and ashley parker. for now, good night from washington. good evening. i'm ari melberme. welcome back to "trump & ukraine: impeachment crisis." how these hearings are transforming the debate on impeachment. new implications regarding the president. what democrats are explicitly calling bribery. we have another week of high stakes public hearings and we will begin a special panel of expert guests in a moment. we have reporting on who's who in the bribery plot and tracking bill barr's role. later with the prosecutor who ran the office who is investigating rudy giuliani in

new york. but first the impeachment goes public. >> the impeachment inquiry into donald j. trump, the 45th president of the united states. >> efforts to gin up politically motivated investigations. >> is this what americans should now expect from their president? >> the witch hunt, it is a joke, sham, hoax. >> this is not impeachable conduct, what is? we are now in the official part of this critical public phase of the potential impeachment of donald trump. in the coming day we will see one key witness after another come forward, including key trump aids with direct testimony about the president's alleged role. these hearings will build on the system outlining this plot.

>> i think it's crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign. >> the possibility of a white house meeting was being held contingent to an announcement. >> the meeting was the security assistance would not come. >> the president's comments were focussed on two things, 2016 and the bidens; am i right? >> i believe so, yes. >> what was communicated to you was that the president wanted investigations into 2016 and the bidens. >> that was my understanding. >> how could our system fail like this? how is it that foreign corrupt interests could manipulate our government? which country's interests are served when the very corrupt behavior we have been criticizing is allowed to prevail? >> in recent days we have seen a dramatic shift in how some of the top democrats in the house are moving towards what they see as donald trump's abuse of

power. several describing it as, quote, bribery. that is one of the only two impeachable offenses listed in the constitution. chairman schiff was the first to use that term in an npr hearing on the eve of the hearings. >> first of all, as the founders understood bribery, it was not as we understand it in law today. it was much broader. it connoted the breach of the public trust in a way where you're offering official acts for some personal or political reason, not in the nation's interest. >> and then very interestingly, after these official hearings began, just within the last few days, speaker pelosi getting even more emphatic. >> quid pro quo, bribery, bribery, and that is in the constitution attached to the impeachment proceeding. the bribe is to grant or withhold military assistance in return for a public statement of

a fake investigation into the elections. that's bribery. what the president has admitted to and says it's perfect, i said it's perfectly wrong, it's bribery. >> quote, it's bribery from the speaker of the house. let's get into it with max baukus. also served as u.s. ambassador to china for president obama. melissa murray, a former then clerk to judge sotomayor. good evening to all of you. >> hi. >> great to have you. senator, your first time on this special, i begin with you. you are the member of the panel who is actually adjudicated a senate trial of a president. what does it mean when we see the house explicitly laying out the evidence and looking at the potential article? bribery being an article of

impeachment. >> he's going to be impeached. the question is what is the senate going to do? i think the house committee, house intelligence committee has done a good job in a noon circus-like way given the facts out why president trump has probably bribed or tried to bribe the president of ukraine. but i still think clearly this has become very political. democrats are going to impeach him. what's going to happen in the senate? my sense is thus far that's a close call what the senate does. it depends what else comes out of these hearings. if it makes it more clear that he's prescribe ee's bribed or a people back home will want their senators to do something about this. >> you have been in that institution, you have been in those courtrooms, there is a lot of speculation on the outside. what you are saying is on the inside, even the republicans who have their own pressures will still ultimately respond to the

evidence? >> i think they will up to a point. but this is because very partisan. the divide is so great. this year it is much different than nixon era or the clinton area. this time the republican party is way right wing. trump has got them all galvanized so republican senators are much more beholden to him, trump, than they were to the republicans at that time. >> on the substance, do you think that the president has done things that merit removal? >> i do. i think he should be impeached. i think that he has abused power. whether there is bribery or abuse of power in the general sense of the term and i think it's so bad that we should not wait until the next election for the voters to decide. we have to set the precedent today that when you do something illegal, and he did do something illegal, clearly illegal, he should be removed. >> for viewers that may or may not recall, you are speaking as

