraine to do that. is wng. it is further evidence of the abuse of office of this are you planning to call mister mulvaney as a witness? >> we certainly will. i don't know if he will testify or cooperate, but you know we don't need that many more witnesses. we have the chief of staff admit to quid pro miquo on television. the president of the und ed dates bragabout asking ukraine and china to investigate joe biden and hunter biden. at this point, there really is

no factual dispute. we know that what the adminiration did and the question is, are we going to t upho constitutional values or not? >> congressman, of all the testimony that you heard this week, what wathe single most important thing that we learned in your review? >> based on the public reporting of the testimony, i would say the most disturbing part is how thpresident outsourced foreign-policy to his peedonal lawyer, rudy giuliani, for his personal benet. an i this was not foreign- policy being conducted by john bolton or mike pompeo or ambassadors. this was rudy giuliani pushing his own interest and the presidents personal interest to win reelection, with ukraine. that is just, every american, i don't care about your party should be appalled that wy personal to the president is representing the united states of erica in foreign at policyrs. >> what does the timeline at

this point, look like in your review, when it comes acto iment? on a vote to impeach. does thanksgiving seem like it is in the ballpark atthis point? >> i think it is. the end of the year. e before like i said, most of the evidence is there. we neeto move expeditiously and then we also need to focus on the wo i mean i have been focused on building affordable housing for the bay area and ndexg transportation and making sure that vewe investments in infrastructure and jobs. obviously i have held this president accountable but i also want to be focused on the work to improve our district and people's lives. >> let's turn to syria now and the trump administration's withdrawal of u.s. irces therthe past week we have seen kurds displace. with turkey annexing parts of syria, the kurds of course havec been one of ams key allies in the battle against islamic state, yesterday vice president mikepence announced that turkey had agreed to a

congressman, i want to ask you, does that cease-fire do anything in terms of undoing the damage done in this very fragile region? >> unfortunaly it doesn't. it is not a cease-fire turkt is describing it as a pause. obviously it is good that the violence has stopped buthe question is what is going to happen to the 1.7 million kurds? the president is saying they will flee. that is unacceptable. they have a brant society in northern syria, we can't just have a mass exodus and then what happens after the five days? es turkey go backin and start killing women and children and civilians again? what we need is far more pressure on turkey, to come up with a permanent commitment, not to invade that region. >> we have to note here congressman that in april, you anapkentucky senator, ran, sent a letter to the president supporting his decision to bring u.s. troops home from syria, you urge the completion of tha withdrawal, over a six

month timeline. that was exactly 6 months ago. >> i did, but i called for a responsible withdrawal and i said let's make sure that we have diplomacy, that we have a deal with him, so that we don't have an invasion. let's anke surethat we secure the kurds, and secure the the president do did not do any inform the allies. not even he did not inform the kurds. he did not inform his own administration in parts and he basically ceded to him. so i do spthink a sible withdrawal is possible. it still is my position, but >> do you have any regrets about sending that letter now, because you are right, that you did call for an orderly process but this haacened almost y on the timeline that you had asked for. >> no i have no regrets. i regret that we don't have a competent foreign-policy. that we don't havele pelike

richard or georgie would've been able to do this. i have no doubt if elizabeth warren, bernie sanders or any competent democrat was p they would be able to withdr all troops and make sure we would have the effect of diplomacy. >> i want to ask you about the resolution passed in thhouse of representatives on monday on a 354-60 vote, this is a rebuke. no doubt abouit of the presidents withdraw from syria. are you surprised by the bipartisan support on this i am not. you had progressives like me supported, even though withdrew. we believe that the handouts to turkey and allowing for the slaughter of the kurds was irresponsible. you have conservatives who believe we should be standing up with our kuish allies and not allow for isis, so the one& in congress, is whatever ideogical perspective you come from, ththis has been incompetent. it has been a colossal blunder, that is costing people their

lives. >> rissman, sd know on th that president trump has chosen his own resort, one of his resorts florida as e year. on of the next g7, next can weget your reaction to that >> it is shocking. i mean i don't understand how this president can be selling his own business as a place to conduct official policy. it is a violatioof the clause. he says it isnot about ney, so i said, i tweeted out, i said if it is not about money, why does he offer thr e places free. why is he having the taxpayers reimburse him, his private businesses, for the spaces. >> is there anything that congress can doto stop this? >> we are calling for investigations and we are saying he ioisting the clause but how many things can we investigate? we are focused on the biggest and having a process of the articles of impeachment.

>> let's turn the passage, the death of your good friend, representative, elijah cummings, you served together on the house oversight committee. how is his deatbeing received in washington? >> it is an enormous loss. i would describe him more as a had the honor of serving with him for about a year on the oversight committee. he is the son of sharecroppers, a man who had a booming that very few others in congress have. i think of people like john lewis and elijah cummings as having had the moral weenht, moral cons of congress, he won't bereplaceable. but, we can learn from his wisdom, his sense of otfairness tosides. ots sense of commitment to civil rights, to rights of immigrants and i just feel blessed and privileged to have learned from him and served on his committee for a year. >> our condolences to you and

