and that is the kasie dvr. that does it for us tonight on kasie dc. up next ari melber hosts "impeachment: white house in crisis." for now good night from new york. good evening. welcome back to our msnbc special series, "impeachment: white house in crisis." tonight's program is the first since the house intelligence committee finished its scheduled hearings and the first since this new testimony from key witnesses testified and explained trump himself was directing the ukraine bribery plot portraying conspiracy at the highest levels of the white house. chairman schiff laying the ground work for articles of impeachment and our special panel of experts digs in on all of this tonight. we're excited to have them. while no single human could consume and make sense of 30 hours of testimony this week, our msnbc team of journalists, reporters and lawyers has scoured every single minute and

every word from this historic hearings to bring you what matters most tonight. we'll track how speaker pelosi got to question on impeachment and now the emerging case against trump. >> two political investigations. he believed would help his re-election campaign. it was a basic quid pro quo. >> i want nothing. i want no quid pro quo. >> was there a quid pro quo? the answer is question. >> what i heard was inappropriate. >> whatever drug deal that they are cooking up. >> they get the call. they get the meets. they get the money. >> that's their objection, not that he engaged in this conduct, but that he got caught. >> he got caught. you heard it right there. and i speak with you tonight on a different type of evening because the evidence is in. two weeks of public testimony,

stunning revelations and current trump administration staff turning on the president. this is all part of why we can tell you tonight impeachment is hitting a new phase. the house democrats say that means they don't really need any other resisting witnesses like bolton or mulvaney because those witnesses who have testified, who have turned over evidence are providing the informational ammunition that is needed to move forward. schiff's committee working on a written review of findings with their preview of the case this week. >> bribery for those watching at home is the conditioning of official acts in exchange for something of personal value. the idea withholding that military aid to get these political investigations should be repugnant to every american because it means the sacrifice not just of ukrainian national security but american national security for the interest of the

president personally and politically. >> schiff will now hand the findings over once he produces the report to the judiciary committee run of course by adler and they would draft any articles of impeachments. if you thought the public hearings have been dramatic, and they have, just wait for the judiciary. those hearings could be wild. we know that from precedent. under the rules and the past practice, donald trump's lawyers could come in and potentially question witnesses who appeared just as bill clinton's lawyers questioned ken star himself in those hearings on the clinton impeachment. no matter who is asking the questions are not good for president trump. >> was there a quid pro quo. the answer is yes. i followed the directions of the president. we did not want to work with mr. giuliani. simply put, we were playing the hand we were dealt. >> mr. giuliani's requests for a

quid pro quo for arranging a white house visit for president zelensky. he had to announce the investigations. he didn't actually have to do them, as i understood it. everyone was in the loop. it was no secret. >> we bring in our special panel now. do you remember "the new york times" editorial board that covered washington clins the clinton administration. dania. and peter emerson, an aid to the member of the judiciary committee during the nixon impeachment, drafrting these articles in a different context and has worked or advised every democratic administration since carter. good evening to all of you. what did you think stood out when you take it altogether this past week? >> i think the split screen, ari. i think the fact that we saw lifers in the foreign service, lifers in the military, people who think about briefing books and think deeply about protocol

and processes. nobody over heated, nobody dramatic. layer after layer corroborating the whistleblower report. and then on the other side it was hunter biden and it was ukraine and it was chulapa and it was benghazi. it was just -- there was no corresponding truth. there was no meeting of the minds about even what the alleged crime was, much less what it is we were even investigating. >> peter, take a listen to how adam schiff wrapped it all up after these two weeks of hearings. >> the day after bob mueller testified, the day after bob mueller testified that donald trump invited russian interference, the day after that, donald trump is back on the phone asking another nation to involve itself in another u.s. election.

