CNN "Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees" - Transcript: Interview with Rep. Jamie Raskin

Interview

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Let's get some perspective from House Judiciary Committee member, Maryland Congressman Jamie Raskin.

Congressman, these new details from "The Times", how much do they change or do they change the calculus for the Democrats here?

REP. JAMIE RASKIN (D-MD): Well, they fill in a lot of the details that were kind of abundantly directed to by Ambassador Sondland who said everyone was in the loop. "The New York Times" report suggests everyone was in the loop. Everyone understood it.

"The Times" report also demonstrates meticulous consciousness of guilt as the White House officials involved tried to cover their tracks and tried to displace their own responsibility onto the Department of Defense and other actors.

[20:10:04]

But ultimately, the report demonstrates that one person and one person only was at the heart of the entire scheme against Zelensky and that was Donald Trump. He hatched it. He conceived of it. He executed it, and he swept up all of these different government powers in the process.

And so, they withheld the money. That's a violation of the Constitution itself because under Article 1, it's Congress that decides where money should go and we appropriated that money. It cleared the Department of Defense anti-corruption protocol. And they violated the Impoundment Control Act by not notifying us formally they were trying to withhold that money.

COOPER: Does "The Times" -- did the details give Nancy Pelosi more of a reason to delay sending the articles of impeachment over to the Senate, do you think?

RASKIN: Well, no, I don't think so. I mean, look, we had 17 witnesses who were sworn under oath. And they all told us different parts of the exact same story, which is the president executed a shakedown of the Ukrainian President Zelensky in order to get him involved in our presidential campaign in order to smear Joe Biden, in order to rehabilitate this discredited conspiracy theory about 2016. That's the basic story. Now we could have had 18, 19, 20 witnesses if we were willing to drag this on for months, but all of them have told us the exact same thing.

In any event, what's put into the bill of indictment, which is what an impeachment is, doesn't have to be exhaustive. That's what the trial is for. And so, at the trial, the Senate ought to call everybody who they think they need to fill in any material element missing from the case.

What we don't have right now is any kind of alibi or any kind of alternative hypothesis about what happened. Everybody agrees this is not an Agatha Christie mystery. At this point, we know exactly what the president did. And I think that all of the senators have to have a fair and open mind, including the Democrats who must be open to any exculpatory evidence, any evidence that contradicts the overwhelming weight of evidence coming out of the House.

But unless that evidence comes forward, I would say that this is one of the most open and shut cases I've ever seen in my life.

COOPER: Certainly, Republicans see it differently, particularly in the Senate, and don't seem so inclined to bring forward any evidence or witnesses. How does this stalemate, if that's what it is, how does it get solved?

RASKIN: But look at the conundrum in what you just said. If they don't see it the same way and if the president is convinced this is a fraud, a hoax, B.S., everything that he's called it, then he should bring forward the witnesses that will show that. He should bring forward people to swear under oath why all of the other witnesses were wrong and why the House of Representatives' understanding of what took place is false.

But it doesn't help just to sit on the sidelines and throw tomatoes and eggs especially when Chief of Staff Mulvaney himself has basically confirmed it saying, of course, there are political quid pro quos in the way we conduct our foreign policy. And the president himself has basically said this is what I wanted from Ukraine, I wanted them to go after the Bidens. So, what we have essentially is one story, which is the president

tried to drag a foreign government into our election in order to get himself re-elected. And that is a high crime and misdemeanor. It's a crime in progress, and if we let it go, American democracy will be forever altered in a very negative way.

COOPER: Yes. And if all you have is eggs and tomatoes to throw -- that's what you end up throwing. I mean, it doesn't seem like they have an argument to actually make.

RASKIN: Well, you know, the president blockaded a whole series of witnesses in his cabinet, the secretary of state, secretary of energy, head of Office of Management and Budget. He can send those people to go and testify if he has an alibi, if he has an alternative story.

Right now, we have not seen one. And what we need from the Senate is a commitment to have a fair trial.

COOPER: Yes.

RASKIN: The reason why the Constitution uses the language of a trial and the chief justice of the United States superintendents the whole process is because it has to have the integrity of a trial. There got to be witnesses, there's got to be evidence. The jurors have to be open to evidence on all sides and then there has to be a fair outcome that the country will recognize as a real adjudication of what took place.

COOPER: Yes. Congressman Raskin, appreciate your time. Thank you.

Coming up, Rudy Giuliani, a new reporting on his involvement, a shadow diplomacy someplace far from Ukraine but kind of similar in almost every other respect.

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