to look at what has unfolded over the course of this day. the seven members of the house who are acting as prosecutors in this impeachment trial, we knew today that they would begin presenting their case against president trump. but we really didn't know what that would look like. not only is there no rule book for how the house is supposed to present an impeachment case in the senate, we just haven't had very many presidential impeachment trials in our history. we've only had two before this one. to be precise. and only one of those was in living memory. so it was a little bit of a black box in terms of what we were going to get. what the house managers decided to do for their first day was to tell a story, a story in parts. lead impeachment manager adam schiff took the floor a few minutes after 1:00 this afternoon. in the course of a presentation that lasted well over two hours he told senators that his house colleagues, house managers, would lay out the details of the president's corrupt scheme in narrative form.

later schiff said they would get into the constitutional issues around impeachment and the reasons president trump should be removed from office. that's apparently what we can expect in coming days. but today was for the story of factually what actually happened. house judiciary chairman jerry nadler told the story of marie yovanovitch, the ambassador to ukraine trump fired because she was perceived as being in the way of his effort to pressure the ukrainian government to announce an investigation into joe biden. congresswoman sylvia garcia of texas detailed the role that rudy giuliani has played as the president's back channel to carry out this scheme. colorado congressman jason crow, a combat veteran, explained why the military aid held up by the trump administration was so important to ukraine in its war with russia and how the hold on that aid violated the law. florida's val demings focused on the white house meeting that the trump administration dangled for months as one of the quids that ukraine might get if they coughed up the quo of a biden

investigation. hakeem jeffries of new york did essentially a forensic reading of the transcript, the white house notes from the infamous july 25th phone call between trump and the ukrainian president volodymyr zelensky. and california congresswoman zoe lofgren, veteran of the nixon and clinton impeachment investigations, she described the cover-up the trump administration engaged in once the ukraine scheme was discovered. and throughout all of this the house impeachment managers present presented e-mails and text messages and call records and dozens of video clips. i stopped counting at 50 different video clips. showing among other things the testimony of current and former trump administration officials. they also presented evidence that has come to light since the president has impeached by the house, including a letter that rudy giuliani wrote to the ukrainian president asking for a meeting. that letter was turned over to

the house by giuliani's sidekick lev parnas just last week. it was described on the floor of the senate today. congressman jason crow showed documents released under court order by the white house office of management and budget just last night, documents heavily redacted, documents released thanks to a freedom of information act request. so, i mean, we'll talk about what all of this means and where this is going. but one takeaway from the first day of the case against donald trump in his senate impeachment trial is that yes, they have amassed an impressive amount of evidence about what happened. despite the white house ordering that the entire administration should give them nothing and defy all their subpoenas. the drama now is in the prospect of how much more evidence there is in the documents and witnesses the white house has thus far refused to make available and that republican senators say thus far they do not want to see. >> during our presentation you

will see documentary records. those the president was unable to suppress. that expose the president's scheme in detail. you will learn of further evidence that has been revealed in the days since the house voted to impeach president trump even as the president and his agents have persisted in their efforts to cover up their wrongdoing from congress and the public. and you will see dozens of new documents providing new and critical evidence of the president's guilt that remain at this time in the president's hands and in the hands of the department of defense and the department of state and the office of management and budget, even the white house. you will see them, and so will the american people, if you allow it. if in the name of a fair trial you will demand it. >> if in the name of a fair trial you will demand it. if there was a theme today, a

recurring theme, it was not only the factual record of what happened but this insistent demand of every senator, all senators from both parties, that the evidence is theirs for the taking. there for the asking if they could possibly justify why they didn't want to see it. that has remained -- that has remained to be seen. joining us now is senate minority leader chuck schumer, who has been of course at the center of this impeachment trial. senator, i know you're just out of the chamber. thanks for making time to be with us. >> well, thank you, rachel. it's always good to be on. >> let me just ask how you feel it went today. this was the first day of laying out the case against the president. >> well, i thought the managers did just an incredible, incredible job. and they were all good. but particularly adam schiff. his closing speech, which i hope many of your viewers saw, is one of the tour de forces that i have seen in my decades here. i'd say it's one of the ten best speeches i've heard. and there are two points about it. people say, well -- one is this

is the first time many of our republican colleagues have heard all the facts put together in a very cogent way. most of them get the snippets from fox news, which really doesn't tell much of the story at all, and they distort it. but here for the first time they saw the whole thing. and when schiff did his last half hour, his last 45 minutes, they were all intently looking at him. i look around, and most of the time they sort of don't want to hear the argument because of the pressure they're under to go along with trump. even though i think a good number of them know in their hearts that he's wrong and that donald trump did all the things that were laid out tonight. but tonight they were rapt on him. and you never know how this is going to work. mitch mcconnell and donald trump will do everything to prevent four people from joining us in our quest for witnesses and documents. but with powerful speeches like

