Trump Demands Pelosi Hold Full House Vote on Impeachment Before White House Cooperates
KEILAR: We're back now with more on our breaking news. President Trump threatening House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to hold a formal vote on impeachment on the House floor before he cooperates with the impeachment inquiry.</s>DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We'll be issuing a letter. As everybody knows, we've been treated very unfairly, very different than anybody else. If you go over, not only history, you go over any aspect of life, you'll see how unfairly we've been treated. And this is not about politics. This is about corruption. If you look and you read our Constitution and many other things, I have an obligation to look at corruption. I have an actual obligation and a duty.</s>KEILAR: Kaitlan Collins is at the White House. Kaitlan, what can you tell us about the president's strategy here, because it appears to be changing from yesterday?</s>KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, it does. And about that letter the president was talking about, we had been hearing this was in the works. Essentially, it's framing this White House argument we've been hearing since last Tuesday that, unless Nancy Pelosi places a vote on the floor formally for this impeachment inquiry, that they have to comply with these document requests, these requests for officials to go up to Capitol Hill, to sit down with House Democrats and talk about impeachment inquiry. So essentially, they're going to send her this letter daring her to hold a floor vote. That's counting on the fact we've seen a surging number of Democrats saying they support impeachment inquiry. They're going to make the argument that could change once they actually have to go on the record. They haven't sent this letter yet. We had heard they were going to. And the president announced it this morning. We're waiting to see if they actually sent it to Democrats. The question is, does it change anything. If they do hold this vote, which Democrats don't feel they need to, will the White House fully cooperate? Some have questioned whether or not they will. Of course, the interesting part came a few minutes later where the president said he thinks, if it went to a trial in the Senate, the Republican-led Senate, he thinks he would win. But he did concede at one point that he does think House Democrats do have the votes to move forward with an impeachment. So it kind of changes the president's frame of mind from where we were told by officials that he was kind of in denial about all of this. So now he does seem to be acknowledging the fact the fact that the Democrats do have the votes. You do hear him at the end, he's still maintaining the same kind of defense. He doesn't think anything he said to these leaders, calling on Ukraine personally, to investigate the Bidens, or publicly, saying China should investigate the Bidens, he doesn't think there's anything wrong with that.</s>KEILAR: Kaitlan Collins, at the White House, thank you. The president defending his actions by saying he has, quote, "the absolute right" to do so. It's not the first time he's given that reason. Plus, the former special envoy to Ukraine telling Congress he found no credibility in the president's allegations against the Bidens. What else we're learning about what Kurt Volker said to Congress in his testimony on Capitol Hill.