that says to me this president believes he is above the law, beyond accountability. and in my view there is nothing more dangerous than an unethical president who believes they are above the law. >> strong summation in your view? >> strong summation that will have little or no effect at all. the congress is going no recess for the thanksgiving holiday. they're closed up. we're calling 35%, 40% on both sides. there is a small margin of independents that will make up their minds as we go closer. but we are in a context of history we have never seen before. we're moving into a political season in just a couple of months and most importantly, as dahlia pointed out, we have no agreement on truth or facts. no one can agree whether the sky is blue or whether chocolate, whether it be dark or light is black or chocolate. >> what do you think of the

substance of this compared to the watergate example you have some experience in? >> the watergate hearings were committed by both sides. >> substance, not process, peter. >> substance, yeah. >> no, i'm asking you. >> oh, i see. >> i'm pressing you because i get people in here who want to tell me they can see the future. and i got news for you and everyone else at home. the people can't see in the future better than anyone else. six months ago people would say pelosi is not impeachment because they could see the future, but i guess they were wrong. so i guess the evidence that we saw this week, your view of that as it compares to the evidence that came out in the watergate hearings. >> obstruction of justice, abuse of power, kind of matches up with what we've seen this week. the other two were the bombing of cambodia and the tax evasion by nixon. i agree, he's going to be impeached by the house judiciary committee. i agree.

it's going to be a wild scene given that he doesn't seem to have the capacity, nor the will to discipline the way schiff did in his committee. >> that's interesting, and i think something that goes to how the evidence comes out. you're saying that there were different approaches, which is part of why schiff's committee got so much farther. >> that and also the decision to move it to schiff's committee. think of schiff's committee as sam irwin and the watergate committee in the beginning. then it was passed. there is another very important point of all this, is that bills are passed, legislative bills are passed with amendments and in a very famous scene from senior staff during the watergate staffing. jack brooks, the congressman from texas, walked in and said don't forgot how a bill is passed. you can't have just one article of impeachment. you need to provide the opportunity for republicans and democrats to say, listen, i thought carefully. i considered it. i voted death sentence two, but i voted for one. so there are going to be, i

suspect, three articles. on the other hand, if there is only one, it gives democrats perhaps a better chance at taking back the senate and say susan collins would have to vote yes or no. puts her in greater jeopardy. there are so many levels of chess being played here that it is so complicated. but wild is the world we move into in a couple weeks. >> yeah. i think that, you know, i have heard lots of chatter all along about democrats are going too narrow. ukraine is the tip of the ice berg. we should be doing e mmollients and all the corruption and the racism. i think the decision to whittle it down to this phone call, this quid pro quo, this education torsion scheme was a decision to make it simple and clear. there was a huge menu to choose from. they decided to go straight up the middle on something they felt the public could

understood. >> michelle, the other thing that is clear and simple, whether people agree with it or not, this is no longer a bad apple's defense. mr. somlin works for the president, testified, got on a plane and continued his representation of the president abroad and said this wasn't bad appl apples. this wasn't shadow. it was all rotten apples. the shadow was the policy. some of that was underscored even in republican questioning. take a look. >> did anyone else express any concerns to you about this so-called irregular channel? i'm not sure how someone could characterize something as an inregular channel when you are talking to the president of the united states, the secretary of state, the national security adviser, the chief of staff of the white house, the secretary of energy. >> what was he doing there and how does that affect people's understanding of how high this went? >> this is an important point

for him to make because there had been some talk about whether republican lawmakers and others in order to protect the president were going to throw some people under the bus. somlin, rudy giuliani, mick mulvaney. with his testimony the ambassador was making very clear that this was not some rogue action that a couple people were involved in. this was the regular channel that the president himself was directing. and he said that repeatedly, that it was the understanding that they had to work with rudy giuliani because this was coming straight from the desires of president trump. >> take a look as well at ken st starr who has been providing his running commentary on fox news. not all of it super supportive. here is a little bit of it. >> the chairman began with essentially pulling out the richard nixon articles of impeachment, figuratively speaking. and he pointed to the third

article, contempt. contempt in the sense of you stood in the way of this investigation. did ambassador somlin spoke vehemently and bit early about his lack of access to records to help him. i think articles of impeachment are being drawn up if they haven't already been drawn up. >> there has been much talk about where the parties stand. what does it tell you that a conservative leave of voices, conservatives in the movement did sound more starkly critical this week as they appraised the evidence in public. >> there were a couple of moments that i think surprised everybody during these hearings. one was somlin talking about, you know, making very clear that he had been denied access to these documents that he wanted and that he thought that they should be turned over to the committee as well.