schiff, with republicans hearing the whole narrative and the whole story for the first time, who knows what happens? and then just one more. how did we get the few changes that we have gotten? as you know, pressure, public pressure matters. and americans who saw this presentation, not just liberals but moderates and even republicans, have to have been moved by it. and that puts pressure on some of these republicans. when mcconnell did his resolution, the public pressure to have a fair trial and a fair resolution was so strong that he had to make a few changes. he had to give us three days. he had to give rather the managers three days instead of two. he had to submit the house record of evidence. that didn't happen because mcconnell wanted to. he was pressured by his senators. now the big job. to get widgetses and documents hasn't occurred yet. but i am very hopeful that what happened tonight will move the public and they will move some republican senators in our

direction. and it's a process. this is going to continue. and i think the next two days will be as powerful as today was. >> in terms of the public's position on this, the public is with you on the issue of witnesses. on the eve of the trial there was a cnn poll that says 69% of the country wants there to be wointss. there's a reuters poll that came out tonight that says 72% of the country wants there to be witnesses at this trial. that includes large majorities even of republican respondents to that poll. what is the mechanism by which that public opinion, that strong public opinion in favor of witnesses, moves far republican senators? >> well, mcconnell and trump, what they wanted to do is never even have the trial, never even consider witnesses. they wanted to dismiss it originally. because of the pressure you're talking about, because even in one poll 64%, in one poll a plurality 38 to 44 of even

republicans, and you know rank-and-file republicans almostal always side with trump. but they wanted witnesses. they had to kick the can down the road and delay the issue of witnesses. i think we made progress the last few days in the focus on witnesses yesterday when i offered those amendments and the republicans had to vote on them, and their constituents saw exactly where they were. we made more progress today. and it's going to be a process. am i certain we'll succeed? far from it. but do i think there's a chance if we keep at it? yes. if we don't and it's still apparent to the american public what an unfair trial this is, how they're so afraid of the evidence, it will make the value of on acquittal zero. so either way there's a good outcome. but obviously we prefer a fair trial and we'd hope that we can get four republicans with everything that's happening to be for witnesses and documents. the fact that the public's with us, the fact that they're moving in that direction may help push republicans in that direction. >> senator, it's chris hayes here.

i wanted to ask about -- >> hey, chris. >> it's good to see you. i wanted to ask about the room. we were discussing before obviously we don't have a camera we don't have eyes on it. there's reporters in the gallery and there's sketch artists, but a notable number of senators not in their seats for long stretches has been reported. and i just wonder -- >> no. >> -- if you feel the body is living up to the moment on both sides of the aisle, that there's a level of attentiveness and seriousness that you'd like to see. >> well, you know, i've rarely seen more than ten members out of their seats at a given time. we've had all members there for most of the time. the attentiveness that most impresses me is the one i mentioned before that i think may have the greatest impact. that a lot of our republican colleagues who have never heard the whole story, have never heard a narrative and have gotten so much of their news from fox news, which is so deliberately biased and leaves out most of the major facts, is really indicative.

so no, i think the room is a very, very positive thing, and i was amazed. i look around and a lot of times admittedly the republicans are sitting in their seats and they're to talk each other, they're not looking, they don't want to look at it. when schiff had his last 45 minutes, they were all glued to him, and that says something, i hope and think. >> chuck, it's claire. let me ask you, if you get the four votes, what happens then? is it in order for you, then, to offer an amendment for each witness that you want and can mitch offer an amendment, say, for hunter biden? is it clear under the rules whether this goes in amendment by amendment, or is it required that you guys do a negotiation at that point? >> no, it's not required we do a negotiation. we are allowed -- well, they have tried to truncate this in mcconnell's resolution.

and that's the worst part of it that still exists. where he says we'll have a vote on whether we should be allowed to vote on witnesses and documents. but if we win that vote, we can get individual votes on each witness. one point on hunter biden. i think the republicans don't want him actually because it would make a circus of the whole thing. trump might want him. and some of the hard rights might want him. but a lot of those people in the middle i don't think want hunter biden. but they could bring him to the floor. they could bring any name up to the floor, i suppose. i don't think they will. >> i don't either. >> if the republicans begin to break, leader mcconnell may come to me and say let's negotiate. he doesn't do that unless he doesn't think he has the votes. we'll try to work something out, but we will work something out, i think, that at least gets the four witnesses and four sets of documents that we've requested. they're essential. >> senator, there's been a little bit of reporting that the white house has a sort of break glass in case of emergency plan when it comes to john bolton,

