maggie haberman joins us now by phone. what can you tell us about the report, maggie. >> sure. thanks for having me. this is something we've seen of a pattern with president trump over time where he talks about getting rid of people who are investigating him or who have done something connected to an investigation when he's appointed them and he believes they owe him their job. this is another one of those instances whereas the whistle-blower complaint was blowing up and deemed credible by the inspector general's office, the president started telling advisers that he wanted to see atkinson, the inspector general, dismissed and continued talking about this since. now it is not clear this went anywhere. we have two officials telling us in strong terms this was never under serious consideration. some people close to the president saw this as another form of venting which we know that he does and we've all been told over time that aides don't take these ventilations from him seriously unless he makes repeated demands and is moving toward doing something. but it is indicative of a m

maggie haberman, thanks. joining us, cnn legal analyst, ross garber, he teaches law at tulane university, his specialty impeachment law. also with us, kirsten powers and jeffrey toobin. jeff, the president based on this reporting seems to think that the intelligent community inspector general works for and should be loyal to him. not surprising, i guess, that he has that opinion given what we have seen in the past. >> absolutely. i mean just remember jeff sessions, who was the attorney general who did the right thing in recusing himself from the russia investigation. and the president spent months fuming about that. and then ultimately humiliated sessions by firing him on the day of the midterm elections. you know, it's always possible that one reason people come forward with stories like this is that they know it's so outrageous that once it sees the light of day in a story like maggie's, that the story will be -- you know, the idea will be killed. but still, the principle remains that, as i think you pointe

it's fun to watch. >> maggie haberman, thank you as always. >>> all right. the black friday frenzy is here. after record-setting online sales of $4 billion on thanksgiving day alone, americans flocking to stores now in search of holiday bargains. and analysts expect black friday to be one of the biggest shopping days of the season. cnn's alison kosik live in paramus, new jersey with more. >> red, get set and job. that's how it is at this best buy. a few minutes ago, the doors opened and dozens of people came streaming in looking for those bargains. it's proof that black friday, it is still a thing. but this time it's expanded to a five-day shopping event. it began on thanksgiving day yesterday and continues all the way through monday on cyber-monday. what are people shopping for? tvs, appliances and other electronics. the best place to be is best buy. but one thing that is on shopper's minds are those tariffs. the u.s./china trade war is under way. some tariffs have gone into effect. and although the national retail federation doesn't think it's going to cha

>> i hartly know the gentleman. >> back with us jeffrey toobin and maggie haberman.s so predictable that this would happen. we saw this before with person after person, barely know him. when does he start to do this and what does it sig nify? >> at minimum that he wants to suggest there was no proximity between the two where he would tell sondlond these things and he's trying to undermine his credibility which what we saw him do, manafort, it's never a good sign when that begins. usually when he says that he rarely uses the phrase i hardly new them. it's usually, i've met him once. i don't think that that bodes well. i don't know how significant it is in the grand scheme. what sondlond has done is amend his testimony. i think he's said what he was going to say. >> but it was after that president trump's used that phrase that only a bad screenwriter would use. >> he uses it again when he is trying to suggest that the person couldn't know what they are talking about because he looks at who knows him personally. >> one person he has not used this with yet is rudy giulia

cnn political analyst and "new york times" white house correspondent maggie haberman shares the buy line. joining us on the phone. it's a special night whoa you ask in all sincerity what did the president know and we did he know it. >> john, thanks for having me. as you laid out we reported tonight the president was briefed by the white house counsel and the national security council lawyer john eisenberg in august that -- about the fact that the whistle-blower complaint existed, the whistle-blower complaint talked about as -- as we know now not just the president phone call with president zelensky from july 25th but also the question of freezing the military aid. and it's not significant not just because as you say the aid was unfrozen -- i think it was less than two weeks later, roughly then, but also the president was aware of this certainly when this happened, but also when he spoke to gordon sondland, the ambassador to the eu, who testified that he had a conversation with the president where the president said, you know, he was trying to get clarity on whether there was a -- some so

