MSNBC "All in with Chris Hayes" - Transcript: "Conversation with Masha Gessen on new book."

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HAYES: How`s everybody doing? Thank you all. Thank you. It`s great to be back here in our Friday night home in 30 Rock. What a day to be back. All right, all right. What a day to be back here. If you`ve not heard, House Democrats are conducting a formal impeachment inquiry on the President of the United States. Tonight, actually, this news just broke right before we came on air. Democrats have just subpoenaed the White House for documents relating to that impeachment inquiry. Now, I just think it`s worthwhile taking a second to remember how this all started so we don`t get lost in the weeds, right? This all started a very simple story of Donald Trump on the phone pressuring the Ukrainian president to dig up dirt -- one could really say like manufactured dirt on his political rival Joe Biden. And we learned all about it from a White House memo that the White House itself released, right? Like just remember literally, this is so thing the White House chose to show us on their own. Here you go. See, the call was perfect. Perfect. There`s no crime here. Now, it`s all the case the crime is literally right there, like you could literally read the crime in front of you.The Ukrainian president asking for military assistance, right, the military assistance, $400 million. And the very next line after he says like, Mr. President, we are ready to get some new weapons from you guys. The very last line Donald Trump says, "I would like to -- I would like you to do us a favor, though. Though. What`s the "though" doing there? Well, Donald Trump said in the call on its own, just that part, I think it`s absolutely an impeachable offense, right? Just the coercion -- you don`t actually -- and I really believe that this is not something that`s like written in the ten commandments or something, Right? We all figured this out, as democratic said, but I think like full stop, coercing a foreign leader to do a political hit job in your on your political rival. OK. But the thing is that we`ve learned more and more is that that moment, Trump`s phone call is only one part of an enormous effort from the entire American government, like full spectrum. So it`s not just a phone call, right? And it`s not just Rudy Giuliani who`s running around doing his weirdness. It`s like an entire comprehensive use of American foreign policy, the State Department, the ambassador of the E.U., the special envoy to Ukraine, all flowing through the White House and the State Department to get them to investigate the Biden`s, all right. It`s a corrupt abuse of power to coerce an occupied country to hand over manufactured political attack in exchange for nearly $400 million in aid. $400 billion, I should say, that they need to keep Russia out of their backyard, right. They are being occupied by Russia right now as I speak to you right here. All while, Russia is the country that helped get Donald Trump elected in the first place, which is weird. Yesterday, the former U.S. Special Envoy to Ukraine, a guy who abruptly quit his job shortly after his name appeared in the whistleblower complaint. He testified before the House investigating committee for nine and a half hours. He`s there for a while. He turned over pages and pages of text messages between him and other diplomats and Rudy Giuliani. And that trove of text messages was released for everyone to see last night around 10:30. And it`s bad. It`s really bad. I grew up in the Bronx in the 1980s, I went to public school and nice, yes -- in the Bronx in the 1980s, in public school. When someone got caught or like called out by someone who liked told your business or like a teacher, like caught you, the room would be like, busted. And all I can hear my mind last night when I was reading these texts was like my middle school cafeteria and be like, busting. They`re busted. Because here`s the thing, the tasks unmask that they were up to no good, right? They document what were essentially several quid pro quo that they were lining up. The Ukrainians had to deliver something tangible in exchange for Trump`s support. It wasn`t just a favor as Trump phrases it. The quote is from one of the diplomats, "I think the President really wants the deliverable." I think the President really wants a deliverable. But even more than that, above and beyond the actual wrongdoing that`s documented in the text, the thing that is so damning about these texts is the consciousness of guilt that hangs over them. And this is key to me. This is actually key. They knew what they were doing was wrong and they were trying to keep it secret. On September 1st, OK, we`re just going to go through this. September 1st, the U.S. Chief of Mission in Ukraine, he`s a guy named Bill Taylor, all right. This guy just be clear, career Foreign Service officer, served in the George W. Bush administration and in the Obama administration. This is this guy`s life work, OK. This is what he does. He texts the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, a guy named Gordon Sondland -- you have not heard that name before, I don`t think, but you should remember it because he`s about to be famous, OK. Sondland actually is a Portland hotel developer who literally gave $1 million to Trump`s inauguration and appears to have gotten this gig as a thank you, OK. That`s who Sondland is. All right, so Bill Taylor, career Foreign Service guy texts, and I quote, "Are we now saying that security assistance and White House meeting are conditioned done investigations. Now Sondland, the Trump appointee, the big donor, recognizes this is a dangerous conversation to put in writing. And he responds, call me. OK. Probably best to talk about this one. That`s not all, OK. It is clear from these texts that the career Foreign Service guy is calling out what is happening. He`s trying to get it into writing, because he knows what`s happening. And then there`s another exchange, it happens eight days later. Remember, they`re still working out this weird thing about what are the conditions that have to be met, and the aid is still being held up. Another quote from the career foreign service guy, Bill Taylor, "As I said on the phone" -- nice one, Bill. Nice one Bill. "As I said on the phone, I think it`s crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign." That is crazy, right? So he says it on the phone that he