that if there is going to be bolton testimony, they're going to make sure it's deemed classified and the public will, therefore, never have access to it. do you believe that's in the works and what would you do if they try to do it? >> well, i'm not sure their classification deeming would hold up, number one, but number two, anytime they try to make it even more secretive and particularly if we get the votes for bolton, i think they'd have to really -- they would lose so much on the public side of things and probably a good number of republican votes if they tried to do that. but i don't doubt for a minute, rachel, that they will do everything they can, the white house, trump will do everything he can to stop testimony. but we are fighting the fight since i sent the letter four weeks ago. we've made witnesses and documents the central issue. we've won over, as you mentioned, a majority of the american people.

if we keep pushing and fighting, we may have a chance to actually get them. i'm not certain. i wouldn't bet the house on it. but i won't say for sure it's not going to happen either. >> democratic leader chuck schumer. thank you for making time for us. it's a big day. thanks a lot. >> thank you. >> there are four u.s. senators for whom the proceedings have a larger opportunity cost than the other 96 senators in that chamber, and they are the four democrats who are contenders for the democratic presidential nomination. they are all off the campaign trail at this point so they can fulfill their constitutional responsibilities to be in washington. one of those senators is senator elizabeth warren, democrat of massachusetts. she join us now from the capitol. senator warren, we really appreciate you taking time to join us tonight. i know it's been a very long day. >> it's good to be here with you, though. >> so you told me when it started to seem this impeachment trial might be convening sometime during the campaign, you told me you had no qualms whatsoever, there's no question,

there was no looking back that you would obviously be there and you'd do your constitutional duty and that you didn't much mind what affect it might have on the campaign. how does it feel now that you're actually living through it? >> well, as i said to you back then, some things are bigger than politics, and this is one of them. this is about the impeachment of a sitting president of the united states. i took an oath to uphold the constitution, no one is above the law. and this is our chance to talk about that. and to have this trial. but i have to say, it's turned out somewhat differently than the way i thought, and that is how blessed i am with people all across iowa, all across new hampshire and south carolina and nevada and across the country who have said let us help out. so people across the country have gone to elizabethwarren.com and they volunteered and they've said we can help do some calling or they pitched in five bucks or people have come in to do door-knocking. people are picking it up.

julian and joaquin castro are out for me right now in iowa. i have other surrogates coming in. this is part of what it means when you build a grassroots movement and that it's not just scooping up money and running tv ads. it's all that time spent out there fighting the fight together. and so now i'm pinned down here in washington and this is where i have to be and should be. but lots of other people are saying we're still in the fight, we'll carry it forward. we're still there to talk about a government that doesn't work for a thin slice at the top but a government that works for all of us. it's really a pretty amazing thing to be part of. >> senator, these days are long. today was not quite as long as yesterday was. but we know there's going to be long days ahead. i wanted to ask you, given the themes of your campaign and given the way the impeachment is unfolding and its unpredictable nature and some of the surprises

we've seen already, do you think there is any possibility that this impeachment ultimately can be less divisive for the country and more unifying for the country? everybody thinks this is just going to make everything worse in terms of democrats and republicans hath each other and not being able to see the same set of facts with the same set of eyes. is there any prospect that this process could actually be beneficial to that sort of divide in the country? >> i think that we're seeing something different unfold. and i sat there today and listened to this long, long series of speeches. and they were terrific. our house folks managing this were just terrific. but lots of details, lots of moving parties and so on. but at its heart really a pretty simple claim. and that is the president of the united states treated the government like hey, something that's just there to help him and his buddies. oh. and one of the central actors is this guy who bought an ambassadorship for a million

dollars and then spent a big part of his time out there trying to do what the president wanted him to do, just squeeze ukraine, to throw some dirt on donald trump's political rivals. what really comes through as you hear that is just the corruption. just corruption. there's no other word for it. and it's not just specific to donald trump. it's this notion right now of this whole administration, how hey, it's all about what helps donald trump personally, what helps his business, what helps him politically, what helps his friends, how they make money, how they buy and sell in our government, in the things that we do together. and i think this is exactly how we beat them in november. and that is drew draw this contrast that we have had a government that has worked

better and better and better for the rich and powerful and they've just taken it over. that that they truly have perverted our government. we have this chance, this grassroots moment, this moment where we really have a chance to turn that around and make this government work for everyone else. you know, as you know, one of the first things i did is the biggest anti-corruption plan since watergate, and a big part of it has already been introduced in the house. there are more pieces to it. think about what that would mean. we beat back the influence of money and we do what the american people want us do. we can pass a wealth tax and beat back the gun industry and actually do something on gun violence. we can make sure that puerto rico gets the aid that they need. we can do the things we need to do as a country, the things we agree on. we can expand social security. we can actually make government work for the people. i think that's what 2020 is going to be all about. >> are there any conversations happening across the aisle?

