Bolton Was Mentioned By Many House Impeachment Witnesses; Pelosi To Send Articles To Senate Next Week
BLACKWELL: President Trump says that he will likely invoke executive privilege to stop former National Security Advisor John Bolton from testifying in the senate impeachment trial.</s>PAUL: The president preemptively defended his decision on Fox News last night, saying he'd be doing it to protect future presidents.</s>INGRAHAM: Why not call Bolton? Why not allow him to testify? This thing is bogus. I'd like to have Bolton to testify.</s>TRUMP: I would have no problem other than one thing: you can't be in the White House as president future. I'm talking about future, many future presidents and have a security advisor. Anybody having to do with security and legal and other things.</s>INGRAHAM: You're going to invoke executive privilege.</s>TRUMP: Well, I think you have to, for the sake of the office.</s>PAUL: Now, Monday, remember, Bolton said he will cooperate if he's subpoenaed.</s>BLACKWELL: With us now a congressional reporter for The Washington Post and CNN Political Analyst, Karoun Demirjian. Karoun, welcome back.</s>KAROUN DEMIRJIAN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Good to be back.</s>BLACKWELL: So, how does this potential invoking of executive privilege impact this ongoing argument between the Democrats and Republicans now moving over to the Senate of calling witnesses, the president says he's going to take Bolton off the table?</s>DEMIRJIAN: It's a new legal hurdle, basically. If John Bolton wants to go forward, and he wants to talk about discussions that he had directly with the president, and the president books, executive privilege over those, it's going to take quite the legal fight to be able to get Bolton to be able to do that freely. If one wants to go and talk about other things, though, the president does not have a blanket executive privilege that covers every conversation that's happened in a ministration. So that other than the up to John Bolton to try and decide if he wants to cross the president. And in, the past when it was the House's process, he decided he didn't want to, even though there was no actual executive privilege invoked at that time. So, this is something that throws a monkey wrench into things and it would potentially delay and elongate the process of getting Bolton in front of the Senate to testify if the Senate can actually build up the votes to subpoena him in the first place.</s>BLACKWELL: House Democrats weren't willing to fight in court for our Senate Democrats.</s>DEMIRJIAN: It appears that they are but the question isn't really what are Senate Democrats are willing to fight for it? It's whether there are enough Republicans to join them because you need 51 votes to compel any of those subpoenas. And while these questions are privileged there, you know, it is possible for the Democrats to try to make the campaign and make the case and push for that vote. They can't necessarily force for Republicans to cross the aisle. If they can, they're in a fairly powerful position because they'll be able to work down their list of potential witnesses that they hope actually do come before the Senate who did not participate in the House's process. And that right now has been kind of a central issue as we've been waiting for Nancy Pelosi to pass these Articles of Impeachment over. Democrats want to see a fair trial that includes these witnesses. And they have limited leverage, though. I mean, they have the Articles of Impeachment in this last few weeks. But now the question is, can they pull the Republicans over because they need the numbers to be able to make this happen.</s>BLACKWELL: So, let's talk about Speaker Pelosi telling her colleagues and the rest of us now that next week, there's going to be this vote on naming managers and sending the Articles of Impeachment over to the Senate. I want to remind people, this is Democratic whip, James Clyburn of South Carolina in an exchange with John Berman, about the strategy of holding the articles, what they want for them, and how long at least he was willing to do that? Let's watch.</s>REP. JIM CLYBURN (D-SC): And until we can get some assurances from the majority leader, that he is going to allow for a fair and impartial trial to take place. We would be crazy to walk in there, knowing he's set up a kangaroo court.</s>JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: How long are you willing to wait?</s>CLYBURN: As long as it takes cage, even if the if he doesn't come around to commit into a fair trial, keep those articles here.</s>BLACKWELL: So, there had been no assurances, no concessions. And Speaker Pelosi says the vote comes next week, why is she ending this standoff now?</s>DEMIRJIAN: Because this is not happening in a vacuum. Like there's intense political pressure on her to actually do this. And the question of how much leverage she had in the first place was kind of borne out by this time that's past. You saw a little bit more evidence come out, a few more e-mails. John Bolton said that he would testify under subpoena, but at the same time, you had Senate Republicans basically closing ranks and saying, no, we are -- we have the votes. Everybody's on board with the proceeding. At least with proceedings to open up the trial and do it the way that there's various debates about what the Clinton precedent is, but to get going with the trial. And once you've lost the votes in the Senate -- this effectively is accounting game, right? And Nancy Pelosi is very good at counting. She doesn't usually count Senate votes; she counts house votes. But in this case, the question underlying everything is the same. If you don't have the votes, you can stay in the standoff forever, and then that starts to cut away at this argument that the House Democrats had for the longest time, which is that this is an urgent thing, they had to investigate the president, they had to build an impeachment. They want him to be convicted in the Senate, because they thought that he poses a threat to the next election. You can't talk about urgency for months and months, and then completely indefinitely, not passing over those articles. And I think that you started to see as much as the Democrats are making statements like Clyburn, a few weeks ago. In the last few days, you've seen more and more Democrats say, I don't know why this is continuing to be a standoff. We really can't keep doing this. And then, of course, quickly retracting those statements because it follows he wasn't quite ready to move yet. But it appears that the, the political, the political time has come and Pelosi has recognize it as such to get this moving to the Senate which has the right to set its own rules of how it's going to go forward if it has the votes to do it.</s>BLACKWELL: Is that the end of Leader Schumer's leverage then, in these talks that have been going on and then stalled for a while, in coming up with the rules with, with Leader McConnell?</s>DEMIRJIAN: Not necessarily. It's a question of how well he reads the GOP and the moderates and the GOP who might be willing to -- who could be appeal to. And so, that's his now his challenge right now is just to speak across the aisle and get fined for Republicans who are willing to say, on principle, they would like to hear from the witnesses and they're willing to vote as such.</s>BLACKWELL: Karoun Demirjian, always good to have you.</s>DEMIRJIAN: Good to see you too.</s>PAUL: Well, still to come, Iran is promising a thorough investigation after admitting that it shot down a Ukrainian passenger jet. How a lack of communication could have contributed to that deadly missile strike?</s>BLACKWELL: Plus, the new CNN Iowa poll shows a type four-way race among the Democratic presidential front runners in the final weeks before the Democratic caucuses who is gaining momentum and who was not, that's a hit.