CNN "The Lead With Jake Tapper" - Transcript: Interview With Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA)

Interview

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More breaking news: Two more impeachment transcripts were released this afternoon, one from Dr. Fiona Hill and then another from Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, both testifying about their concerns over Rudy Giuliani and acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney and Ambassador Gordon Sondland pushing for investigations into the Bidens, pushing that Ukraine open those investigations, in exchange for a White House meeting between President Trump and Ukraine's President Zelensky.

Joining me now to talk about this and much more is Democratic Congressman Ted Lieu, who serves on the House Judiciary and House Foreign Affairs committees.

Congressman Lieu, thanks so much for joining us.

[16:15:04]

So, this is Colonel Vindman testifying about a conversation he had with Ambassador Sondland regarding the, quote/unquote, deliverables, what Ukraine needed to do in order to get this meeting.

Question: Do you understand how he came to believe this deliverable was necessary?

REP. TED LIEU (D-CA): Right.

TAPPER: Answer: So I heard him say, this is Sondland, I heard Sondland say that this had been coordinated with White House chief of staff, Mr. Mick Mulvaney. Question: What did Sondland say about that? Answer, Vindman: Sondland

just said that he had a conversation with Mr. Mulvaney and this is what was required in order for the Ukrainians to get a meeting.

Question: Did he explain what the investigations were that were needed? Vindman: He talked about the investigations, about the 2016 election and the investigation into the Bidens and Burisma.

Now, Mulvaney today defied the subpoena from the three committees including the one you're on.

LIEU: Right.

TAPPER: For -- subpoena to come in and talk to the impeachment inquiry. Your committee is not challenging his defiance to the subpoena and not taking it to court. Why not? Isn't Mulvaney's testimony essential?

LIEU: Thank you, Jake, for that question. All of these witnesses that we have seen corroborate the exact same narrative which is that Donald Trump solicited foreign interference in our elections. He did it for his personal political gain, at the expense of U.S. national security.

We would love to have Mick Mulvaney but we don't need him because we have Colonel Vindman saying what happened, with Fiona Hill saying what happened, we had George Kent, we had Ambassador Taylor, enough people have all corroborated the exact same story that we have enough witnesses to go forward.

TAPPER: So the three people publicly testifying next week are Bill Taylor, the top ambassador -- the top diplomat in Ukraine for the U.S., George Kent, who's a State Department official, and the former Ambassador Masha Yovanovitch. None of them talked to President Trump about this Ukraine scandal. Wouldn't it be good to have somebody whether Ambassador Sondland or Rudy Giuliani or Mick Mulvaney, somebody who had talked to Trump about this?

LIEU: This is just a first week of public hearings. We're going to have more. If you look at the witness depositions, Sondland talked directly to the president a number of times. But beyond that, we have actual call record of July 25th between Donald Trump and Zelensky right after the Ukraine talked about military aid, Donald Trump immediately asked for a favor though, and when you read through the rest of the transcript it is investigations into the DNC, as well as the Bidens.

So we already know there is no daylight between any of these policies that were being executed by Giuliani and Mulvaney and Donald Trump. They're saying the exact same thing.

TAPPER: Is Sondland -- you said that next week is just the first week of hearings. Are you going to call Sondland to testify publicly?

LIEU: That remains to be seen. But with his new addendum to his testimony, it is pretty compelling because with his new addendum, he basically explicitly said there was a quid pro quo between the Trump administration and the Ukrainians. You can call this extortion, you can call it bribery, it's all the same thing when the president used his powers to freeze military aid, to dangle a critical meeting between the White House and the Ukrainian leader in exchange for launching two bogus investigations.

TAPPER: Sondland does admit in his addendum that the meeting would only come in exchange for investigations, although he doesn't use the term extortion or bribery or quid pro quo. John Bolton's lawyer said today that his clients, that Mr. Bolton, the former national security adviser, has significant insights into matters involved in the impeachment inquiry but that Bolton will not testify until a court resolves whether or not he has to comply with the subpoena.

Should you, Democrats leading the inquiry wait until you can have Bolton testify? It sounds like he knows a lot.

LIEU: Right. Right.

So, I'm a former prosecutor and I would love to track down every single lead, every single witness. But in this case, all of the damning evidence really came out pretty early. We have the summarized call transcript, we have Ambassador Volker's text messages that were released that show U.S. diplomats understood about this quid pro quo. We know that Donald Trump froze critical security aid to Ukraine.

Essentially, this is a lot of undisputed facts. So, we would love to have John Bolton come in. If he is going to wait for a court order, that might take months and months, and we're not going to wait months and months.

TAPPER: Is it your belief, sir, that the rough transcript that has -- of the conversation between Trump and Zelensky, that that is all you need in terms of firsthand quid pro quo evidence, that that speaks for itself.

LIEU: That is not all that we need. It's certainly part of the evidence. This is a months-long pressure campaign by Donald Trump to try to get the Ukrainians to launch these two investigations into the Bidens and the DNC.

[16:20:02]

So, we have the transcript where he mentioned these two investigations. Those are the president's own words, and then we have all of this testimony from State Department officials, Lieutenant Colonel Vindman and others who corroborate that exact same story that the Trump administration was trying to get the Ukraine to launch these two investigations and they did it by withholding military aid and dangling this important meeting with Zelensky.

TAPPER: Democratic Congressman Ted Lieu of California, thank you so much for your time, sir. We appreciate it.

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