i know you senators are not used to being alone and all of you with assigned seats with no phones and no other work you work do all day long. are any other conversations across the aisle, the reports we're getting are republicans talking to each other, democrats talking to each other, we're not hearing that any cross-party conversations might be happening. and it would seem like that's going to be an important factor if there's going to be any persuasion in either direction. >> you know, it's a fair question. but i think right now it's been pretty much the two sides. as you say, democrats talking to democrats. republicans talking to republicans. but part of that is because we are spending so many hours listening. and i got to say, that almost never happens in the united states senate. i mean, people stand up and speak a lot, but mostly people are yak yakking, standing in back and so on. right now that's not happening. the seriousness of this moment has mostly meant that people are

sitting down and listening. and even if they're not sitting in their seats, as they ought to be, they're standing up in the back or even in the cloak room where this is all on closed circuit television the whole time. in other words, it's not -- it doesn't have the feel of a social moment. it has the feel of an historic moment and the people are paying more attention to the facts. this is one, if we do pay attention to the facts, then we will have a fair trial because that means we'll get the witnesses, we'll get the documents, and then we're on a very different path. >> senator elizabeth warren, democrat of massachusetts, leading 2020 democratic candidate. thank you so much for your time tonight, senator. great you have to here. >> thank you. >> we have more ahead this very busy news night. coming up we're going to be joined by a key witness for the democrats in the house on the constitutional underpinnings

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it's a different kind of wireless network, designed to save you money. switch and save up to $400 a year on your wireless bill. and save even more when you say "bring my own phone" into your voice remote. that's simple, easy, awesome. click, call or visit a store today. we're back now, honored to have you with us for our continuing coverage. impeachment trial of president donald trump. i'm joined newly here at the desk by my beloved colleague, lawrence o'donnell, the host of the "last word." thank you for being here, my friend. former senator claire mccaskill is with us.

maya wiley is here, civil rights attorney and joined by noah feldman, harvard law professor and constitutional expert. he was a witness for the democrats during the judiciary committee's public hearings as part of the impeachment inquiry. professor feldman, thank you so much for being here. nice to have you here. >> my pleasure to be here. >> this is my first chance to talk to you. so i have to ask you questions first. is that okay? >> absolutely. >> feel free to toss it to anyone. is this a trial? you've heard a lot of commentary saying if there's no witnesses, if there's no evidence it's not really a trial, that's definitional. the idea that the senators are jurors or are they jurors and judges? those of us who aren't lawyers don't know whether to expect this to look like the united states senate or for this to look like perry mason. it doesn't really look like either. does it meet your constitutional understanding of what a trial should be? >> it's close but i don't know it's there yet. bottom line, they are both the jury and the judges, so that's already something unusual. that's already not the "law and order" perry masonry paradigm.

but they also have always in every historical instances heard witnesses. and that's pretty central to the idea of a trial. >> even in non-presidential impaechts where their impeaching judges or other officials they always have witnesses. >> they always do. and the idea that the fact finding is supposed to happen in the house of representatives is counter to how it's always been done. the real facts were always expected to come out in the senate. >> why are they making a decision on witnesses? obviously the democrats tried to make amendments to the resolution to subpoena witnesses yesterday in the outset. republicans ruled those down. republicans say they want to make the decision about witnesses after the house impeachment managers have presented the prosecution's case presented the prosecution's case and after the president's counsel have presented the case for the defense. why would you decide on witnesses then? does that have any parallel in a real trial? >> no. it's a clever solution that they came up with because in the clinton trial there was a lot of ambivalence about whether there should be witnesses because of the nature of what the testimony was going to be about.