someone who has tried very hard to work across the aisle in a bipartisan way. you were even criticized for that. you are also from a red state. you are not speaking from the bright blue resistance. you are speaking from that vantage point. take a look at the questioning this week, including what we are seeing as increasingly the bribery case. this was daniel goldman leading the question. >> whether it is a quid pro quo, bribery, extortion, abuse of power of the office of the presidency, the fact of the matter, as you understood it, is that security assistance and the white house meeting were not going to be provided unless ukraine initiated these two investigations. >> ambassador somlin described conditioned for the security systems and the white house meeting in those terms. >> i just want to bear -- it bears repeating that according

to ambassador taylor, who is a vietnam veteran, lifelong public servant in the united states government, there was an effort to steal hundreds of millions of dollars of funding and use it in a barter to help the president get re-elected. >> i think what the democrats did yesterday was run the hearing in a professional way. it was great that schiff decided to table many of the republican motions until the end. >> in these hearings wednesday and throughout the week. >> yes, throughout the week. the real thing that happened here that i think was important was that they emphasized the credentials of kent and ambassador taylor. these are not never trumpers. they're not people in the resistance. they're career professionals that have served both siends of administration, republican and democrat. and over and over again they both saw a shadow channel of foreign policy so unorthodox that it really gave them pause and made them wonder if they could continue to do america's work on an international stage

and made them think that the president's actions here were not about rooting out corruption in ukraine, but rather were about helping the president in the 2020 election. >> all right. ruth marcus, walk us through the view in washington as these hearings are now underway. >> well, the view in washington is these hearings are now underway depends entirely, i think, on which side of the aisle you are sitting on in washington. and so i think to some extent senator baukus' belief that some of his colleagues have their votes up for grabs, what they might think privately about the president is one thing. but as long as public opinion is as incredibly split as it is between republicans who are strongly in support of the president and democrats who are just as strongly opposed to him, that is how the senate -- first of all, how the house is going to split.

and second of all, how the senate is very likely to split. that's just reality. >> let me play for you as well just on the substance one of the other revelations this week that after the famed phone call with ukraine the president was following up and was sort of literally dialing for dollars and still trying to get somlin to be his guy to hold back the money unless he got the election help he wanted. >> called president trump and told him of his meetings in kiev. a member of my staff could hear president trump on the phone asking the ambassador about the investigations. he told president trump the ukrainians were ready to move forward. following the call with president trump, the member of my staff asked ambassador somlin what president trump thought about ukraine. ambassador somlin said he cared more about the investigations of biden which giuliani was

pressing for. >> ruth, it seems like quite a bang to start. i mean, you have covered other impeachment processes that took a lot longer. this story is literally under a few months old. and the star witness at the first hearings this week lays out the plot. >> well, the velocity of this story has been amazing. we read the original rough transcript of the phone call, and we're flabbergasted at the audacity of the president soliciting a foreign government for help against a political rival and all the evidence that's developed since has only gotten worse for the president. the thing that was astonishing about the testimony this week was that i think we expected to put this very sober public face of the long-time state department officials and others on to this testimony. i don't think we were necessarily expecting something new. certainly not a bombshell like

this of an overheard conversation with the president of the united states to which the take-away was he doesn't care about ukraine. that is, he doesn't care about u.s. national security interests as much as he cares about going after the bidens. just pause and take that in. >> yeah. you take that in, senator, and you are talking about the abuse of national security powers. i mean, this is military money. it could have been a bomb, right? it could have been a battleship. according at least to these witnesses. they are saying this is how the president rolls. he does not care about the rules or the constitution. that's the evidence. again, i keep stressing that because when we hear the other side or if there is a senate trial, we will be covering that as well. but these hearings this week we're laying out the evidence. then the question is at what point do you have enough evidence to make up your mind? we want to take a quick look at a younger senator baukus at that point in the later point in the clinton trial. take a look. >> we know that there is

virtually no chance that any additional evidence is going to change their minds. people's minds are made up. >> we, though, have numbers here that show support for impeachment has grown as this evidence has come out for the public and one out of ten republicans in some polls have already shifted on this, suggesting people's minds are not yet made up. >> well, i think that in the house, minds are made up. i think in the senate minds are pretty much made up. i think that it depends what other evidence comes out. if president trump has to, in fact, dy vivulging his tax retu there could be more evidence of something egregious. we don't know yet. the trial in the senate has not occurred yet. i think there will be one, but we'll see. >> i want to turn to memory as a person who has been around the courtroom, you know that memory

