The secretary of state is now refusing to push back on the debunked notion that ukraine and not russia interfered in the 2016 election. And while trump was talking tonight in florida, the person in his administration known as anonymous was answering questions on reddit. Anonymous had plenty of things to say tonight that the president will not like, and we will be joined by a reporter who will bring us those biggest moments from the q a a little bit later. But first tonight, he knew. New reporting from the New York Times shows that President Trump knew about the whistleblower complaint weeks before news of the complaint was made public. Quote, trump had already been briefed on a whistleblowers complaint about his dealings with ukraine when he unfroze military aid for the country in september, according to two people familiar with the matter. Lawyers from the White House Counsels Office told mr. Trump in late august about the complaint explaining they were trying to determine whether they were legally required to give it to congress. According to the times it is unclear how much detail the lawyers provided trump about the complaint, but this does mean that the president knew that the whistleblower had accused him of wrongdoing before he told Eu AmbassadorGordon Sondland there was no quid pro quo. And before he ordered the ukraine aid to be released. As the impeachment investigation moves forward, something well get to in a moment. And the walls continue to close in on the president , it seems no one not even one of his closest allies is immune from getting thrown under the bus. Heres trump in an interview with bill oreilly talking about Rudy Giuliani. What was Rudy Giuliani doing in ukraine on your behalf . Well, you have to ask that to rudy but rudy i dont even know i know he was going to go to ukraine and i think he canceled the trip. But, you know, rudy has other clients other than me. Im one so you didnt direct him to go there on your behalf . No. Rudy has other clients. Buckle up, Rudy Giuliani. Lets get this straight. Despite hours of interviews and dozens of questions on ukraine over the last couple of months including an hour on fox just the other day, the president has never said that before. And this whole bus meet rudy thing is coming just days after giuliani once again made this strange remark about what would happen if he was ever thrown under the bus. You can assume that i talked to him early and often. Yeah. And have a very, very Good Relationship with him. And all of these comments which are totally insulting, i mean ive seen things written like hes going to throw me under the bus. When i say that i say he isnt but i have insurance. I have insurance. Stay tuned for what rudy says in response to trumps latest comments. And less we forget all this is happening while we are one big step closer to seeing possible articles of impeachment drawn up against the president. The title of the hearing, the impeachment inquiry into president donald j. Trump, constitutional grounds for president ial impeachment. A democratic aide tells nbc news that the witnesses for this first hearing will be academics like constitutional scholars and impeachment experts. Judiciary Committee Chairman jerry nadler sent a letter to trump asking whether he and his counsel plan to attend the hearing and question witnesses. Chairman nadler reminded the president house rules do entail him as chairman to curtail that, if quote you continue to refuse to make witnesses and documents available related to the impeachment investigation. In his letter to the president chairman nadler writes i remind you that the participation of the president or his counsel has been described by the committee in past inquiries as not a right but a privilege or courtesy which is being extended to the president s counsel. I am hopeful you and your counsel will opt to participate in the committees hearing consistent with the rules of decorum and with the solemn nature of the work before us. This hearing will likely take place just as the House Intelligence Committee sends its written report summarizing the findings of its investigation into President Trumps efforts to enlist ukraine into discrediting his political rival. The Judiciary Committee is expected to use that report to draft articles of impeachment in the coming week. I spoke earlier with congressman madeleine dean, a member of the Judiciary Committee about what she will be looking for as this process unfolds. I believe i have to be as thoughtful as possible. Thats why i want to see the report. I want to read and digest the report and see where it leads us. Because what we have to combine is the evidence. It could be one article, three articles, it could be four. But then the evidence and the judiciary matches that to the law. I swore on january 3rd i would up hold the constitution of the United States. So i want to see all of the evidence, not prejudge articles of impeachment. Put merit to the constitution as well as my own oath. Leading off our discussion tonight is jill winebanks, former assistant Watergate Special prosecutor and legal analyst. And neera tanden, and bill crystal, editor at large for the bullwork and director and served in senior positions of the reagan and bush administrations. Everyone, welcome. Its hard to begin but i think the biggest headline, jill, is that the president knew about the whistleblower complaint in late august. That means he knew about it before he spoke to Gordon Sondland, the Eu Ambassador saying there was no quid pro quo. He knew about it before he released the aid. If you were a prosecutor working on impeachment, if you were a lawmaker or House Counsel working on impeachment, what would you be asking . I would have already assumed