it was super embarrassing, as we all recall. so both sides agreed to delay the decision until that point, ultimately. >> because they wanted to put it off because they didn't want to make the decision because they were hoping they didn't need a witness. >> because it wasn't good on either side. back in the day when we felt collective embarrassment, there was embarrassment about the content of that testimony. here the republicans seized on that to say we're following the precedent. but what they're really trying to do of course is lessen the pressure on them to hold witnesses, to have witnesses at all. and the democrats are pushing back as strongly as they can against that. and hoping that they can generate enough support in the next few days that in the middle of next week when this vote comes the public will say yeah, we were cheated. we didn't get our trial, so therefore, bring the witnesses in. if you can get those handful of centrist republicans to make that move, maybe it can happen. >> the public support for witnesses at the trial is stunning. when that cnn poll came out this weekend saying 69% of the public wanted there to be witnesses at

the trial i said hmm, that's an interesting poll, makes me curious about what's the sample size? what's the end here? i wanted to know more -- >> seems like a terrible poll. >> and then reuters comes out with another poll that shows support for having witnesses even higher including a large majority of republican voters who want witnesses. so the public is there. that does, i think, create pressure on the senators to get them themselves. >> i agree. it's a question of how you interpret that. you ask people who aren't following the trial, there's a trial, shouldn't there witnesses? i think every american has the instinct that the answer would be yes, it would be very strange to exclude the witnesses. i think that's the basis for that answer. it's a kind of intuitive sense. >> lawrence, as somebody who worked in the senate and knows the senate very well, i was asking professor feldman about how well this stands up as a trial. how well does this stand up as the performance of the senate? >> well, the chief justice made the mistake i think yesterday of calling the senate the world's most deliberative body, which is this old title that it's had for a long time that it lost a long time ago.

he didn't say it just as an honorific. he said the senate has earned it. he said these 100 people have earned that. and that is completely untrue. they have not earned it. i'm not sure they ever had it. but let's pretend they did. they lost it a long time ago. so as senate impeachment trials that i've seen -- which are now exactly two. you're not supposed to live to see more than one. but this is disgraceful compared to the clinton trial. >> really? >> just disgraceful. the clinton trial was -- the rules for it were arrived at with 100% agreement of the senate. the reticence about witnesses was shared as noah just said on both sides. there was nothing contentious procedurally about that trial. and many democratic senators, the result was not a foregone

conclusion. probably was by the time you got to the trial but as you led up to the trial there were many democratic senators who were searching for -- through this evidence to see how they were going to vote, were they going to vote for or against their democratic president. we are now talking about a maximum universe of possibly four republican senators. and we're not talking about them as considering the possibility of voting against their president in the end. we're talking about the possibility that they might if they feel especially open to this, they might say yes, this should follow as professor feldman just said every impeachment trial that's ever come before us and we should have witnesses. and that's the most we are currently hoping for from a universe of four republican senators. >> what's your claire mccaskill tally on whether there will be four republican senators -- >> it depends on who the fourth would be. if it's lamar alexander, widely

respected in the caucus retiring, an institutionalist who's been part of a lot of negotiations over the years, somebody who's tried to hold on, he and chuck schumer talk all the time. if he were to break, i think we could get maybe double that. >> just a quick parn thetical, what's really important about him breaking, alphabetically he's the first senator in the roll call. so he'd vote first. you could have three or four out there after him who were undecided and that would do it. >> so that would be key. but i've got to agree with lawrence in one important respect. i'm not saying that the fault is all of mitch mcconnell. there is enough blame on both sides of the aisle that have contributed somewhat to the current climate. but he -- >> just for the senate being lousy you mean? >> yeah, for the senate being lousy and no longer working and it always being about just what the leader wants.

he has really heightened the art of controlling his caucus in a very partisan way. i was surprised that nobody broke on those amendments. in the old days people would have broken on those amendments because it's very hard to explain other than that's the way the clintons did it. well, we're not going to talk about sex this time. they all know that. these are not stupid people. so it is very disappointing to me that none of the members that i know well that are bright, intelligent, and generally good people did not take a very small, tiny step to say you know, yeah, we probably ought to have witnesses and documents. >> if they do decide on witnesses, professor feldman, let me put this to you. what we think they would do is there would be a bunch of stuff that didn't happen in front of us. there would be depositions behind closed doors. i don't know if they would be videotaped or not. do we know that? >> they might. >> they did in the clinton case.

>> they did in the clinton case. >> so there would be depositions behind closed doors. all senators would have access to the product of those depositions, whether to be a tape or a transcript. and then based on that they would decide whether or not that witness was going to have live testimony or their deposition was going to be used in some way. you expect that it would follow the same clinton lines? >> i think it probably would. and that would be a good thing for the house managers for the prosecution because if we were to get john bolton's testimony, the white house would say, well, executive privilege. he's going to disclose all sorts of secrets about our foreign policy, which is obviously absurd, but they'll say that. and by doing it behind closed doors you can solve the privilege questions instead of having to litigate them. you can say, well, if anything secret happened it happened behind closed doors and no one else is going to know about it. not that there would be, but there could be. >> maya-s that how you see it in terms of how it would work out? >> definitely. i think one of the things that's so important about the point is it goes back to this notion of precedent. i mean, we've only had two