is the first place you pretend not to know things, right? you are not necessarily purgering yourself and denying. >> so here we go. the current president is veriy y l lit gous. he knows this. he may have lied to mueller, which is a separate felony. some people get convicted for it. and then second now he's saying he doesn't remember anything about somlin or talking to him. take a look. >> i know nothing about that. first time i've heard it. in any event it is more secondhand information, but i have never heard it. >> do you recall any conversations. >> no, not at all, not even a little bit. >> so gordon somlin has to be calling his lawyers at some point. i imagine there will be an addendum to the addendum he

filed. but just take that in. he was speaking so loudly it could be overheard by someone not even on the same piece. >> is that what bothers you, that he's a loud talker? >> we knew he was a loud talker. it goes to show how unorthodox this is? >> if i may, does it show the president may think this is wrong and he doesn't want to do it again through all normal channels. somlin is a donor an alleged patsy. he is not the secondary of state. >> it is not the shadow government that things are happening that couldn't happen in the original register. that's really important. it also links the president to this in a direct way, and he can talk about it being secondhand evidence or third hand evidence, but we could actually find out where he was at the time and hear from people who had firsthand information if the white house would allow these individuals to testify.

>> that goes to my final question to ruth. take a look at these photos, ruth. we have gordon somlin on the other end of that call, plus laura cooper and david hale. >> he and president trump seem to have the worst memories of anybody in government. but somlin's memory keeps getting refreshed. in a normal world, he may have to worry about perjury charges. now we will have the testimony from the other end of the phone call, from the person who witnessed, overheard the president on the phone. and i think the person whose comments this week might be the most dangerous are the president's because when he says i don't remember having this phone call with gordon somlin, he's going to have a hard time coming back and saying, oh, this never happened. i distinctly remember that the

phone call that i don't remember actually didn't happen and i never said i care about the bidens. so he has backed himself into a little bit of a corner, i think. >> it is a lot, a lot to process and having much veterans here does help us. i want to thank ruth, senator baukus and senator murray. doj might have been pulled into a cover-up of the cover-up. also, we'll break down who's who and why aids keep changing their story. and my interview with the prosecutor who ran the office now investigating rudy giuliani. all that plus more on the big week ahead and we will answer more of the questions you sent us in this special "trump & ukraine: impeachment crisis." si. hands-free sliding doors, stow 'n go seats, man, y'all getting a hook up and y'all don't even work here. pacificaaaaa! but in my mind i'm still 25. that's why i take osteo bi-flex,

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jim morrison told me that the call kaucould have been bet and that president trump discuss that he meet with mr. giuliani. and attorney general william

barr. welcome to our msnbc special "trump & ukraine: impeachment crisis." a new focus tonight that upset the entire trump presidency with these hearings continuing next week. barr and the doj are implicated in the plot. way back in april, trump went on fox news suggesting barr could get involved in the ukraine investigation stuff, a bid to try to push a defunked conspiracy theory peddled of course by rudy gull yanny. >> i would imagine he would want to see this. people have been saying this whole -- the concept of ukraine, they have been talking about it actually for a long time. you know that. and i would certainly defer to the attorney general, and we'll see what he says about it. >> the concept of ukraine. well, no, not exactly because he's not just talking about the country. he's talking about getting help with the election and trump got more explicit on the white house lawn. >> i hope he looks at ukraine.

