And complaining as well that closed interviews and depositions are unfair. Top democrats have pushed back on those call them process critiques by stressing that private interviews are routine for gathering facts and prevent them from matching stories in a potential coverup and the democrats said that the public hearings will come. Now there is news. Democrats are prepping a new phase of this impeachment probe planning public hearings on the case for impeaching President Trump within weeks and as early as mid november. The Washington Post reporting the star witnesses will include ambassador bill taylor who of course was acting ambassador to ukraine and spoke out on the quid pro quo and bribe issues but up ended it with the bombshell testimony that significantly advanced details in the evidence against the president. And specifically recounted the administration conditioning ukraine money on getting a probe of a donald trump rival. Democrats also plan to hold a public hearing with ambassador. And that they want to get john bolton into the public hearing. He made nope his visceral opposition to the giuliani probe on ukraine and it could be devastating for the white house although it was unclear if democrats would subpoena him. So the democrats offense their strategy is coming into view. First, gather evidence from many of the witnesses in private. Then focus on the few key witnesses for hearings in public. Take the three names. Each worked at high levels for the trump administration, each in various rooms as the ukraine plot unfolded. They can detail a fact drive up case that House Democrats would say would impeach donald trump. Note something here, this is pretty straightforward but worth pausing on. This is a contrast to past house hearings about the Mueller Report which didnt feature key witnesses like don mcgahn or paul manafort. If these witnesses could be devastating to trump note that the Top Republicans have boxed themselves in to supporting the potentially devastating hearings. Maybe it is a case of be careful what you wish for. If everyone agrees the fair thing is to launch into these public impeachment hearings. Not all republicans are focused on the process. Trump has been demanding they get tougher in defending him and now key ally graham is pushing the senate to formally condemn the house impeachment probe adding this today about trump and the infamous ukraine call. He keeps telling us he did nothing wrong. He keeps telling me that the phone call was perfect. Im saying, mr. President , the phone call was okay with me. All right. Now when you read senator grahams actual brandnew resolution, im going to have it right here, it does not propose a law or even suggests the senate do anything. Instead, what this does is criticize the house. In fact, if you flip to the end, only five pages, it lists basically three things that it calls on Speaker Pelosi to do. Hold a floor vote about the current probe, give the president due process and give away subpoena powers to the republican minority in the house. Which is not how the house is typically organized. Now, let me be clear with you. Senator graham knows the house doesnt take orders from the senate or vice versa. And the senate has the upper hand here. Because any impeachment if there is one will ultimately go to the senate for the final call, a trial or acquittal or conviction. So this resolution is basically mostly theater today. It doesnt impact the probe at all but as senator graham was trying to score those points along the way he did end up endorsing trumps ukrainian call. Okay with me he said. And that will become key to this if the house impeaches. The senate at that point cannot pass resolutions criticizing the house or any other part of the government. It will have to act. It will have to hear and decide on a case. And some senators may say anything goes or anything goes if its in their party. Or theyre okay with a president apparently according to multiple witnesses extorting a bribe from a foreign country and others may not be okay with that. They may decide that some votes maybe one vote, but some votes can be bigger than politics or news cycles. Some votes may around here, they still make history and they certainly determine how history remembers you. I want to get into all of that right now with a great panel of experts with me. Christina grier, professor at fordham. Jacob weisberg and the executive director from the center for constitutional rights. Good evening. Hi. I begin with you on the point in the cynical environment where people like to ignore facts, is it the case that not every senator or every republican senator will jump to the Lindsey Graham position that was up furled today which is its all good. Its all gucci. All okay. Yeah. The they wont and they shouldnt. The republicans totally overplayed their hand when they stormed the bastille and they were like these things are happening in private. They need to be in public. They have been running around trying to defend the president which essentially is an indefensible position an at the same time, the president is trying to get his the folks that can give information to congress to not do it. Theres a letter that went from the administration, the state department, to laura coopers lawyers saying we dont think the hearings are fair, you shouldnt testify because theyre not allowing the state department lowers come in. Of course they wont let the state Department Lawyers come in. So the administration is trying to push back youre saying that the democrats theory of the case whether its proven or not is that the problem is parts of the state department were being pulled into the commission of a crime. Absolutely. And thats what the information is demonstrating. And for republicans to once this information comes out