impeachment trials in the history of the country and yet we're taking the clinton impeachment and talking about what was very unique. noah's point about look, the reason this was behind closed doors in the first place, because it was icky. and now it's become a precedent you that don't have live witnesses when in the andrew johnson trial you actually had 41. not to mention judicial, right? judges. lots of judicial impaechlts that people don't pay attention to. so i just think that to the extent they're also looking at precedent it's most likely they're going to treat this precedentially but i think it also has the advantages -- >> it is also remarkable when the clinton impeachment happened i was sort of -- my life is such a thing that i wasn't paying that much attention. i didn't have a tv. i wasn't paying much attention to what was going on in electoral politics. i had other things going on in my life. but i remember living through that and thinking clearly this

is the nad ir of nihilist tic partisanship, scorched earth miserableness where it's just people -- and now we are like trying to reach those heights again in terms of the bipartisan cooperation that that represented. >> there's one more point, though, that i think is really important, that comes down to what everyone is saying here. it's if they don't, if they don't have any evidence come in to this trial, they could well -- we might see this problem on steroids over the next decades because if this gets treated as the new precedent, when we've barely had any to speak of outside of judges that no one pays any attention to, then that actually does go to whether it's the constitution itself that's on trial and the impeachment power itself that's on trial. >> and if i could say just following maya's terrific point there, you know, one of the problems with precedent is it doesn't work well if there's not enough of it. if you just have a couple of outlying points, one of which is

from literally the 1860s, you can't really say that you have precedent. you don't really know what to do. and that's why we've had this whole fight about whether there can be witnesses. it's because it's been so long since the last impeachment, that they can get away with saying, well, no one really remembers what happened, let's make up the rules from scratch. in real precedent we already know what we've done and let's just do it the next time. >> but there is no precedent here. one of the things the house managers say is if you allow this to happen this mean the next president, this means -- and they are implying, this means a democratic president could do this. no, it doesn't. it simply means the only precedent you're establishing now is the current republican party will not vote to impeach or remove a republican president who does this who is named trump. that's the only precedent that's been established here. if a democratic president does any of this, every republican would vote for impeachment and removal. so the precedent has become a complete joke in this congress. >> we're going to take a quick break. i want to say thank you to noah

feldman, harvard law professor. really appreciate you being here. constitutional expert, witness for the democrats during the judiciary committee public hearings. really cool that we had him here. lots more ahead tonight. stay with us. ahead tonight. stay with us at liberty butchemel... cut. liberty mu... line? cut. liberty mutual customizes your car insurance so you only pay for what you need. cut. liberty m... am i allowed to riff? what if i come out of the water? liberty biberty... cut. we'll dub it. liberty mutual customizes your car insurance so you only pay for what you need. only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪ if you're living with hiv, and ask your doctor about biktarvy. biktarvy is a complete, one-pill, once-a-day treatment used for hiv in certain adults. it's not a cure, but with one small pill, biktarvy fights hiv to help you get to and stay undetectable. that's when the amount of virus is so low it can't be measured by a lab test. research shows people who take hiv treatment every day

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we've had some news since we've been on the air tonight. the trump administration's blanket refusal to turn over documents for the impeachment trial is facing some new challenges on a number of fronts tonight. first you should know that the "new york times" has filed an interesting brief, a compelling to my mind brief in federal court tonight, arguing that the white house claiming privilege in order to withhold certain ukraine-related documents from omb, the "times" is arguing tonight in federal court that those privilege claims are invalid because privilege can't be used to cover up governmental wrongdoing. you'll recall that just last week the government accountability office found that withholding the aid to ukraine actually was a violation of the law. so information about withholding the aid to ukraine can't be withheld to cover up that wrongdoing by the government, and so those materials should be made public. so that is moving in the courts as of tonight. at the same time at the end of tonight's proceedings house impeachment manager zoe lofgren

brought up once again what house investigators claim is an improperly classified piece of testimony from a staffer for vice president mike pence. zoe lofgren repeated what her colleague adam schiff has said before, which is that as she put it she has read this classified testimony and she basically made the case on the floor tonight that there's no good reason for that testimony to be classified. she pointedly said that covering up wrongdoing is not a proper reason to classify something. chief justice john roberts tonight, somewhat surprising denouement to tonight's proceedings, he allowed that that piece of classified testimony which he described as a single page of classified testimony will be made available to senators. it's not being made available to the public because it is classified. there's criticism of the fact that it is classified. and all 100 senators will now have access to it. they'll have to go to a secured room, a classified setting in the capitol, in order to look at