that what youve said was true to begin with. There was no other reason for the release of the money except that they got caught redhanded. So id be asking for all the details from the omb about the withholding of the release of it. Id also be trying to let the American People know about the budget act that made it illegal to with hold money that had been appropriated for a specific purpose within the fiscal year and what was wrong with doing that. And then you just have a time line that has become more and more and more convincing that theres no conclusion but that donald trump acted for his own personal interests and against the interests of the American Public. And thats where were at is that he has committed an impeachable offense, although that needs to be defined, and thats what the hearings in december are for is to define and thats very much what happened in watergate. The first part of the Judiciary Committee was defining what is a high crime and misdemeanor, what is an impeachable act, so thats an important starting point. Bill, this has been a republican defense, its been the president s defense that they release the aid, there cant be a quid pro quo because there was no quid here, there was no pro quo part it. There was no favor in return for the favor. But this shows there was a really and wed already known this, but theres an even more suspect time line. We already knew the i. G. Sent the whistleblower complaint to congress two days before the president released the aid and that the Intel Committee and two other committees started an investigation into this two days before the president released the aid. Now were learning the president himself knew about this complaint in late august. What does this do to the republican defense . You know the president he may have well have participated in trying to prevent the report from getting out and getting to congress. I think the coverup of the whistleblower report is another thing itll become clear in the next few days and really is clear already there was a real coverup in addition to the extortion the attempt to extort from ukraine information false information probably about joe biden. I mean, trump gets told about this whistleblower report, that seems a little odd. And remember they dont send it to the hill, right . And director of National Intelligence mcgwire testifies and wont say. Its obvious when trump talks to sondland and reads that statement theres no quid pro quo here, thats been written by a lawyer in the white house. Theres a real coverup here as well as an abuse of power. Does anyf of this matter to republicans . Does any revelation matter to republicans . Yeah, if you dont care about the facts and decide youre going into your tribal defense of the president no matter what. It is striking. Its two months since this story really broke. Public opinion has moved more than people expected, a. B, i do think trump has behaved more and more erratically and really reminded any republican who has the eyes to want to see how dangerous it is really for him to be in office, honestly. I think the pardon of the war criminals, the now sort of praising of them and attacking the entire military system of justice as somehow the deep state that was out to get these people, i mean people i dont know. Ive talk today a lot of these members. There are a few. There are more than people realize i think who are open perhaps to voting for impeachment. Theyre going to keep very quiet to the end because they just get pummelled if they stick their head out. Ive got to say the number of conservative journalists and sort of writers, the number of republicans all over the place who just decided to throw in with trump is depressing. Lets talk about Rudy Giuliani, neera. The president was on with bill oreilly a little bit earlier today, formerly of fox news. And people have been asking when the president was going to try to distance himself from Rudy Giuliani. He hadnt done it until suddenly today. Lets listen. Rudy giuliani, but hes your personal lawyer. Giuliani is your personal lawyer. So you didnt direct him to go to crew crane or put the heat on him . No, i didnt direct him but hes a warrior. Rudys a lawyer. Rudy went but you have to understand rudy has other people he represents. Yeah, he has a big firm that doesnt work. I think hes done work in ukraine for years. Isnt it interesting and a real coincidence that the president himself mentioned these investigations and the transcript of the call with president zelensky on july 25th. And then Rudy Giuliani just also happened to be looking into the same thing but it wasnt directed by the president . Neera, what do you think . I mean, i would if i were Rudy Giuliani, i would look at Donald Trumps pattern of loyalty and the people who have been fired by donald trump over the last several years and perhaps when hes in real legal jeopardy to be serious about this the Southern District of new york has a real investigation of Rudy Giuliani. They have i mean as far as we can tell they have already indicted two people, and they seem to be doing an extensive investigation. If the president of the United States who has used the doj to as basically his own personal legal firm refuses to protect rudy, i think thats a very bad sign for Rudy Giuliani. I want to emphasize one thing bill said which is we are learning facts, obviously, in realtime. But we should be clear. The coverup is something that is a new piece of information. The fact that the whistleblowers complaint was essentially hidden from congress seemingly at the direction of donald trump who was the subject of the whistleblower complaint, does seem to be at least additional grounds for obstruction. And i think this is a several layers of