i hope he looks at everything because there was a hoax that was perpetrated on our country. >> and it continued. two months later trump dropping barr's name twice. quote, i'll tell rudy and attorney general barr to call because he wanted to extort a foreign government to go after biden, his rival. we know from witness testimony that set off alarm bells all over the government. barr's role a key part of the original whistleblower complaint. and what happened next is extraordinary and still under investigation because the whistleblower complaint was part of what was passed over to the justice department, which of course is supposed to independently investigate any potential crimes. and they get referrals from the intelligence community that ask them to do that. but the doj curiously said they weren't even going to open an investigation to look into this. doj lawyers writing a secret

memo saying they need not turn over that complaint to congress. in other words, don't even try to get the facts. facts might be good for trump. who knows? but don't start a probe to look at them and then keep it cquiet from congress. it involved their boss and as we know publically and in ways that should protect him. we don't have any evidence that mr. barr did anything wrong to carry out donald trump's request about this ukraine plot. in other words, we don't have evidence. we haven't seen it yet in any public hearing saying barr did x, y, z. but we know mr. barr has engaged with trump on other conspiracy theories going to travel the world as part of this investigate the investigators, looking at the origins of the russia probe. >> i am going to be reviewing both the genesis and the conduct of intelligence activities directed at the trump campaign

during 2016. >> we should be worried about whether government officials abused their power and put the thumb on the scale. >> i think spying did occur, yes. i think spying did occur. >> we have to look at that. >> look away because that is the context for a chorus of voices arguing that mr. bar within this impeachment scandal may be undermining the integrity of the justice department. >> let me ask you about the attorney general. >> he's gone rogue since he was mentioned in all of this. it's curious that he would be making decisions about how the complaint would be handled. >> i think where they're going is a cover-up of the cover-up, and that's really very sad for them. >> i'm joined by matt miller, former justice department in the obama administration. your view of this? >> well, i think first of all, the attorney general absolutely ought to recuse himself. it is hard to understand based

on any legitimate reason why he would still be overseeing the department's role in it. i want to add something else to the bill of particulars that you went through. you know, as part of this investigation into the origins of the investigation that you mentioned, doj has already come out and said that this prosecutor that barr appointed is looking at information that he got from ukrainian individuals. so they're looking at something from ukraine. we don't know what that is, but we know every other time information has come from ukraine to the u.s. government, it seems to be either corrupt ukrainian oligarchs or officials that have been trying to smear u.s. civil servants like the former ambassador or to other size carry out their particular interests. so there is something else happening at the department that i don't think we have quite gotten to the bottom of yet. >> and you think that's suspect how? >> well, look, the department

has been behaving very peculiarly here. it's not just the fact they didn't open a full investigation into the president's call. you might have seen a world where the department would have looked at it and decided it wasn't a crime. but they decided to do a very narrow lens of campaign finance questions. >> and how often -- just slowing you down because you're making so many great points. how often would you announce in the opening weeks of a news story, we're not investigating this? >> never. never. >> because it was your job. >> it is very rare for the doj to look at something they find -- i think most people call it disturbing and take the narrowest legal lens and decide to not look any further and decide if there are other criminal statutes implicated. at the same time they got the

referral of this phone call, they were investigating rudy giuliani and they were investigating rudy giuliani's two leagues who were now under indictment for their activities all in ukraine, all of which seem to be connected to the president and this extortion scheme he's been trying to execute. >> another great point you're making. they announced we don't see this campaign to get ukraine to do anything as a campaign violation. and those people you just mentioned who are ukrainian linked, were just indicted on, among other things, campaign violations. >> yeah, on campaign violations. those people are in the middle of this. it is a complicated thing. when we look at the impeachment, we're all looking at what the president did. but what the justice department looked at, they're in the middle of this scheme where they're incurring favor with one side, using that access to the white house on the other side of the atlantic to go sign up clients in ukraine and get information from those clients they could use to smear the president's

political opponents. it was an access scheme. they befowere right in the middf this. the idea that in the middle of a criminal investigations the department would just say, oh, we're just going to think about this one thing about the president, not look at it. and then the most critical part that you mention is we're going to try to block the information from being turned over to congress so it could do its job. it just smacks of a cover-up. and the idea that bill barr is not right in the middle of this, they have tried to shove is responsibility to lower level officials does not pass the smell test. >> they asked barr whether trump did ask him to hold a news conference and he said, i don't remember. >> any time the attorney general has a conversation with the president, you remember every detail. you come back and talk to your staff about every detail. i remember being briefed on these conversations many, many times by eric holder.

the idea he wouldn't recall a conversation with the both can't be true. he would remember one way or the other. >> yeah. it is dodgy. as you say, you have been on the inside. those things are well documented and you do things when you are on the phone with the president. matt miller, really appreciate your clarity here. >> thank are yyou, ari. >> our exclusive interview with the prosecutor who ran the sdny unit that's investigating rudy. and why the next hearings could be very difficult for one trump aid and the bribery case. . con liberty mutual solo pagas lo que necesitas. only pay for what you need... only pay for what you need. liberty. liberty. liberty. liber♪y i wanted more that's why i've got the power of 1 2 3 medicines with trelegy. the only fda-approved 3-in-1 copd treatment. ♪ trelegy. the power of 1-2-3.