the other one was during marie's testimony when trump started tweeting at her and chairman stiff stopped the proceedings to make sure he was willing to consider this intimidation of a witness, which also prompted a lot of surprise remarks and commentary from conservatives across, you know, across the social media and regular media. and i think that those sorts of things will come back in the articles of impeachment discussions definitely. >> peter? >> i think she's right. i think the ultimate challenge, though, given my experience in '74 where you had three networks, people who missed it during the day even though millions were focussed on it came back at 6:30 at night and walter cronkite, pbs with bill moiers. >> shout out to bill moiers. >> and there was a real attempt on all sides to get the truth just as you are trying to do here and the media is doing in

general. but today there is so many platforms of disinformation that it is almost impossible for the public to actually go through this. second, it's delivered on so many different methodologies as well, it becomes extremely difficult. the word surprise to me no longer is in my vocabulary when it comes to donald trump. i think for the most part that's true of anyone. i don't see a smoking gun coming up. even some sort of embrace of putin physically isn't going to surprise anyone. it's pretty clear he's looking forward to putin taking america back. >> i think the most important thing that peter is saying is what is different is this is packaged. in the moment it is donald trump is witness tampering in realtime. a minute later it's gone. it's gone. it's not on fox news. this week we have unbelievably damning, a rollup of everyone by som som somlin.

i think the idea there are these distilled moments of catch that -- >> right. i have to fit in a break. but very important to consider as you look at what they do with the facts and what the public understands the facts to be. thanks to each of you. coming up, my special report as promised on the key evidence emerged from everyone you see here. we did some of the scouring so you don't have. and later we have a d.c. insider who worked at her side for years. and then as we have been doing, will tackle some of your questions on what happens next. that's all coming up on "impeachment: white house in crisis." e in crisis." we'll inform them that liberty mutual customizes home insurance, so they'll only pay for what they need. your turn to keep watch, limu. wake me up if you see anything. [ snoring ] [ loud squawking and siren blaring ]

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we're going to tell you everything you need to know about how the president's own pentagon and his own security

staff detailed a plot to extort foreign help to cheat in the election campaign. for the first time this week we saw trump's own staff saying under oath the plot was not a shadow policy. it was the ordained policy of the trump administration. as memorably said, quote, everyone was in the loop. so here we go. 12 witnesses, 30 hours of testimony and many people distinguished themselves from even their more powerful bosses who remain in bureaucratic hiding because remember how a lot of this ended last week. afterwards we saw witnesses go out to hail a red taxi of washington. what do they believe behind in explosive evidence and receipts, including trump's hand pick ambassador to walked into congress and dropped a dime on his boss at the worst possible time. this is what it sounds like when someone confesses in public. >> was there a quid pro quo?

as i received previously with regard to the requested white house call and the white house meeting, the answer is question. >> wow. how do you confess that this week and get away with it? well, look, he could be nay eve about some things, but he came in with larger names an his own. an ambassador to donald trump details who was in on the plot, naming names and according to sondland it was everyone. mr. gull yiuliani, president tr mr. mulvaney. ambassador taylor, ambassador volker, a lot of senior officials. everyone was in the loop. >> what if he is just trying to save himself and take those

shots at people? he brought the proofs, the e-mails, the text messages. you just heard working directly on the plot. before the infamous call, he showed, like in a high level e-mail, that mulvaney, rick perry and his direct pos mike pompeo were all involved. there was a whole scheme there to get the leader to assure trump he intends to run the investigation. they all were on that e-mail. also busting mulvaney for action because he required the national security council to set up the call. as he named names, other witnesses corroborated this plot telling officials that those same officials were undercutting national security for trump's political er rands to get biden. >> he was involved in a domestic political errand.