it. i want to bring into the conversation now cheryl ann ifill. president and counsel at the naacp legal defense fund. great to have you here. >> thanks for having me. >> let me ask about the privilege claims here. one of the things that's been interesting over the course of these proceedings is that we the public keep getting new information. stuff from foia lawsuits that's being released. heavily redacted materials and lots of privilege claims, deliberative privilege claims from the white house in terms of what we're allowed to see. chris hayes earlier tonight was describing that as a sort of battleground here. one of the core issues we're having conflict about in terms of what we know about the president's behavior. >> yeah, it's important. i mean, the concept of privilege is a core one and a critical one. my fear is that it's being used in ways in which it was never meant to be used. it's being used as a blanket way of simply saying anyone who's ever been in a room with me can't talk to you. and my fear is it's distorting the whole concept of privilege. and the use of it, i would actually call it the abuse of

privilege, you know, should be concerning. and when i look out and i watch these arguments and i see all the lawyers, all the senators who are lawyers, you know, in that room and who really know what privilege is and who know what the limitations of privilege are but who are willing to go along with these arguments that in any other context they would recognize as specious, it's deeply concerning. >> is this the sort of thing, though, where we're going to ultimately have a fight over whether these privilege claims are proper and they'll be adjudicated and somebody will say i'm going to force this and i'm going to make the courts weigh in on this and we're going to force these materials out and then in 2029 somewhere down the road somebody can go -- people who are the next generation of cable tv people will be talking about those court rulings and they won't be able to remember what they were about? i mean, these things take forever, right? >> what worries me is that we tend to think that we're going to be around in 2029 having this kind of conversation. and i think it will be a very different country in 2029 if we don't begin to address, particularly as it relates to

the rule of law, some of the excesses that we have seen over the last few years. that's what's supposed to be the thing that holds us from one administration to another, from one year to another, from one generation to another as a country. and the kind of topsy-turvy approach to the rule of law and the willingness of so many in our profession to acquiesce to these excesses i think suggests that we may be on a road to this being a very different country. and so when we get to this place that we think we're going to get to, where this is all going to be washed out, it may not matter because we just may be in a very different place as a republic. >> but we may be pretty much exactly one year away from every single document that's in contention now being released immediately to the congress, which if there's a new president sworn in on inauguration day next year, that afternoon all of this will happen. the president's tax returns will immediately p sent from the irs to the chairman of the ways and

means committee. those senators and house members, but especially these senators should know that they are now possibly one year away from the full release of every single document that's in contention here. their votes will be measured against that information when it comes out. >> but the chance they're taking, the presumption is that it's not going to be a different president. and they're taking that chance i think in some measure because of what we see today. i think some people are forgetting that this actually is about the integrity of the 2020 election. it's about what the claim is that the president tried to do with regard to the 2020 election. and even as we sit here and as we watch this impeachment there's legislation like the shield act which was sponsored by zoe lofgren that's designed to prevent some of the things that happened in 2016 from happening again, preventing foreign governments and being able to get campaign information, disclosures of foreign governments and political advertisements and so forth. and all of those bills, there are about ten bills. and they're sitting in the senate, and senate leadership

will not allow those bills to move. they're designed to protect our election. so the chance some people are taking is that they won't have to worry about what happens in january of next year. and it's important, especially for someone like me who's involved in working on voter suppression and for the communities of people that i represent, when we watch this that we're not just talking about the personal political fate of president trump or any of the senators in the room. we're talking about the integrity of our elections. people may come out in droves, but if our elections are not protected, if they can be hacked, if foreign governments can do the same kind of thing that was done in the past, if the president actually can call for foreign governments to do what he did with impunity, these are all issues that go to the very heart of democracy. and for the people that i represent who struggled for decades and centuries to have the ability to be able to be full citizens and participate in a political process, all of the political talk, what undergirds it is that, is our ability to participate as full citizens. and that's what makes us as democracy. and ultimately that's what this is all about. and we just can't lose sight of

that. >> i think adam schiff going so far in what appeared to be an ad-lib today, to call these proceedings as being about the president cheating in the next election, using that phrase "cheating" that he was trying to essentially rig the next election and interfere with it and cheat, that's going to be on the front page of a number of newspapers nationwide tomorrow. and i think he did get -- i think he went out on a rhetorical limb maybe further than he had planned to, but by being so aggressive on that point i did think at least for today put that squarely at the center of the narrative. we are going to take one quick break right here because we are going to come back with reaction from another senator who we have just wrangled on the way out the door from the capitol tonight. stay with us. we'll be right back. stay with us we'll be right back. when you shop with wayfair, you spend less and get way more.