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these claims were suspect. >> did he peddle false accusations against you as well as the bidens? >> yes, that is my understanding. we're back on our msnb special with a closer look at someone's whose name come up a lot in this week's hearings, rudy giuliani. >> the united states was undercut by the efforts led by mr. giuliani. >> i became increasingly aware by an effort of rudy giuliani and others. >> guided by mr. giuliani. >> mr. giuliani's efforts to gin politically motivated investigations. >> the investigations of biden which giuliani was pressing for. >> affecting u.s. engagement with ukraine. >> those key impeachment witnesses testifying about how giuliani was guiding this channel in proper dip employple.

facing a criminal investigation by the sdny, the office he used to literally run. i am joined now by david kelly that also held that top job. thanks for being on the special. >> my pleasure. >> when you see mr. giuliani as a suspect in this probe being name checked that many times in the hearings, is that bad for him in the investigation or irrelevant? >> i think it's probably largely irrelevant unless there was some information disclosed they didn't already know. my guess is there probably aren't an awful lot of surprises, but it is really hard to say where they are with their investigation. >> when you look at the fact that mr. giuliani stands as far as i know as the only person in the middle of the venn diagram and in the middle of the impeachment probe, what pressure does that put on him? he used to hear from a lot.

he has gone quiet. >> i think there is a lot of pressure on him in both places in the congressional hearings certainly he needs to be concerned. i mean, there has been some discussion, i have read reports about him, for example, maybe being the person that he threw under the bus, that he went rogue. if that's the case, he has an awful lot to worry about. unclear whether or not the facts will support that or where it will go from here. but if i'm in that position and seeing all that, yeah, i get worried. also, it suggests about what the prosecutors are going to see. if they haven't seen it already by who they're looking at, assuming they're looking at this, he's got to be concerned that his name is coming up way too much and the prosecutors have to be very interested in that. the challenge for the prosecutors is looking at, i think, largely what's going on with the impeachment hearings. people look at this as not so much a criminal investigation or a criminal proceeding. it is a political one and it is about abuse of power, not about

the commission of crimes necessarily. >> you mention that abuse of power, david. that hangs over all of this, including whether giuliani's role was helping the president do something despite his lawful powers that went beyond him. you look at central casting. you also used to be a cop, right? >> yes. >> with people who have these roles in government are given potentially great powers, the power to detain, to arrest, to convict and in some cases to kill, be that on the street or through the lawful process of execution. thinking about that, i want to play for you mr. giuliani's public defense before he went quiet, which was not him saying, look, i can say whatever i want in politics. it's rough. it's tumble. no. he tried to come back into the protection of the government and claim that he's basically like a member of the trump administration or the state department, which obviously would grant him different

powers. take a look. >> i never talked to a ukrainian official until the state department called me and asked me to do it and then i reported every conversation back to them. and, laura, i'm a pretty good lawyer, just a country lawyer, but it is all right here, the first call from the state department, the debriefing in the state department. >> so why are they -- >> as an investigator, how critical is that distinction, especially in the impeachment hearings, whether he was acting at the direction of the u.s. government or not. >> two things. first off, he held up his phone, if i'm a prosecutor, i want to get everything that's on there and they may have already done that. he's talked about this before. essentially what he's saying is what's called a public authority defense. in other words, maybe i committed a crime, but i was authorized to do so. the challenge with that is that he kind of looks at a lot of