>> a lot of this caught republicans off guard, putting the trump administration and trump's defenders in a tough spot. why would sondland admit the worst things that have been said about his plotting, things that looked bad? why would he do that if this weren't true? if is called an admission of interest. if you admit something bad about yourself, it is considered more credible than if you are just defending yourself or bragging about how great you are. the reason makes sense whether you are a lawyer or not. you have no bias logic to just confess or criticize yourself falsely in most situations. why am i telling you this? well, this type of testimony, this type of statement is considered so credible, if you make an admission against interest, it is even admissible an exception to hearsay. although, i would add a lot of what sondland said is under oath

and about himself so it's not hearsay anyway. it was an attack that came from his own number one em mployee, mick mulvaney admitting that plot in order to defend. >> he also mentioned to me in past that the corruption that related to the dnc server, absolutely no question about it. >> what you just described is a quid pro quo. >> we do that all the time with foreign policy. that's it. that's why we held up the money. >> that's it. that's why we held up the money. that was seen as an inexplicable gaffe at the time. so now as we think about everything that's happened in the past weeks, do you remember how odd it was when mulvaney first stepped to that? think about what we knew now. he knew there were receipts. he knew there was written e-mail evidence already tieing him to setting up the quid pro quo

bribery plot. he knew that then. and then it was only probably a matter of time until it came out. so mulvaney had his own interests in trying out any defense, no matter how bizarre or guilty sounding to say maybe what he did was okay. instead of denying it happened because he knew sondland had the e-mails to show it happened. do you remember how mulvaney tried to break with the lawsuits over the testifying? this week also demonstrated once and for all that trump wanted investigations to address foreign corruption and not score domestic points because sondland and others didn't care if there was an investigation, that it actually occurred, only that there was american tv coverage of a biden probe. >> he had to announce the investigations. he didn't actually have to do them as i understood it. >> giuliani and president trump didn't actually care if they did them, right? >> i never heard mr. goldman,

anyone say that the investigations had to start or had to be completed. the only thing i heard from mr. giuliani or otherwise was that they had to be announced in some form. and that form kept changing. >> announced publically? >> announced publically. >> so it was all about the public television discussion of the bidens being dirty and under investigation. not whether there was one. sondland's account confirmed by another official. >> this was a demand that president zelensky personally commit on a cable news channel to a specific investigation of president trump's political rival. >> and you don't need only the hearings to confirm this up. that cable news channel cnn has disclosed that they did have a planned interview with the ukrainian president who was apparently going to reveal all this. >> we now know for months the trump white house had been mounting an intense campaign to force him to publically announce those investigations. his team apparently concluded

that since he was planning an interview with me anyway, that would be the form in which he would make the announcement. >> that would be the form. all of this to benefit trump. that's a question that came up and was also answered. take a look at this exchange. >> who would benefit from an investigation of the bidens? >> i assume president trump. >> there we have it. see? [ applause ] >> didn't hurt a bit, did it? >> didn't hurt a bit. well, may not have hurt the witness. it hurt the president a lot. so we just showed you every single key substantive high like about the ukraine plot. that's what they were trying to do. then what happened when they got caught? what did they do about that? everyone remembers the cover-up being worse than the crime for watergate. well, sondland argued and he still works for trump that there might be another article of impeachment against trump. he didn't use those words but he

spoke to something everyone in the room understood, that open defiance can become obstruction and sondland described he didn't like that or being held back from full cooperation with evidence. >> i have not had access to all of my phone records, state department e-mails and many, many other state department documents. my lawyers and i have made multiple requests to the state department and the white house for these materials. yet, these materials were not provided to me. >> i believe that those who have information that the congress deems relevant have a legal and a moral obligation to provide it. >> a legal obligation. the president hasn't been doing that. instead he's been doing talking points. these notes went viral this week. it is literally donald trump writing down what he did sondland after they got caught and quoting himself as a kind of defense. he has every right to plead not guilty, but pleading not guilty is not evidence. it's just words.