we go inside this moment with pulitzer prize winners maggie haberman with white house correspondent for "new york times" and historian jon meacham forio convers on the >> this is "washington week" fundin provided by -- >> there's aoment a moment of realizati realization, of understanding, a moment where everything is clear. at fidelity wealth planning is about clarity. knowg who you are where you have been and where you want to go. that's fidelity wealth management. >> additional funding provided hugh and practice it's ewing committed to bridging cultural differences our communities. the corporation for public broadcast and by can contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> once again fro washington moderator robert costa. robert: good evening. i hope you enjoyed thanksgiving. for me it is time toil see f in pennsylvania and talk politics andake stock of the year. at this table we will did that take stock of president trump a

this, i want to bring in cnn chief legal analyst jeffrey toobin and white house correspondent maggie haberman. thank you both for being here. maggie, just based on what you know about how this white house works and what mick mulvaney's role is in it, would he freelance on something of this importance? >> i'm loathe to speculate without having actual details about this instance, but what we do know is in the past, mulvaney has not been known to go do things well outside of what the president is aware of. we certainly know that -- we knew even before all of this testimony that he was involved in terms of directing the freeze on the aid, that he was acting on orders from the president. that's basically what we knew. now we have heard his name come up repeatedly in testimony and given the fact that this was going on over a period of many months, these conversations, it is hard to imagine that this was all happening, you know, with mulvaney on his own and the president was unaware. mulvaney is going to be a key witness, as you said, for congress to come before them. i don't know that that's going

maggie haberman of "the new york times," i don't think they've had time to get through all of it as it was just crossing and the timing was significant as to what you are reporting tonight. what more can you tell us? >> sure, erin. it's significant because this briefing by the white house counsel and john eisenberg who is the main lawyer for the national security council took place at the end of august roughly two weeks before the freeze on that aid was lifted. so we know that the president was aware that there had been this whistle-blower complaint filed against him in connection with his actions regarding ukraine both in terms of this phone call that he had with president zelensky of ukraine on july 25th and the fact that the aid was frozen and those are the key details in the whistle-blower complaint and he was aware of it at the time when he reversed himself. >> and he was -- aware of the whistle-blower complaint and aware that they were trying to avoid this ever ending up with congress which, of course, it did, and then -- maggie, we know the time line here is two days after congr

we go inside this moment with pulitzer prize winners maggie haberman with white house correspondent for "new york times" and historian jon meacham forio convers on the >> this is "washington week" fundin provided by -- >> there's aoment a moment of realizati realization, of

first let's bring in cnn political correspondent abby phillip and maggie haberman. mag fgie maggie, you have sources everywhere. are you talking to anyone close to snoopy? how are they thinking? what is he thinking about the parade this morning? >> i think snoopy is keeping his opinion a close hold as to whether he's going to be able to actually fly at 9:00. >> we're waiting to see his tweets. really the tweets are the picture. >> sometimes. not always, but sometimes you can know what snoopy is thinking when snoopy tweets. glad we did that, thank you. >> had to try. >> appreciate it. >> and let us know if you hear anything too. >> i'll be here some of the day. >> the president signed the bill which imposed sanctions on china having to do with protests in hong kong. this was passed by congress. seems he didn't have much of a choice whether to sign it. he was sort of forced into it. the president has expressed concerns it will get in the way of his trade negotiations with china. what's the current thinking inside the white house on this measure and what it might do to

maggie haberman is the white house correspondent for "the new york times." and cnn chief legal analyst jeffrey toobin. maggie, republicans have been calling on democrats to release the transcripts of the testimony of the impeachment inquiry. well, they got some now. and what story do these transcripts tell so far? >> i am having trouble finding information that bolsters republicans' cases that this is unfair, that information was being cherry picked, that there's a fuller picture. at least from these two. it's possible when the volker and sondland transcripts of released, and those are the ones i heard republicans talking about that they had concerns about information getting cherry picked and creating a certain narrative from. but so far the two we saw yesterday, to your point, they create a picture of an ambassador who was concerned about being threatened on some level by the president of the united states and they create a sense or a -- there were statements to the fact under oath that mike pompeo was not telling the truth when he was asked by an aide to g