things here or it conflates. if he's under the public authority defense, it means that he's acting in kind of a quasi official capacity. but he has come out and said he's the president's personal lawyer. you can't have it both ways. so i think he's going to have a tremendous challenge there about what he was doing and the, frankly, the public authority defense is fairly narrow. in other words, it has to be very specific instructions that you follow. you can't just have you go into what you want to do and you are off and running and i can blame the public authority defense. it doesn't work that way. >> and one of the things we heard over the week from some public defenders of the president as well, some of these witnesses are secondhand accounts. wouldn't rudy giuliani be the firsthand to count. >> it appears that he has by his own admission has firsthand information and, yeah, sure. my guess would be -- >> that would be interesting to watch. >> there is a couple

complications to that. one is he's going to claim that's attorney-client privilege information, a lot of what he has to give. or, two, the president will assert an executive privilege or, three, it is public authority. >> david, he wasn't exactly filing court motions in ukraine, was he? >> no. but that's not relevant. he's kind of all over the map. they need to -- the problem is that think, ti think, that they didn't pick their theory and stick with it. >> right. >> they have been all over the map. i think there is going to be a collision of those and ultimately a day of reckoning where you can't have it both where you can't have it all ways. it is one or the other. and whatever route they pick there will be certain legal hurdles that need to be met or overcome. >> as always, thanks for coming by. appreciate it. and i should also mention david will be back with me for a special event in new york with several of the top federal prosecutors from the same

office. you see it right here. go to msnbc.com/sdny if you are in or near new york and you want to join us, it is at columbia law school thursday, december 5th. it is called independent justice. it will have david, me, barry berger and six former attorneys from sdny. msnbc.com/sdny to get your tickets tonight. my special report connecting even more dots in the trump bribery plot. and later we will answer some of your questions. anything you ever wanted to know about impeachment but were afraid to ask. afraid to ask. as a struggling actor,

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"everything"? >> what he meant by "everything" was the security assistance and the white house meeting. >> bombshells. those are some of the bombshell remarks and the testimony that's come out public in these imeachment hearings adding to what is a case of bribery, detailing what donald trump's team was offering in exchange for the re-election help that trump won. trump demanding a bribe to get re-elected. these are producing more evidence of how it all worked. that's not the only thing happening. if you divide the trump camp up here, it is not just that more people are admitting it. it is as these accounts go public, some of the people who used to try to deny it are moving and also admitting it. that is crucial to this case. so let's get into it. in terms of the players we know, you could say things are moving

towards the bill tailors of the world. the first person that objected to this in realtime and away. things are moving away from the trumpian defense of all of us. so we made an animated chart to show you. it starts over the summer, having the discussion about the probes. somlin insisting no quid pro quo bribery. that was before there was an impeachment probe on ukraine. in private taylor objected and told somlin this was a bribery plot. those are your two camp. boom, the whistleblower blows up and adds to the taylor concern, filing a complaint about the bribery plot. at that point, let's be clear, those were the battle lines. some people involved said bribery. others denied it. okay. then go back to the chart. enter mick mulvaney, admitting the bribery plot famously saying it happens all the time in a

televised spectacle gaffe. watch as mulvaney retracts that and goes back over, migrating into the no bribery camp because he reversed himself. however absurd you find that retraction, that was the white house had several people standing by trump. mulvaney may be damaged but there were multiple people linking arms in the no bribery defense. the testimony is re-shaping those defense alliances. so take a look at our chart. you have the army officer testifying on bribery, a top national security counsel official and then, this is the most important shift to date and it just happened as taylor and other testimony goes public, sondland leaves the no briarry camp and actually says his recollection has been refreshed and there was bribery, adding to his past congressional testimony. this week he is also expected to

say it in public under oath. you are looking at where the witnesses stand and where the story is going. a lot of people on the right now alleging the bribery plot, including sondland, trump's ally. you have mulvaney who retracted and then all by himself the president. melissa murray is back with me. thank you for being here throughout our special. >> thank you. thanks for having me. >> i walked through that because cases are about evidence. a lot of the evidence is testimony. >> yes. >> what does it mean when we look on that chart and see sondland moving and trump increasingly isolated? >> he sees the the writing on the wall, bill taylor is virtually an unimpeachable, no pun intended witness, a career servant, saying i have no dog in this fight, i don't want to be on the record as wanting impeachment or not, i just want to tell the truth, and the truth, this is what i saw. all of a sudden sondland is, wait a minute, let me go back, i