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and i'm joined by a former white house and state department official in the obama administration and a former senior counsel to congressional committee, tom rogers. he's been on both sides of these televised hearings, having served as a senior executive at msnb and nbc. good to have both of you. what jumps out from those hearings particularly that could become one of the articles of impeachment in the judiciary committee? >> just that broader conversation that we have with fiona hill and sondland about corruption and how it looks in the government. they are used to fighting corruption overseas and encourage other countries to get better about really sticking to the rule of law.

and the idea that our diplomats have had to come forward and talk to congress about because it's happening in the united states tells you where we are at this moment in time when around the world people are actively protesting their governments right now. we're not unfortunately. we're no longer the leader in supporting rule of law. >> let me say that was one hell of a summation you did. if that was a courtroom, the jury would deliberate for 45 minutes and come back with a unanimous conviction. i think it is pretty clear from the evidence we heard over the week if this was a real courtroom, you could get extortion. you could get bribery. you could get abuse of power and you could get obstruction. abuse of power is obviously a political one, not a criminal one. but clearly here standing in the way of really getting all the evidence and everybody who has been touched that was so-called in the loop in front of the committee putting out everything

that everybody knows is what really makes this audaciousauda >> it is so interesting to see how president trump was sticking with the words quid pro quo when frankly the conversation has moved on to using the english words of extortion and bribery. why bribery? because that is specifically listed as one of the things as an impeachable offense. >> right. that's something we covered a lot and goes to the power of having that testimony by someone who is currently employed by the president. i don't know that that's fully sunk in. he's an insider like john dean. he knows what happened. but unlike some of the people in nixon who ultimately left the white house, he's still representing the president. so they're at odds over that core question because he's admitting to the bribery plot while the president of course continues to deny it now. he had also and his chief of staff as we showed previously

admitted to the core of it. they're really in a tough spot. for your analysis, given the different experience you have, take a look at the sondland/dean comparison. i will show you this. >> was there a quid pro quo? the answer is question. >> i began by telling the president that there was a cancer growing on the presidency and if the cancer was not removed the president himself would be killed by it. >> in your view, does sondland rise to the level of that iconic testimony or not quite? >> certainly provided enough evidence to be able to move forward here with impeachment. unlike john dean, he was not the white house counsel. coming from the white house counsel, that's a whole different level of testimony. >> because he was also the lawyer. >> he was also the lawyer and he also interacted with nixon on a regular, daily basis, having regular conversations about a cover-up. different level of testimony. but, remember, as strong as that testimony was, that was before

the senate watergate committee in june of '73. and the committee and the judiciary on the house side didn't impeach until august of '74. so as strong and important as the dean testimony was, it was really quite a long road. sondland's testimony was impactful enough for the house to move forward here much more rapidly. >> it is a great historical point you make to educate us about how it worked. obviously it feels today like certain things can happen faster. but our minds are still our minds. it's going to take a certain amount of time for the public imagination, the public mind to have this all sink in and then reach judgments about it. those of us closer to it may make sometimes a faster study. i want to play for you a little bit more of sondland discussing something in your wheel house, which is how many senior people made this the actual policy of

the u.s., not a shadow one. >> we made every effort to ensure that the relevant decision makers at the national security council and the state department knew the important details of our efforts. the suggestion that we were engaged in some irregular or rogue diplomacy is absolutely false. >> as an experienced diplomat yourself, what did you think of that argument? >> oh, i definitely think that's sondland trying to cover himself and give more credibility to the fact that he effectively was somebody who had put his nose where it didn't belong, and he had put himself out there at the president's request of bringing somebody like rudy giuliani and his goons into a long-standing policymaking process that pre-dated president trump and even pre-dated the obamas in some way because we know from bill taylor's testimony, from the ambassador's testimony that

there has been an interest of the united states supporting the ukraine for a long time. it is a democracy that has been threatened by russia ever since the soviet union collapsed. and it's always been in the u.s.'s interest to help them. congress authorized this military aid and support. the president was holding up congress's will because he had a personal agenda. and sondland is caught in between what is official long-standing policy and president trump's policy. >> you lay it out really well there. thanks to both of you. appreciate your expertise tonight. we go inside pelosi with a key insider. and as promised, we will get to answering some of your questions about where do we go from here on impeachment. mpeachment [ slurping ]