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(whistling) let us pray. sovereign god, author of liberty, we gather in this historic chamber for the solemn

responsibility of these impeachment proceedings. give wisdom to the distinguished chief justice john roberts as he presides. >> joining us now is senator chris van hollen, democrat from maryland. he spent the day in the senate chamber for the impeachment. i should also mention it was senator van hollen who requested the g.a.o. investigation into whether the white house broke the law by withholding military aid to ukraine. the g.a.o. found that in fact they did. senator, thank you very much for being with us tonight. i know it's been a very long day. >> rachel, it's great to be with you. long days turning into the night. >> there will be longer days ahead too. so i hope you're eating your vitamins. let me start by asking you how you think the last two days have gone and what your impression was today in terms of the house impeachment managers making the case.

>> well, rachel, i thought that the house managers put on a mountain of evidence to support their case today. and i think a lot of republican senators were not paying close attention to what had been happening in the house. they kind of had dismissed it as a partisan affair. but now they're having to face facts. they're having to face testimony that was taken under penalty of perjury. and the house managers have done a really good job of undermining some of the president's claimed defenses. right? i mean, the notion of a perfect letter. and they're pointing out that everybody who listened in on this letter has to go find a lawyer. they talked about how zelensky said he didn't feel any pressure. and making the point that in fact they felt a lot of pressure. and of course it would be crazy for zelensky to say publicly he was pressured given the vindictiveness of this president. and other areas as well. the whole notion that the president cared about corruption when he essentially fired and

got rid of our ambassador, marie yovanovitch, because she was a corruption crusader, and that laid the way for the president to implement his scheme. i thought they did a really good job. and the president's counsel is going to have a really tough choice because either they're going to have to accept these facts or try and contest the facts. and if they contest the facts they're just going to make the case even stronger for the need for witnesses and documents to resolve any differences. >> senator val hollen, it's lawrence o'donnell. if you do get john bolton into a deposition, which apparently would be the first stage of testifying in the way mitch mcconnell sees it anyway, if he reveals things that would interest you in other witnesses or another witness who is not currently on your list of witnesses that you hoped for, do you believe procedurally that you would have an option, a way of coming out of that john bolton deposition and then asking for a subpoena for

someone else? >> well, that's the big question, lawrence. whether we're going to get any witness like john bolton and whether we're able to follow the trail of incriminating evidence to other witnesses. which is exactly why last night the last amendment we proposed was an amendment that i put forward essentially saying that the chief justice should make the decisions in the first instance on motions for witnesses and motions for documents. you would think if our senate republican colleagues wanted an impartial proceeding they would support that. and when they voted against that they made it very clear they want to rig this process. now, i may offer that amendment again later in this process if we get witnesses. and let's let the chief justice decide just like the judge in every trial around the country decides what evidence comes in,

what's probative and what's not. and republicans may have voted against this once but i think they're getting a lot of questions about why they're unwilling to take the chief justice of the united states, who by the way was nominated by a republican president. >> senator chris van hollen of maryland. we know it's been a long day. tomorrow will be another. thank you so much for being here with us tonight. we really appreciate it. >> thank you. >> it is only because of senator van hollen that we know that the effort to withhold the aid from ukraine was illegal. we've heard a lot of argument, rebuttal from the republican side, from the president's side, that there's no crime been alleged, that there's no illegal act that has been alleged here. it has made me wonder whether or not they'd consider charging them with conspiracy to violate the impoundment control act, which would be an actual criminal act. >> that would be up to the attorney general. >> a problem there. >> you could bring that as an additional article of impeachment or something at this point. the fact that all of these things are still being fought over in this way and to this degree and that this stuff is

still being pried loose, even at this late stage -- >> it's a very, very active investigation with a very kind of active evidence base as if it has volcanoes in it. >> it is. we're in the middle of it. much more ahead with us here tonight. stay with us.

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can you save me from this conversation? that we can't do, but come in and see what we can do. we're here to make life simple. easy. awesome. ask. shop. discover. at your local xfinity store today. well, good evening once again from our nbc news headquarters here in new york. day 1,098 of the trump administration. 286 days to go until the 2020

presidential election. house democrats started their marathon opening oral arguments in the impeachment trial, laying out why they believe donald trump should be ousted from the white house. the impeachment managers from the impeachment managers from the house have a total of 24 hours, over three days to make their case. today, importantly they used about seven hours, 15 minutes. their goal, to convince a republican majority senate that the president is guilty of high crimes and dismean nors, abusing his powers and obstructing congress. >> president trump withheld hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid to a strategic partner at war with russia to secure foreign help with his re-election. in other words, to cheat. the president's misconduct cannot be decided at the ballot box, for we cannot be assured