texted it to bring into the record. OK, he`s calling out what is clear as day is happening. It is a corrupt abuse of power, it is a quid pro quo. Now, here`s the thing about Trump. Always for everything the President has two big defenses, two defenses. One, he does everything in public so there`s no scandal, right? Like, how can it be a scandal? Russia, if you`re listening. He told a foreign government to engage in criminal sabotage on his behalf in front of everyone, right? And number two, and the second defense and you`re going to hear it a lot and you`ve been hearing last week. It basically comes down to this -- and these are not my words, this is the characterization of the people defending him. It`s essentially that Donald Trump is a morally incontinent sociopath who cannot tell the difference between right and wrong. So you have to just give him a break because he like literally doesn`t understand the difference. That is the defense. He`s just Trump being Trump. What do you want? He literally doesn`t know it`s wrong. And Trump himself, that`s his sort of -- that`s his approach as well, right? He`s embracing this. It`s is him on the driveway, publicly committing the same impeachable offenses, right? He`s doing it in public. Nothing wrong with it. Saying this morning on the driveway, there`s nothing wrong. There`s nothing wrong. Corruption, there`s nothing wrong. But these texts destroy that weird alibi. The text show they all knew it was wrong. They`re doing it in secret and they`re thinking about how to cover up. They know what`s wrong while they`re doing it. And that`s what I actually think makes this different than some of the other different scandals we`ve seen, right. Not only they knew it was wrong that they worked on their cover story. So back to the text, right? It`s after midnight, OK. Early last month, our career foreign service guy Bill Taylor, you remember him, right? Career guy, he`s in Ukraine. He`s in Ukraine and he`s texting back and forth with Sondland, right, the guy who gave $1 million in the inauguration. And this is the part of the text I read you earlier. The career foreign service guy clearly uncomfortable, trying to put it on the record everything is happening. Very specifically, he says, "As I said on the phone, I think it`s crazy to withhold security systems to help the political campaign." And then silence. Five hours go by. The New York Times reports that before responding to this text that`s just hanging there with a career foreign service person being like, what you`re doing is crazy and wrong, right, that the Trump appointee Sondland spoke to Trump. The Times reported that yesterday. He speaks to Trump. And one could imagine -- I don`t know what was in the conversation -- but one can imagine what happened in the conversation between Trump the appointee about a career diplomat who`s now calling up the fact that they are corruptly extorting a foreign occupied nation for political hit job on the President`s political rival. What should I tell them Well, the Trump appointee comes back five hours later, with this like hilarious lawyered press release cover story in a text, which by the way, is the same cover story they`re going to use later on where all becomes public. "Well, I believe are incorrect about President Trump`s intentions. The President has been crystal clear no quid pro quos of any kind. Presidents is trying to evaluate whether Ukraine is truly going to adopt the transparency reforms that President Zelensky promised during his campaign. This is a text." And then here it comes again. Here it comes again. I suggest we stopped the back and forth by text. I bet you do. Probably you should stop texting that. No quid pro quo but stop texting about this. He says it, no quid pro quo. Well, OK, then it gets weirder. You guys following right? Good. OK. So today it gets weirder. So Republican Senator Ron Johnson from Wisconsin who is a big supporter of the President says he basically can do no wrong. He says what he did in the driveway. Yesterday was fine. Soliciting hit jobs on his political enemies from the authoritarian state of China. Well, today he tells the Wall Street Journal -- Johnson, that the Trump appointee Sondland, the guy who gave that like lawyered up press release things saying no quid pro quo, that that guy told him Ron Johnson back in August, there is a quid pro quo. That guy, the guy who put into writing with the lawyered text after he talked to Trump, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. He went to Senator Johnson and be like, dude, there`s a quid pro quo. We`re holding up aid to Ukraine in exchange for this crazy investigation. And so then Johnson, again, this is all Johnson told this to reporting. Johnson then goes to Trump and says, is there a quid pro quo? Are you holding up a day Ukraine so that they investigate the Biden`s? And Donald Trump -- you cannot make this up. According to Johnson says no, and who told you that? Like it`s just a super innocent thing to say. It`s what you say when you`re innocent. And then Johnson basically says, again, according to Ron Johnson, according this Republican, like he does not support impeachment. I don`t even know if he thinks this is all wrong. So he says to Trump, OK, well, there`s no pro quo. So I`m going to go -- he`s in contact to the Ukrainians. He`s says I`m going to go tell them, we`re going to release the aid, right? Like, what`s the holdup? And Trump says, don`t do it. So this is back in August before all these breaks. The people who are party to this corrupt conspiracy already know it`s wrong. They already know they`re going to get caught and they are already working on their cover story. And the cover story is no pro quo even as they all very obviously put a quid pro quo into place. And then just two days after the career foreign service guy Bill Taylor calls them out in that text. Am I crazy or are you guys doing something totally corrupt and illegal? And when he puts that scheme in writing, and it blows up their spot, and you know what happened? Two days after that, Trump releases him. Busted. I want to turn out a member of the House Intelligence Committee investigating the President, the committee that tonight subpoenaed the White House Democratic Congressman Denny Heck. Congressman, I guess I want to first start with your reaction to the text and the testimony that you heard yesterday in terms of how it builds out your understanding of what happened here.

