CNN "Anderson Cooper 360" - Transcript: Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA) is Interviewed About the Public Impeachment Hearing

Interview

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Joining us now, one of the questioners tomorrow, California Democratic Congresswoman Jackie Speier is here with me. The change -- Speaker Pelosi using the word "bribery," is that more of

sort of a messaging that the whole quid pro quo is not something which is a term commonly used by people, but bribery is far more understandable, extortion, things like that and also bribery is mentioned in the Constitution?

REP. JACKIE SPEIER (D-CA): Well, the fact that bribery is mentioned in the Constitution I think is something the American people grab on to, treason, bribery or high crimes and misdemeanors.

[20:10:03]

And the elements of a bribery taking place are just so clear. You have a public official who either directly or indirectly asked for something of value in exchange for doing an official act, that is what President Trump did. And so I think that the only thing that we have to establish is that, was there corrupt intent? And I think I don't have to look at his actions.

He is withholding information from the committee. He is preventing many people from testifying before the committee. He had a back channel with Rudy Giuliani and others to pursue it. You start adding all of that together, and you have a pretty solid case.

COOPER: Do you think that there would be more than just the issue with Ukraine, if it does come to articles of impeachment, that it would be obstruction of justice from the Mueller report would be involved as well?

SPEIER: There was clearly obstruction of justice. It was spelled out in the Mueller report. He chose not to pursue it because of the guidelines within the Department of Justice about not indicting a sitting president. But I don't think we're going to walk down that path. I think we're staying very focused on the Ukraine phone call.

COOPER: On the argument that many Republicans are making and certainly tomorrow, it seems like what the ambassador is going to be making as well, she really had no knowledge of -- she wasn't talking to the president and all this other stuff is hearsay. We hear this now, third, fourth, fifth-hand.

SPEIER: Well, first of all, I mean, hearsay is like circumstantial evidence. And in most crimes, it's circumstantial evidence that actually solves the crime.

And we also have this summary of the president's phone conversation, and then we have his actions afterwards. And now, we evidently have Mr. Sondland talking to the president in which the president says how about the investigation. So, it's pretty -- it's pretty straight forward.

COOPER: Sondland never mentioned this other call. I believe in his testimony, he said he couldn't remember there were one or two calls with him and the president. But correct me if I'm wrong, he never mentioned this other call at the dinner that now -- that Ambassador Taylor referenced one of his aides. SPEIER: That's right. What's so interesting is that you have the

president saying -- well, I really don't know much about the gentleman, except that he gave this gentleman his personal cell phone number and evidently, Ambassador Sondland has him on speed dial. There was probably at least six phone conversations that they had.

COOPER: It's also -- I mean, there is -- for a candidate like for President Trump, who as a candidate was very upset about the security, you know, violations or, you know, the security standards of Secretary Clinton, to be using a cell phone in a restaurant in Ukraine of all places, I mean, that sort of violates every norm of trying to keep secrets from your adversaries.

SPEIER: Well, and the president using a cell phone as well, which he does and is -- you know, verboten, actually, and the irony is, you know, Russia could know more about this conversation than we'll ever know.

COOPER: The -- Mark Sandy, this attorney for the OMB is going to testify on Saturday if subpoenaed. He would be the first witness from the OMB. Prior to this, there had been testimony that somebody at the OMB had said that this -- that the president was holding up the aid.

Do you know much about this witness, what he will testify to?

SPEIER: Well, we know he is a career civil servant. He has been in and out of OMB for a number of years. We also know that he did sign the July hold on the military aid. Subsequent holds on the military aid were done by political appointees. So, it will be interesting to see what happened.

It appears that he, without having had the interview yet, was resistant or asking questions about why they were putting a hold on it.

COOPER: Do you know -- is it one step closer to trying to figure out exactly how that order came down? Because, I mean, it seems something like putting a hold on aid, you would think there would be a large paper trail on something like that.

SPEIER: Well, you can withhold -- typically, there is a process by which you use either rescission or what's called reprogramming. Neither of those things took place. Normally, there is some description as to why there is a hold put, and obviously there wasn't any in this case at all. And then we have, you know, a number of incidents where we've heard from people who said that it was being -- we've got text messages from Volker and Sondland about the fact that the president was holding the military aid until there was an investigation announced.

COOPER: If the ultimate goal is to get some Republicans in the Senate to -- if this goes to impeachment, to get some Republicans in the Senate to kind of look at this with different eyes, do you think any move has been made toward that thus far with the testimony?

[20:15:04] SPEIER: You know, how do you know? I mean, every day, there is another disclosure, there is another bombshell. The conversation at a restaurant now is new information that we didn't know about a day ago. So, I think what we have to do is just do our job. And this inquiry will move forward.

We will present our evidence to the Judiciary Committee. They will assess whether or not they're going to create articles of impeachment, and then the House will take it up.

COOPER: Congresswoman Speier, we appreciate your time. Thank you very much.

SPEIER: Thank you.

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