"the new york times"' maggie haberman reporting that he sent word to sessions over a week ago that he could face pain if he runs. so let's remember, okay, the ex-a.g. has been on the president's hit list ever since he recused himself from the russia investigation. >> even my enemies say that jeff sessions should have told you that he was going to recuse himself. what kind of a man is this? the only reason i gave him the job, because i felt loyalty. i told you before, i'm very disappointed with the attorney general. but we will see what happens. the attorney general says i'm going to recuse mah-self. >> and then making fun of him. but i never attacked the president, loyal. i mentioned "the times" there. it is of course the hometown newspaper of the president, the one that he loves to hate. yeah, i guess hometown, because now he's in florida, but, you know, he was born and raised here. trump tower. but he's also bullying "the washington post's" reporters. any time they report facts that he doesn't like, for example, they're reporting last night that the president asked sessions' replace

"new york times" maggie haberman saying trump warned sessions through allies he would publicly attacknt pence, asked if he will campaign for sessions in 2020. there is expected to be a primary in alabama. take a listen. >> obviously, we -- we'll let the people of alabama make that decision. >> we'll let the people of alabama make that decision. not exactly a strong endorsement. >> right. former colleague. you know, this is the thing about this whole sessions thing. as you were saying, donald trump can just take this whole thing because he is so upset and angry with sessions, as you said, for recusing himself. if that happens because sessions apparently, you would know better, is probably the strongest of all in the republican nominee. okay, maybe not. >> the trump people don't like him and the people who aren't so crazy about trump -- i would not bet on sessions. >> here is the thing. it could hand over back the senate seat to doug jones. >> right. >> if donald trump gets involved in this. >> and roy moore gets the nomination. that's doug jones' christmas present. >> exactly. >> an al

earlier tonight maggie haberman of "the new york times" had the clean kill. and we quote, in late september mr. trump changed his primary residence from manhattan to palm beach, florida. melania trump, the first lady also changed her residence to palm beach. each of the trumps filed a declaration of domicile, saying that the mar-a-lago club, mr. trump's resort in palm beach will be their permanent residence. this means that in no particular order florida will now be home to hurricanes, manatees, joe stone crab, the everglades, rick wilson, anything in orlando, the kennedy space center, jeb bush, the daytona 500, and donald trump. it's a lot. the move may have been motivated by some sort of nexus of his deep unpopularity in his home state of new york. governor tonight wished him good riddance. and more likely the tax savings. the top rate in new york state is 9%. new york city, 4%. and new york city has bill de blasio, so three more reasons why the trumps may see florida as a win-win. and starting tonight floridians have time to adjust to the thought. richard

we learned from your colleague maggie haberman that he does a lot of the true work and a lot of the heavy lifting behind the scenes in the west wing. does his now about to be former boss mulvaney, do you think, survive ukraine? >> yeah, it's a great question. look, mick mulvaney seemed to be on thin ice even before the ukraine thing happened. there has been -- he was at odds with john bolton. he's at odds with the white house counsel. and the president do not always see hieye-to-eye. the ukraine thing became a bigger problem for mulvaney when went to the briefing room and admitted in front of all the reporters that there was a condition on military aid to ukraine on them conducting investigations of democratic supposed this conspiracy theory of 2016. then he tried to take it back. so the question for him at the moment is, you know, does he do more damage to the president on the outside? i think as long as he's seen as somebody who has insurance, that makes him a little more, you know, so many i had in his current position. i don't think it means he necessarily has the kind of, you know, a

people close to the administration telling "the new york times" maggie haberman that sondland is the one they're most concerned about. one of the first witnesses to testify behind closed doors but later amending his testimony that he now remembers that a white house aide and new testimony was sought by the president. sondland's name came up several times during yesterday's marathon hearings, identified as one of the main officials who carried president trump's message to the ukrainians. >> ambassador bolton cut the meeting short when ambassador sondland began to speak about ukraine deliver specific investigations in order to secure the meeting with president trump. followed this meeting there was a short meeting in which ambassador sondland emphasized the 2016 elections, bidens and ba ruris burisma. >> what did ambassador sondland say to tell you that he told mr. yermak? >> that the ukrainians would have to have the prosecutor general make a statement with respect to the investigations, as a condition of having the aid lifted. >> after this larger meeting with vice president pence an