complication that make getting rid of the dirt here even more important, which would make rudy an easier target. Jill, would you want to hear from Rudy Giuliani . Would you be making every effort to hear from him if you were working on impeachment . I would definitely want to hear from him, but i also want to hear from all the other witnesses who have refused to come in. I think the courts decision yesterday makes it very clear that there is no such thing as absolute immunity and that witnesses have to show up. And i think with rudy there is so much evidence that he is key to this, i dont know how the president can say, well, he has many other clients, when in the phone calls memorandum we see he says talk to rudy. So hes telling the crew cranians to talk to rudy. How can he now say rudy wasnt acting on my behalf even though i told the ukrainians he was and hes really important. So the defense becomes more and more unbelievable, more and more improbable, and no one can accept it anymore. I still hold out some hope that republicans will start to accept the facts much like what happened in watergate. And id also point out one of the grounds for impeachment was lying to the public. And certainly donald trump has outperformed Richard Nixon in that regard. And this one is certainly one of them. Bill, i want to know what you think about the polls. Should we be looking at how the public feels about impeachment, or is this something wholly different from Public Opinion . Right now 50 say donald trump should be impeached and removed from office. It seemed to level off. Should lawmakers be paying attention to it or voting and deciding based on what they believe their constitutional duties are . This is quite often lawmakers will take the constituents views into account. Often they should give them a lot of weight if its some economic interest. This is case, though, where they did swear an oath to the constitution, and theres a long tradition of lawmakers in britain and the u. S. Explaining on matters of this kind of gravity theyve got to do the right thing, not simply the most expedient thing in terms of a possible primary challenge or whatever. Its not for me an acceptable excuse, therefore, for republicans to privately say, oh, my god, can you believe this new information about trump . But, hey, you know, my voters will be upset if i do the right thing. And i do think in a certain way even liberals in the media and democrats have been a little too accepting of that. None of us wants to look naive or simpleminded. So we all know, come on, of course theyre not dwroeg to do the right thing if their constituents, some of their constituents, their own partisan supporters dont want them to. Go on. 50 of the American People believe that donald trump should be removed from office. That is very high number given given where impeachments usually are. And, you know, i think that is a stunning number. Of course it hasnt moved a lot because 50 is very high number. And i mean, Strong Majority of women. 60 of women think he should be removed from office. That is i think something no republican should take comfort in. I just want to explain that last graphic we put up. Cnn has been asking for every president since clinton, bush, obama and trump, just support for impeachment in general even though for bush and obama impeachment was not on the table and always hovered around 30 . And trump is at 50 , and that is markedly more people. We appreciate it. Coming up, more breaking news and more bad news for the president. The final deposition taken by the House Intelligence Committee in its impeachment investigation was released tonight. A former omb staffer laid out in detail how the hold on the aid to ukraine actually went down. Thats next. The aid to ukraine actually went down. Thats next. Oh, ho oh, ho, ho, ho you. You got me. Uh, what do you want . Ive got uh, ai robots, ive got vr goggles. I want your sled, please. No. [ chuckles ] timmy. Itd be a shame if this went viral. For those who never compromise. The mercedesbenz winter event. Whoa. He was pretty good this year. Im a verizon engineer, and im part of the Team Building the most powerful 5g experience for america. Its 5g ultra wideband for massive capacity and ultrafast speeds. Almost 2 gigs here in minneapolis. Thats 25 times faster than todays network in new york city. So people from midtown manhattan to downtown denver can experience what our 5g can deliver. woman and if verizon 5g can deliver performance like this in these places. Its pretty crazy. Just imagine what it can do for you. Tonight House Democrats released the final transcript from the closed door depositions of the impeachment investigation, and one of those transcripts contains the testimony of mark sandy, the only official from the White House Office of management and budget to testify. You might remember diplomat bill taylor telling the Intel Committee that he learned ukraines security aid was being withheld when an omb official told him Via Teleconference that the order came from the president to the chief of staff to omb. Well, mark sandys deposition gives us more color about what was happening behind the scenes at omb. He testified he told omb lawyers and leadership the order which came without explanation may very well have violated the law. And two staffers left after expressing frustrations about the hold on ukrainian aid. He spent it last several hours combing through these transcripts. Josh, i think there were 400 pages speedreader. What did you learn . What was the most important detail . A lot of reading to go through tonight, katey, but it was worth it because we had new information we did not have before. The new information being we now know there was not one but two official