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accountable. no one is above the law. >> that is the moment when the most powerful democrat in washington flipped the switch on impeach m, sparking a process of these two weeks and stunning public hearings. each revelation different from the last, a reminder of how powerful the speaker of the house is. because the speaker may hold things back or let things loose. speaker pelosi's initial resistance to a full-blown impeachment was not out of character. when she made history in 2006 as the first woman ever to be speaker of the house she faced a republican president under fire for policy like the iraq war and for allegations of abuse of power like spying and torture. but she left no doubt at the time she was not going to turn her speaker ship into an impeachment march against president george w. bush. >> in some quarters folks will think you are a san francisco

liberal who has nothing set on your mind other than unleashing your penance to impeachment of the president. >> i have said and i will say before impeachment is off the table. >> she said it was something that basically many on the left had been demanding and she wasn't going to do it. 38 members of congress actually introduced a rezlation that did call for a bush impeachment inquiry. in fact, back in the day, stephen colbert when he was doing his character laid out all the reasons why democrats should impeach bush. >> i mean, the republicans impeached bill capitol hilinton. don't you want to get back at them for that? the president has been baiting your guys for six years, wmds, iraq, katrina. signing statements, torture, wiretaps, secret prison ns, u.s. attorneys.

>> but speaker pelosi said she reached her decision not to do it and years later she explained why. >> the argument against president bush was about a president and an administration that sent us into a war based on a false representation of the threat of weapons of mass destruction in iraq. i do think people could have made a case about president bush, but i did not want to go down that path because of what it would mean for the american people. >> what it would mean. and contrary to depictions that pelosi also occupies the far left or most aggressive wing in her portacaarty, pelosi and ada schiff have been striking very cautious notes about all this for months and months. >> if a majority of your caucus wants to go forward with an

impeachment inquiry, would you go for it? >> it is not even close in our caucus right now. why are we speculating on hypotheticals. >> has it brought you closer to an impeachment inquiry? >> i don't know. the koconstitution provides impeachment as a remedy. it doesn't compel congress to act and impeach whenever there are grounds or impeachment. i'm keeping an open mind, but i have yet to be fully persuade sg ed. >> we want a methodical approach. not any one issue will trigger now we'll go to this. >> when the mueller report came out it was adler seen by many as the key lawmaker driving the impeachment investigation at the time, not schiff or pelosi. a washington post poll released after the mueller report showed that then 37% roughly supported impeachment proceedings. after pelosi announced the start of the probe in september, it has jumped 21 points to 58%.

wow. now, there are two factors driving that, the facts of the ukraine scandal and the democrats going fully on offense with speaker pelosi's shift. in a cynical world that treats so many choices as matters of optics or strategy, note this shift involves a factual and logical premise. democrats used to argue, some of them, that maybe you skip impeachment and try to stop donald trump in the next election. but this scandal undercut that democratic argument, and that with very clear logic, if trump is abusing power to cheat in the next election, then he's corrupted that very potential check and balance, which is part of why top democrats now say trump's actions left them no choice. >> we had no choice but to go forward. >> we're not fooling around here. >> we see the actions of this president being an assault on the constitution. >> i'm joined now by former new york congressman, a member of

pelosi's leadership team. thanks for being part of our special. >> thank you. great to be with you. >> how do you see this shift? >> well, i think what you have just covered really is very self-explanatory in itself. i think that nancy did not want to go down this path. she doesn't believe that impeachment should be used as a tool to remove the president for anything willy nilly. you know, when you talked about what happened with george w. bush, i remember being in a leadership meeting with nancy and she said we are not going to put the american people through that. meaning, elections have consequences and that's why -- she believed so much in the electoral process. that's why i think she leaned so heavily there initially. but then you have the straw that broke the camel's back. the president himself admitting that he told the president of ukraine, you know, first you have to do me a favor and that favor is not to improve the

lives of the ukrainian people or end sex trafficking or child labor. it is to do me a personal favor. that is to get dirt on my political opponent so i can use that in my re-election campaign. that flies in the face of everything we believe in in terms of our constitution. that's why i think she felt compelled to bring the impeachment proceedings forward. >> and the history with bush is because she was speaker both times. everyone i think does remember there were constitutional issues there as we mentioned, torture, among others. >> uh-huh, right. >> and he was a highly reviled president, particularly in his second term in our party. >> right. >> what do you see in the contrast here and does that in your view strengthen the speaker's hand in good this far this time? >> you know, i think as i think the speaker has said before, there may very well have been, you know, cause to bring