. >> let's bring in maggie haberman. she's "the new york times" white house correspondent and david gregory. maggie, i want to start with you. before you covered the white house, you were a decorated political reporter. and you covered bloomberg here in new york city. what do you see going on here? this seems to be in direct response to what bloomberg sees as the strength of joe biden's candidacy. >> yeah. you think you described it correctly on what it is that he's thinking. we know that mike bloomberg has wanted to run for president for a long time. the only other person with nearly as many floats for the presidency without doing it was donald trump before donald trump ran for president. i think he is concerned about biden's difficulties. he's clearly concerned about warren. he's been a critic of warren's approach toward the wealthy for a long time. he does have a story to tell about being the new york mayor and he does have a story to tell on two issues that will matter in this primary gun control and climate change. b

joining us now, maggie haberman, white house correspondent from "the new york times," and cnn politicalht. >>

we have cnn political analyst maggie haberman the, a white house correspondent from the "new york times" and joe lockhart, he was president clinton's white house press secretary. it's going to be a very interesting day. for the first time we're going to hear from people with direct knowledge. just what the republicans, their outcry about some of this has been what they call hearsay. today it's not. today it's people who were on the very phone call. do you have any sense of how the white house is going to be responding today. will the president be watching? will the president be live tweeting? what's the plan? >> as you might recall last week we were told very emphatically the president is not watching, and the president proceeded to tweet about the hearing and watch it. my assumption is generally he is watching it. i think he didn't watch the first day. i think he is going to tune in here because vindman in particular is somebody there has been so much discussion about. how the republicans want to handle this, they're in something of a wait and see mode. they need to see what vindman sa

weer learned from your colleagu maggie haberman tonight on social mediaab that he does a l of the true work and a lot of the heavy lifting behind the scenes in thehe west wing. did you his nowst about to be former boss mulvaney, do you think, survive ukraine? >> yeah, it's a great question. look, mick mulvaney was seen to be kind of on thin ice even before the ukraine thing happened. he was at odds with john bolton. he's at odds with pat cipollone, the white house counsel. he andll the president do not, u know, always seeno eye to eye. theo ukraine thing obviously became an even bigger problem for mulvaney when he went out to the briefing room and admitted out front in front of all these reporters that there was o in ft a condition on theat military a to ukraine, on them conducting investigations of democratic supposed conspiracy theory of 2016. then he tried to take it back. so thed question for him at th moment is, you know, does he do more damage to the president on the amoutside? i thinkde as long as he is seens somebody who has insurance, to use a phrase, that makes him a little m

as maggie haberman reported, brad parscale, trump's campaign manager, thinks it's politically beneficial the president to move to florida. that doesn't make as much sense as the tax reasons here. >> in fact, to the whole question, mr. pratt, about tax liabilities, the trump organization is still had h headquartered to new york, he would have to move the whole company to avoid corporate taxes. >> i'm not sure what his plans are regarding corporate taxes. he filed a declaration of domicile in palm beach counties which indicates he and his wife will be florida domiciliaries, at least that's the intent. moving the corporation is beyond what he's said he will do so far, at least according to reon fifth avenue at 55th street. to his credit, new yorkers would say, he hasn't gone very often because he knows the impact every time he stays at trump tower, it creates a security nightmare, jeremy. >> absolutely. what's so interesting about this, he blames democrats, as he does for all his problems. it's his tax bill that made taxes in new york, states like new york and on the east coast, higher taxe

. >> maggie haberman who is one of the writers on the story says quid pro quo was not in the vernacular at all in regards to this story, at all, when the president had this conversation with gordon sondland. just put up p-203 here. you can see the president had the phone call with zelensky. it's late august when the president is briefed about the whistle-blower complaint. late august. so he knew that he got caught at that point before all these other key events happened. what are those key events? one is the aid being released. he knew he was caught before the aid was released. and he knew he got caught before he had that phone call with gordon sondland which everyone says exonerates the president where he says no quid pro quo. why is he saying it? because the whistle-blower said there was a quid pro quo. >> and he knew there was a whistle-blower report when he also told republican senator ron johnson that there was nothing going on here. and he was so upset on the phone according to ron johnson. he knew at that point there had been a complaint, so he was aware that he needed to vehemen