theyll have a choice to make as to whether theyre going to stay with the president and his big mouth and anything goes or going to look at the evidence and say what does history demand we do as congress to rebalance the powers of the administration and our congressional allies. Coming off of yesterday which may have been a theatrical stunt of all the House Republicans basically chanting and people used to say you know no justice, to peace. They were saying no public hearings no peace. Like the scif sit in. Right. And we discussed on the show yesterday that it any attempt to do the civil disobead disobedience wearing thin. Today, you have the post and the other indications saying, okay, to peace until we have public hearings. Well have a bunch of public hearings. I think we tend to look at this through the watergate lens but theres an important difference. In water gate, republicans were fundamentally loyal to president nixon. Until the evidence got so powerful that it overwhelmed their loyalty. There is no loyalty to donald trump. What there is is selfinterest and fear. These republicans think their odds of keeping their jobs of getting reelected are better if they stick with trump who is still 80plus percent with republicans than if they come if they switch sides. Well, lets pause on that. Because youre making a deep point i think. Im going to invoke Christina Grier whose views im fame year with. Grier has the same view as Lindsey Graham of 2015. Illegitimate race baiting critic. You have said those things on the program. Specifically. The difference youre drawing is the people have publicly pretended otherwise. And hes only renting them by the hour and the day their selfinterest appears to be greater getting rid of trump theyll jump in a second. And thats why it looks like it looks like a wall right now. It looks like the republicans are holding firm, but if trumps republican support drops from 80 to 60 you would see republicans in swing districts and in swing states i think switch sides. Its like the show succession. Theres no loyalty. Theyre just temporary alliances. Who is jerry . Jerry is a very ruthless but brilliant general counsel. Well, depends which side, right . Rudy giuliani. Yeah. Early rudy. Early rudy. Heres the thing. This reminds me of machiavelli, provinces that are easily won are easily lost so hes building a coalition of men who are afraid of them and theyre doing whatever they can. Theyre going in front of the cameras, donald trump has already castigated the media and theyre pledging the loyalty. We see this every sunday on the sunday shows. We see this with every press conference where they know hes watching television because thats what he does as the president of the United States. But hes broke some many norms in the beginning parts of the presidency he thought that was okay. The language he uses, sort of his hiring and firing approximates. The fact that we havent had a press secretary actually give any sort of response to the nation. The difference is now were realizing he is breaking laws, bribery, quid pro quo, giving the foreign leaders about our interests and intentions. He doesnt understand the presidency as i said from day one and i know hes not read the constitution. Had he read the constitution you would realize in article i is the legislative branch. They have a significant amount of power and he doesnt understand how the house can conduct themselves in a manner where hes just not the king and not in charge. So had he read the federalist papers he would understand the separation of powers make it such that all branches are equal in the eyes of the founding fathers. So because he doesnt have an understanding of the United States government and our operations and practices, he is now painting himself consistently in a corner. And were going to see him lashing out and demanding things of his sycophants and theyll do it temporarily until they realize hes a walking embodiment of quick sand and they have to leave him at some point in time. Hoping they will sort of stand up for the nation and not just for a man. Thinking about Lindsey Graham, who is by the way, an attorney and very close to the president and selfvolunteering to be the lead here as he was with kavanaugh on behalf of the president lets look at the history of Lindsey Graham. The process youre engaging in regarding the attempted impeachment of President Trump is out of bounds. The meaningful presentation on why the house managers and the house of representatives believe bill clinton committed high crimes. A lot of people want to get trump and they dont give a damn about how they get him. To cut this trial short, leave the criminal allegations unanswered will do a lot of damage. I think its dangerous to the presidency. So i dont know if he knows that we have youtube. We have the old clips. Impeachment offense is not the same as a crime. We keep we have to keep coming back to this point. There are crimes that are not impeachable offenses like if trump punched somebody could be a felony, but not an impeachable offenses. Impeachable offenses are abuses of power. Punching somebody is something serious but its a felony as vince is going to remind us to destroy a mailbox. Right . Right. But any president , any public official who happened to destroy a mailbox is unlikely to be impeached for i. Unless they were trying to destroy something inside the mailbox. But the taylor testimony were so inured to trump that really brought home again how shocking and outrageous this behavior was. I mean, first of all, what he was doing to ukraine, a small independent european nation thats an ally, that has part of the country under siege from russia that is living on the life line of our military aid. To hold that military aid to hold them hostage based on a personal