[Rep. Nancy Pelosi:] Resolution is adopted without objection.
[Boris Sanchez, Cnn Anchor:] A divided House taking a critical step the impeachment inquiry now official. So when will a private process go public?
[Christine Romans, Cnn Anchor:] The president's namesake Tower losing its most-tenured resident. Why is Donald Trump moving to Florida?
[Sanchez:] And breaking overnight, a new wildfire growing fast in Southern California. Thousands forced to evacuate. Is relief on the way? Welcome back to EARLY START. I'm Boris Sanchez. It caught me off guard there.
[Romans:] Nice to see you nice to see you. I know, the pictures are beautiful and scary at the same time, right? I'm Christine Romans, 30 minutes past the hour. Just hours after the House officially made Donald Trump the fourth president in history to face impeachment, a defiant chief executive made very clear he has no plans to concede anything. In an Oval Office interview with the "Washington Examiner," the president said, "This is over a phone call that is a good call. At some point, I'm going to sit down, perhaps as a fireside chat on live television, and I will read the transcript of the call because people have to hear it." That's a reference to FDR's radio addresses from nearly a century ago.
[Sanchez:] With Speaker Pelosi holding the gavel, not a single Republican voted to support the impeachment inquiry. Two Democrats did defect, crossing over to vote against it. The vote paves the way for a very private process to go public in the coming weeks. And while that was going on, a top National Security Council official who was on that call between President Trump and President Zelensky of Ukraine testified to impeachment investigators. A source saying he told lawmakers his predecessor advised him to stay away from the shadow Ukraine foreign policy being pursued by Trump's personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani. The NSC official also backed up damaging claims about the president. CNN's Lauren Fox has more from Capitol Hill.
[Lauren Fox, Cnn Congressional Reporter:] Well, a huge day on Capitol Hill yesterday as lawmakers, Republicans and Democrats, both forced to be on the record when it comes to where they stand on impeachment. The resolution they voted on yesterday sets out the rules for the next stage of this impeachment inquiry when these testimonies become public. Also yesterday, Tim Morrison up on Capitol Hill where he largely corroborated testimony from Bill Taylor. He was a career diplomat who told lawmakers last week in a 15-page opening statement that he had concerns when he had learned that the president was trying to use nearly $400 million in U.S. military aid to Ukraine as a way to try to extract investigations that he hoped the Ukrainian government would announce against his political rivals. Now, Morrison also testified yesterday on Capitol Hill that he didn't have any concerns about the legality of what President Trump said on that July 25th call, but he did say he had concerns about information leaking from that call because he said he worried that it could damage the U.S. relationship with Ukraine. He also said he was part of the conversation about what to do with the call transcript following the July 25th call Boris and Christine.
[Romans:] Thank you, Lauren. Lauren mentioned Tim Morrison testified he was not worried anything illegal was discussed on that call, and that statement was seized on by Republicans, including President Trump in a late-night tweet. "Thank you, Tim Morrison, for your honesty." A departure from the criticism of basically every other witness so far. Speaker Nancy Pelosi had said she would only move forward with impeachment if there was bipartisan support. Yesterday's nearly party-line vote was anything but.
[Pelosi:] I had not been, shall we say, enthusiastic about the divisiveness that would occur from an impeachment. But weighing the equities, I had said then he's not worth impeaching because it's even going to divide the country further than he has already divided it. But this was something that you could not ignore.
[Rep. Kevin Mccarthy:] Alexander Hamilton wrote, "There will always be the greatest danger that the decision to use the impeachment power would be driven by partisan animosity instead of real demonstrations of innocence or guilt."
[Rep. Steve Scalise:] This is Soviet-style rules. Maybe in the Soviet Union you do things like this where only you make the rules. Maybe you think it's fairness if you can run roughshod over somebody because you've got the votes. But that's not how impeachment was supposed to go.
[Sanchez:] It's important to remember this. The longer impeachment goes on the more complex it becomes for Democrats. A trial could disrupt presidential campaigns with candidates, who are also senators, required to stay in Washington as other candidates like Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg stay on the campaign trail. Also, vulnerable House Democrats may face new challenges after voting for an inquiry. Republicans will no doubt target those lawmakers, many who won traditionally red districts in that blue wave of 2018.
[Romans:] All right. President Trump giving up his namesake Manhattan tower as a permanent residence and declaring himself a Florida residence. Court documents and a series of tweets show the native New Yorker is moving to Mar-a- Lago whenever he's done in Washington. He writes, "I cherish New York but unfortunately, despite the fact that I pay millions of dollars in city, state, and local taxes each year, I've been treated very badly by the political leaders."
[Sanchez:] Yes, and note that he doesn't mention his federal taxes there. There's no way to check the others, too, since he's never actually released his tax returns. A source close to the president tells "The New York Times" the change was primarily for tax purposes. Remember, Florida has no income tax. The source says the president was also enraged by the Manhattan prosecutor's lawsuit to obtain Trump's tax returns. That case likely headed to the Supreme Court in an election year. You can sort of see the irony in the fact that the president is moving as so many other thousands
[Romans:] Yes, thousands.
[Sanchez:] of New Yorkers are also moving to Florida because of the tax bill that he passed.
[Romans:] Because of the president's tax, right. You can't write off state and local
[Sanchez:] Right.
[Romans:] taxes over like 10 grand or something. All right, much more on this. Plus, Halloween takes an ugly turn in Chicago. A 7-year-old girl is shot while trick or treating.