white house correspondent for "the new york times" maggie haberman. let's start with rahm.he house. how did your former colleagues do? >> i think the democrats did a good job in making sure the facts piece by piece step by step got laid out. i think the republicans -- there were two parts. by the second day they were actually following the script they were supposed to, being respectful. obviously the president messed it up. i would say that both parties -- in this situation you have the jets and sharks already set up. it's been divided like that. >> they were divided going into the hearings. they seemed divided coming out. chris christie, we learned -- we expected no news during the hearings. in fact, we learned about this new witness to ambassador sondland's conversation with the president and on friday president trump's tweet. thing can happen during the hearings that can change the dynamics. >> i think things can happen, but i don't think they changed the dynamic. for those people that support the president they're not offended with this conduct. they're saying this is c

joining us now, cnn political analyst maggie haberman. and cnn chief legal analyst jeffrey toobin. jeffrey, your thoughts at the end of these two weeks? we know more this morning than we did two weeks ago. >> we know a tremendous amount more. and what's remarkable is how the evidence is entirely consistent. for me the single most memorable piece of evidence was in kiev. right after the infamous phone call. on july 26 when sondland the ambassador to the european union is on the phone with the president at this restaurant in kiev and he hangs up the phone and he says to david holmes, the foreign service officer, like -- the president doesn't give a about ukraine things. he says what do you mean? this is a big deal. there's a war going on fighting against russia. sondland says no, no, no. a big thing to the president is something that affects his political future. a big thing to him is the biden investigation damaging his political enemies. that's the story. that's the story. and it plays out through all the witnesses. and, you know, we're now going to move into this mode of are the r

. >> joining us maggie haberman for the new york times and cnn political analyst kaitlan collins, white house correspondent. for this historic week is the feeling inside of the white house one of anxiousness or one of we have successfully gotten republicans in line to say that this is all just a democratic partisan process? >> they know they haven't gotten republicans successfully in line with the coherent message they're all sticking to and that is of concern to them. some republicans are saying the facts aren't really in dispute the question is whether you think this is corrupt or not. others the president has been pressing for weeks to try to say there was nothing wrong at all. nothing. >> he was perfect. >> to dispute the facts. the president has made clear he doesn't want this argued on process grounds. republicans many don't think they have a choice. the bigger concern within the white house is two fold. one is that television is obviously visual medium in this world here, they know that there -- it could be powerful to see these witnesses testifying in public. that has not been t

joining us now is maggie haberman who has been a big part of this story on eddie gallagher and on the navy secretary over the last few days. if we can, i want to start at the end here before we get into the details of the story. because i think the big picture here is what's most important. the navy secretary is out. and on the way out the door, he writes a letter saying the president of the united states is undermining military discipline. that's a big deal. >> it's a huge deal. and the resignation letter makes the one from james mattis that we saw almost a year ago look like a nice note to the president, like a love note on his way out. make no mistake, he is not happy about what's happening with the gallagher case. he's not questioning that the president has the right to do it. >> no one is questioning that. >> what he is making clear is this is not normal procedure and this undermines and several senior military officials, several pentagon officials have said this. this undermines how they do things there. how they keep soldiers from committing war crimes. how they keep soldiers f

joining us now with her reporting is cnn political analyst maggie haberman the white house correspondent for "the new york times" who broke the story. good morning, maggie. >> good morning. >> the president is not in love with new york city anymore? why is he moving? >> i think there are a couple of reasons. i think the primary one that i was told was that it is tax related. remember, he is going to pay far less in taxes in florida than he would in new york. florida has a no state income tax. there is an irony here because the state taxes, the local taxes became more onerous in new york after the tax bill that president trump signed into law. i think that it says something about his pose-presidential future and the resignation that new york is not such a welcoming place for him. he is deeply unpopular in new york. and there is always a concern about protests that he might face on an ongoing basis at trump tower but some of this advisers see an electoral advantage here, allison. moving too florida, they think it is potentially helpful in an election where florida is key. florida is always

giuliani insists in a conversation that he had with maggie haberman, one of my colleagues, over the weekendat he was not bringing up mueller at all and that he was not at that point working as the president's lawyer and that his conversations and his work in ukraine in that period was about his -- the private clients he had. i mean, what we know for sure is that the president poroshenko was trying to improve his relations with the united states and get military assistance from the united states. and he was doing that in part by offering things to trump that he thought would appeal to trump and that would be, for example, a deal of $70 million worth of the u.s. coal sales to ukraine. or a deal for ge to sell locomotives to ukraine or westinghouse to provide nuclear fuel to its power plants. so those things were definitely happening. giuliani was present during this, but the quid pro quo part of it relative to stopping the mueller investigation is an open question. it's an interesting and it looks like there's some similarities between the later episodes. but it's not as clear cut. >> let me