REP. DENNY HECK (D-WA): Well, first of all, Chris, can we just declare that the quid pro quo is, frankly, as obvious as the nose on your face? It`s obvious in the President`s words after discussing the sale of Javelin missiles. I would like a favor from you though. It`s clear in Ambassador Taylor`s remarks that it is crazy to withhold security assistance for help in a political campaign. The quid pro quo is right there on the table staring us all in the face in their words. But here`s the deal, Chris. A quid pro quo, is it necessary for it to be a violation of federal law, and we shouldn`t fall into the trap of that debate as obvious as it is. Soliciting assistance from a foreign government is a violation of federal law, period, full stop. Furthermore, it is conspiracy to engage in that illegal activity is subject to criminal proceedings, conspiracy to cover it up to obstruct justice is subject to criminal activity. We don`t even have to get to the fact that this is in fact, a quid pro quo.

HAYES: So there was news today about there actually being a criminal referral to that point, that the CIA General Counsel kick this over to the Department of Justice, and they`ve been reported before. But today, the reporting was that when the CIA General Counsel move this complaint to DOJ, it wasn`t a "What do you guys think of it," it was meant to be actually a formal criminal referral, and it looks like DOJ just sort of sat on.

HECK: Surprise.

HAYES: Yes, fair enough.

HECK: DOJ and the Attorney General Barr.

HAYES: You also --

HECK: Chris, look, the point remains, however, that there is something broader and fundamental and more important than the violation of this particular statue at risk here. And it is, of course, whether or not we are going to be a nation of the rule of law. We are we were founded thusly, and this one-term President Donald Trump isn`t going to change that for the United States of America.

HAYES: So explain this to me. So you`re on the Intelligence Committee. It`s one of the three committees that sort of constitutes his oversight triad, right. If you talk to Kurt Volker, yesterday, you`ve got these texts. You`ve subpoenaed various people, you`re going to get depositions from the former Ukrainian ambassador, from Sondland -- I think on Tuesday is going to appear for a deposition. You talk today to the Inspector General. You subpoenaed the White House. What is the purpose of all this if you`re telling me right now, like we got them?

HECK: Well, I think there are additional details of the narrative to fill in. So for example, in particular, I`m looking forward, frankly, to hearing from Ambassador Yovanovitch, the former Ambassador of Ukraine who seemingly was sacked because she wouldn`t go along with the deal. This sorted chapter in American history is going to be clearly entitled shakedown and cover-up. And part of the cover-up the stonewalling. But they can only stonewall so much so far. Chris, remember that there was somebody within the circle that knew about this that shared that information with the ultimate complainant. There are Americans of patriotic impulse involved in this, and they will assure that the truth will out.

HAYES: Final question. You subpoenaed the White House today. The Oversight Committee subpoenaed the White House which is a, you know, doesn`t happen very often. Obviously, they`re going to try to fight you on this. Are you confident that you have the better part of this legal argument?

HECK: On the subpoena?

HAYES: Yes.

HECK: This is a formal impeachment inquiry. This is an inherent power in Article One of the United States Constitution. It is not and I don`t mean to be snarky, it`s not at all clear to me that the President of the United States has ever read the United States Constitution. But it is clear that we have this power and authority. It is the job that people that send us here expect us to do. The constitutional remedy to engage in an impeachment inquiry or if needs be, articles of impeachment and impeachment vote are enshrined in the United States Constitution. That`s the document we all swear to uphold.

HAYES: All right, Congressman Denny Heck, thank you very much for your time.

HECK: Thank you.

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