impeachment for george w. bush, but she chose not to do that. but here you have the president consistently working in ways that are unconstitutional. and in this particular case where he's using -- you know, he's basically asking a foreign entity to again, you know, get involved in american politics and american electoral politics and play with our elections. and for his own personal gain. if you don't stop this now, what will he do next? what will this president do next? and quite frankly, what will other presidents in the future do when they have this same opportunity? will they do this again themselves? so that's why i think, you know, when it comes to this particular issue, nancy, not because of the left quite frankly, but because of those seven democrats who were in interface or marginal districts who approached her and said, we believe the president has crossed the rubicon, we believe he's gone to far and this is the only mechanism by which you can do this.

>> a lot of this involving the underlying evidence and how do you deal with it. you and others have pointed out that may have moved her. the evidence is not always moving the people in the other party. they are trying to move the evidence, and for a very clear encapsulation of this, i show you exhibit a, a little bit of then and now lindsey graham. take a look. >> mm-hmm. >> if you could show me that, you know, trump actually was engaging in a quid pro quo outside the phone call, that would be very disturbing. >> was there a quid pro quo? >> as i testified previously with regard to the requested white house call and the white house meeting, the answer is yes. >> there you go. >> yeah. i think the fact, you know, you take that moving the goal post further and further, and reports that the white house has been meeting with the senate republicans to map out a strategy as to how to move forward on impeachment, you know, not to dismiss it

immediately. they've apparently agreed to a two-week process. what defendant wouldn't love to be able to sit down with the jurors before their trial quite frankly? so it really is unseemly to say the least, but, ari, you're right. they tend to continue to keep pushing the goal post back when you meet that mark, and it's unfortunate, sad for america. >> congressman crowley, i appreciate you giving us some of your inside view on this process, sir. >> thank you, ari. great to be with you. we're going to come right back with, as promised, some of your largest questions about the hearings and where we go from here. as a struggling actor,

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i don't know about you, but i feel like a lot happened this week, and some of it was pretty clear like when we heard about bribery that we showed you tonight. and some of it got downright

technical and confusing, which brings me to what we're going to do right now. we've asked you guys what are the things you want to know more about in the impeachment probe, and we've got your questions, so let's get into it. arwyn wants to know can the daets call bolton as a witness in the senate trial if he doesn't give testimony in these house hearings? bolton would definitely be a key witness. if he continues to refuse to testify in the house probe, we think it's unlikely that he would get separately called in a senate trial because that's where republicans hold a majority and are setting basically the key rules. we did get key details and a lot of testimony from his former aide fiona hill. joseph z asks what exactly is the role of the supreme court during the senate trial? it's not so much the whole court but you're thinking of course of one key member, supreme court chief justice john roberts. he walks across the street and would preside over any senate impeachment trial just as william rehnquist did in the clinton impeachment. that means he's there to govern and make some key calls so it

could be really interesting to see what tone he sets. then frank f. asks, why did the founding fathers make impeachment so confusing? was that intentional? well, that's a really interesting question. i think it goes to what you think the text of the constitution implies. the framers did give broad guidelines, so there aren't specific rules for what happens once impeachment gets going, and there isn't a list of all high crimes. you've heard a lot of debate about abuse of power. everyone understands that to be an impeachable high crime, but a lot of the rest is broad. bribery is impeachable. they say that. the house starts the process. the senate holds the trial. but over these next weeks, whether it feels really clear or more vague is really going to depend on how it goes. we do think that when you look at what's happened in other impeachments, there are clues, but they are not rules. the presidents tell us what's been done before, not what this congress may ultimately do. i want to thank you for your questions and for watching our specials. you can always find me week

nights 6:00 p.m. eastern on "the beat with ari melber" right here on msnbc. >> announcer: this is an msnbc special presentation. this is a jagged little puzzle of a story. here are some of the pieces. a bitter race for the white house. a candidate who would do anything to win, maybe even conspire with a foreign government. a secret campaign meeting in an iconic tower on new york's fifth avenue. and in this case a mysterious woman who may have tipped the scales at a time when america seemed to be coming apart at the seems. i'm not talking about 2016. no, this time the year was 1968.