maggie haberman of "the new york times" who has covered him for the first time the first to report thet change and encapsulated trump's relationship with the big apple. he came of age in queens, built trump tower, starred in the apprentice, bankrupted his businesses six times, and drew cheering crowds and angry protesters to fifth avenue after his election. through it all, president trump, rich, bombastic and to many americans the epitome of a new yorker was intertwined with the city he called his life-long home. no longer. the table is back. you've known him as a new yorker what do you think? >> he was in new york but he was never of new york. you would not see him around, even where people in real estate would go, the watering holes. he was not sociable. he is the kind of person that was all about trump. and it's not easy to fit in social circles when the beginning, end, and middle of your conversation is you. and that's all he would do. so you knew he was here, he was always in the at that point tabloids but he was not one that was of new york. and most new yorkers when it hit the p

. >> joining us now maggie haberman, white house correspondent for the "new york times" and cnn white house correspondent kaitlan collins. you have some new reporting on in fighting within the white house. i do want to get to that. first what we did receive just an hour ago was this memo from house republicans on how they plan to defend the president. one of the things they will discuss broadly speaking is the president's mind-set, his doubts and skepticism about ukraine in general, and then they have these four talking points which i'm frankly surf are prizprised is what they're leading with here. that the july 25th phone call shows no conditionality or evidence of pressure, the president says do me a favor and brings up just the bidens and the 2016 election and also there is witnesses saying that there's also kinds of conditionality around that call. zelensky and trump say there was no pressure on the call, well, president trump may not be the only important witness here, president zelensky is under an awful lot of pressure to lead his country. the ukrainian government was not aware

i noted maggie haberman, "the new york times" white house correspondent says trump's begun the i hardly know him distancing so i hope when he lands, he still has a job. >> the president has an event in austin, texas, and has been airborne for most of the last 90 minutes, still photographers are being asked not so gently to clear the hearing room and we should have the gavel here shortly. >>> the committee will come to order. >> we'll now proceed to the five-minute member questioning. first i wanted to recognize myself for five minutes. first of all, i wanted to clarify something for the record. with respect to the witness who testified on saturday, that is mr. sandy, he is a career official with the office of management and budget, he is today reviewing his transcript, an opportunity we give all the witnesses before their transcript is released to make sure that it's accurate and correct. as his deposition was only taken saturday this was the soonest we could arrange that, we did inform the minority yesterday that if they wish to use any of the questioning from mr. sandy's deposition, t

the "new york times" maggie hab haberman broke the story. here's what she thinks might be behind the change. >> he's going to pay far less taxes in florida than he would in new york. florida have a no-state income tax. the taxes became more onerous in new york after the tax bill the president signed into law. i think this also says something about his post-presidential future and the fact that new york is patrol not such a welcoming place for him. >> president trump has visited mar-a-lago five times more than trump tower in new york. we've seen from some of the politicians there, essentially they're saying, boy, but interesting for the florida men. >> florida now has a republican governor, two republican senators, a republican legislature and it's much more welcoming politically for him than it is in new york where folks protest and all kinds of unrest whenever he goes back up there. i do expect the president to spend more time in p flar. we have a lot of that. >> when he goes around down there, i imagine he'll be saying, i'm one of you now.

people close to the trump administration tell the "new york times" maggie haberman is the one they'reconcerned about. he was one of the if pirs witnesses to testify behind closed doors but later amended his testimony saying he now remembers that military aid in a white house meeting for ukraine's new president were tied to the investigations sought by president trump. >> maybe we did break into the watergate after all. hold on. >> it's unfortunate. sondland's name came up several times during yesterday's marathon hearings identified as one of the main officials who carried president trump's message to the ukrainians. >> ambassador bolton cut the meeting short when ambassador sondland started to speak about the requirement that ukraine deliver specific investigations in order to secure the meeting with president trump. following this meeting, there was a short debriefing during which ambassador sondland emphasized the importance of ukraine delivering the investigations into the 2016 elections, the bidens and burisma. >> what did ambassador sondland say to tell you that he told mr. yerm