political demand of the president is something that should make every american and every republican and Lindsey Graham mad as hell and bill taylor this guy who is not a partisan who is a lifetime Public Servant didnt want dont in this position, but hes spent his career defending the country. A vietnam war veteran. Something is wrong that this man is being put this this position. I totally agree of getting back to christinas view of the constitution, the constitution is the floor below which no president should go. And what were hearing from the republicans now is that the democrats are somehow holding the constitution over the president s head. And if theyre holding the constitution over the president s head that will tell you how low this administration and this president has gone to the point that loyal state Department Officials are defying orders not to testify in order to say that this is actually more important than the blind fealty. And that connects this whole conversation, because the fact that you have people saying we wont testify and them private hearings are bad but we dont want public hearings. And then we dont really want to get into it. I mean, what is so fascinating and the contrast we mentioned in the Mueller Report was the key people spoke to mueller in private but wouldnt in public and that froze up a stalemate there. Where you had a lot of democrats for impeachment and a lot not. And thats kind of where it ended after that. And here, many a matter of weeks the number of Public Officials including people like as mentioned taylor, and bolton, these are nonpartisan people or people willing to take senior posts in the administration and its exactly the evidence that can change everything. Right. But i think what youre saying is its going to be a regular Public Servants who are going to possibly save this democracy. The people that we have elected to represent us, we have seen that a vast majority of republicans have not been doing their job. They have pledged their loyalty to the president and not to the country. And so when we move forward with this, i mean, thats so much fear theres so much fear of people who work around this president because they know that donald trump can only have fiefdoms. We talked about how he never had real boards. He had one or two companies that had a board but the vast majority of the businesses its him as the king. Everybody does as he says, so he thinks why cant we do this in d. C. So moving forward we have to get more and more republicans to understand that if they do not act now they are really essentially destroying the democracy and whether theyre doing it so that i can run for office later or have a little payout or theyre afraid of something from their past, like get over it. We need the nation to move forward. Thats the difference between the alleged russian collusion in 2016 and the bribery plot for 2020. 2016 people can disagree about it but even bob mueller and i read that report ore than once did not conclude showed that the evidence showed an election crime plot. Here, whether its mr. Bolton, talking about the crack pipe and the drug crime and the get me out of the conspiracy, or these Civil Servants and you have detailed and i wont repeat it or other experts are saying, no, this is a plot, it looks like a crime. Its coming from inside the white house. If you dont step up to that youre saying in public its okay to do election crime. I have to get a break, final thought . Well, we need people to come out of the shadows and it is a very difficult thing to do and they will be sort of the saviors of the democracy. But a lot of the anonymous reports in some ways arent helpful because the president hides behind the fact that its anonymous. So it has to be made up. Right. Some of the whistleblowers are anonymous. More and more people come out its all happening. Thats what makes it an interesting time to follow it. A deep conversation, i appreciate it. Coming up, giuliani uncorks a new defense that will not work. Well explain why. A gop insider on the pressures facing the party on the impeachment and a new lawsuit is targeting kushners company. And well bring out the coauthor of the art of the deal, tony schwartz. He has some new ideas. Well explain coming on this special edition of the beat coming up on msnbc. 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Vacuum in the back, hallelujah get 0 financing for 60 months plus 2,250 total bonus cash on the 2019 chrysler pacifica. Lets start off like this. Rudy giuliani has done a lot of interviews, hes said a lot of things. I bet you know about that. But that is actually starting to change and it might be because hes feeling the heat. Two of giulianis indicted associates are back in court pleading for now not guilty to Campaign Finance charges. And while giuliani had said he doesnt think needs a lawyer right now, as of tonight cnn reporting that giuliani has been approaching Defense Attorneys for, yes, possible representation. And while giuliani was not to be clear and fair mentioned in this indictment, we do know the feds are reportedly investigating him and even from whats just publicly known, many parts of the probe look sprawling. It is searching email accounts. Peoples social media. Several Electronic Devices and this striking quote, several identified i should say up identified premises. That means we would expect people going to search homes or businesses or some other premises which is a big deal. Not only that, but add up 50 Different Bank accounts have been subpoenaed. So thats what the federal criminal case looks like thats enough, thats a lot. Then theres the scrutiny on mr. Giulianis dealings with the state department which is central to the impeachment probe and giuliani on a lot of that stuff, he practically invited it.