have to refresh my testimony, i remember now there was actually a quid pro quo and bribery are the fact that we're talking about bribery has shown we are shifting into a new era in this proceeding. we're going into a new part of the inquiry. as senator baucus said, it is sure there are going to be articles of impeachment and the democrats have made a strategic choice to focus them on things that are actually explicit in the text of the constitution. treason, bribery, high crimes and misdemeanors, as opposed to the sort of amorphous category of high crimes and misdemeanors that hasn't been identified. >> isn't that important because while abuse of power is a very serious thing, people of good will can disagree about that. there are a lot of people who would hear about wars they disagree with, mistakes in foreign policy, and say, that seems to me like abuse of power in the colloquial sense of the term. >> we saw with the clinton impeachment, was the conduct problematic, objectionable, was it impeachable, maybe a

completely different matter. by focusing on bribery, it's something the american public can think about, even if in a modern sense as opposed to this constitutional sense, but they know what bribery is, they know it's problematic, they can link it to the constitution's charge that congress has the authority and indeed the duty to impeach a president when he commits bribery. >> this is something we've discussed and been reporting on "the beat" as well. the other big difference is bribery is always about personal enrichment. you're taking money or taking power, taking help with the election. there isn't a good defense to, well, i just needed that money, as there can be in some of the other issues. you see this in the example we've used from blagojevich. absolute power to appoint a senator. when he sought a bribe for it. the thing he had unlimited for suddenly has a limit. >> again, this is what the framers had in mind when they were laying this out. they did not understand bribery in the federal statutory law we

know today but in this broader english common law sense that was about the abuse of oy official power. that's why it's linked to treason, that's why it's linked to high crimes and misdemeanors. alexander hamilton said, these are the abuses of public men. they understood this about involving is the government, the giving of governmental in exchange for something of value and it was a problem. >> they also understood, there will always be credible temptation for people in power to use it to enrich themselves or hold on to power. >> yes. >> these are ambitious people who become president. if there wasn't a hard cap on their ability to take the pentagon or nuclear weapons and use them to hold on and get re-elected action of course they might feel that temptation, it has to be fought. professor murray, thank you so much for being part of our coverage. we'll be right back with some of your questions about the impeachment process and where we go next. (employee) enterprise car sales has access to over

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we've asked you about some

of the parts of the impeachment process you may want to know about. we've gotten a lot of questions from you. did trump request the ukraine president initiate investigation into the bidens or just that he announce the investigation for the sake of optics? that's something under investigation, we may never know the whole story, but for constitutional issues it may not matter. both options would allegedly serve trump's goal, to go after and harm a political rival, to get foreign help in doing that in order to get re-elected. the smoke, not necessarily caring whether there was real fire. another question asking, is there any potential legal consequence for politicians who slander or disparage these witnesses? we've seen some of that against colonel vindman. some republicans and public allies in the press questioning his loyalties, making ugly

smears i'm not going to repeat. let me tell you how that works. the constitution generally gives lawmakers immunity for any official speech. out in the public realm, peel want to say ugly things? most of the time, not always, but the vast majority of the time they are not going to run into criminal prosecution for using their free speech rights. so the answer, whether you like it or not, is a lot of those kind of smears will not be punished in a courtroom. then quote the boxer mom sending us this question. what happens if the senate exonerates trump and he breaks more laws? well, you have a big smart question there and i can tell you there isn't a simple answer. it is something lawmakers and attorneys and others are thinking through, because you're looking at uncharted territory. deterrence though is a part of the argument for any impeachment process. for this president or others. it sends a message not only to the president but to everyone in federal government that there will be investigations, that there will be actual hearings, that you don't want to be on the wrong side of that.

if donald trump were to be convicted, if any president's convicted in the senate that also is something that carries major consequences. i want to thank all of you for sending us great questions. i want to thank you for watching our recurring msnbc special. hope to see you again monday night and every weeknight, 6:00 p.m. eastern, on "the beat." this program includes violent and disturbing content, viewer discretion is advised. where is an agreement that says we have to stay in the middle east for the rest of humanity, for the rest of civilization, to protect the kurds? it never said that. we never agreed to protect th