your colleagues the in washington. congressman ro khanna, thank you so much. >> thank you, it is always a pleare. >> survivors of recent california wildfires linked to unpg&e's equipment have l monday to file liability claims for their losses. also the states top utility regulator, is holding an emgency meeting today with pg&e executives about the widely criticized power outages last week. that left hundreds of thousands of customers without power. goveinor gavin, is dema accountability, saying this week that californians should not pray pay the price for decades of pg&e's greed and new ect. joining me talk about this law professor, jared, from uc hastings college of the law. thanks for being here. >> x for having me. >> there is this deadline on monday, and before we get started i want to put up the website for folks who do want to file claims who haven't. it is pg wildfire info.com. i think it is really

interesting that if you don't m get your clin by this monday, you basically forfeit your claim, so my first question to you, is why does this deadline exist in the first place? >> that is a great question so, when you think about bankruptcy law, it is easy to cus onlyespeciin this case, the wildfire victims whose lives were upended by fires that had been attributed to eepg&e ant. but the company itself needs le to move through the to be bankruptcy process and the judge needs to know just exactly what is it sitting in d front of him, because of that bankruptcy law has these harsh rules where it is harsh, if you don't file a claim by 5 pm on monday, you are more than likely forfeiting any rights you might of had to get anything from pg&e. for any damages that you suffered. and to the extent that yowere harmed by pg&e related fires and you don't file a claim, you're going to be out luck. even if the person who lived next door to you who did file a claim and also suffered damagesu gets a payment on account of it.

you really do need to file a claim. by that date. >> we know that tens of thousands of people have filed clai, but there could be tens of thousands of people who haven't yet. i'm really surprised by th figure. it might be as much as half of those out there who still haven't done so. why you thinthat is? >> that is a great question. you are hearing in a couple of different stories from the people who have been looking at it. one possibility is there is just misinformation going aroune and le don't understand they need to file a claim. the company has done a really great job i think in advertising that you need to do it. it is a legal form. it isthintimidating. is a process people are familiar with. i can understand how you would look at this and say i am not sure what to do. another possibility is people migh think if thfile a claim, vethey to know exactly how much they are owed. they have to have scientific proof that this is the number actually tmpany has done something great which is you can just check a box on the form saying you are not sure

hoch you know and you can amend the form later, once you learn more about what your damages are. there is no real reason not to file a claim, you just have to put your name on it, explain what happened to you and you can check the x saying i am not sure, and later you can figure it out and amend it. you need to do by 5 pm monday. >> there are a lot of misconceptions. touched on some of them juste now. the questions i have heard is do i need a lawyer to do this? what do you tell peop? >> it always helpful to have a lawyer in life. i say thatas a lawyer. but it is always helpful to have a lawyer to help you with things. bu you don't need a lawyer to help you with this form. you just need to go online and fill it out. it is great if you have a consult with a lawyer while you are filling it out yourself. if you don't have time to do that between now and monday, fill out the formand work th a lawyer later to amend it and fix any mistakes you might have made. >> we should note thab ities from these wildfires are the primary reason that pg&e cited when they entered into bankruptcy protecti at the enof january. today, we at

have the regulator, the california public utilities commission, calling executives from pg&e and. ou we are talking the ceo, also the chairwoman of the board and a number of executives as well. i r,just won how much of this is going to influence the bankruptcy process. what ty are talking about today, is these controversial power outages from last week. do you think this could e influe the bankruptcy proceedings, that conversation we hear today? >> absolutely. but, in a subtle way. so, the bankruptcy judge, is a very experienced judge. 30 years. n doing this for he really is good at paying a bankruptcy judge. you have this incredibly importancoany that is in your court room and they need help. r they are unege from the press, under siege from the public of california. the state governments, the regulator. all of this kind of adds up to a landscape for the judge where he looks at pgand he thinks

i need to todo something, help move this company on, so we can focus on these bigger challenges that it faces. you know, the fire conditions and the shutoffs, like e are not things that the judge or the bankruptcy can x. these are things that the company is going to have to work through later. i think it sort inof shows in t grand scheme of things how unimportant in some ways, this bankruptcy p cess is for pg&eture. it is really important for the fire victims that happened in the past, but this company it is not like it will be rainbows and unicorns and all of their problems are coming to an end. this is a really tough situation. >> why should ratepayers pay attention to this. i think a t of us are wondering at the end of the day, are the rates going to e g up? ratepayers should pay attention to this. as a pg&e ratepayer myself, i certainly think about it in that sense. and what will probably happen, is e your rates not going to go up right away afgor the bankruptcy.

but, after this ends, you know, the problems that pg&e has, will continue force rates up and up and up, you would assume overtime, absence and dramatic change in the cost of doing business which only seems like it is going up. if you are a ratepayer you can cover your eyes and hope that nothing bad happens. but is not this bankruptcy that will force rates up in the future. it is all of the business faoblems, that pg&e s. >> problems that the governor and other state officials were sayingwe years in the making were the product of neglect and choices made by the company. help us contextualizis bankruptcy in the grand scheme, this is the biggest utility bankruptcy that this company and country has ever seen. how unique is this case? >> this has to be you know, i was a professos and i a bankruptcy lawyer. this has to be, if t the most unique bankruptcy that we have onen, it is of them. we have seen a lot of companies

that have very unique caseal like genmotors, that was very unique in 2009. you know the city of detroit had a unique case. i thunusual. it is unusual in that the bankruptcy judge n'really do have the power to solve all the problems that pg&e has. like there is a sort of powerlessness of the bankruptcy system over this companma that just s this really strange. >> okay, well jared elias, professor at uc hastings college of the w. think you. >> thank you for having me pierced the act that will do it for us as always you can find more of our coverage at kqed.org/newsroom. i am lily, thank you for joining us.

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