-Last night 10 candidates
faced off in the fifth Democratic debate.
From the beginning of the debate,
substantive policy issues were at the forefront,
and I'm just [bleep] with you.
We're gonna talk about impeachment.
[ Laughter ]
For more on this, it's time for "A Closer Look."
[ Cheers and applause ]
It's been an explosive week of testimony in Washington,
and if you'd like an example of just how shocking and crazy
things have been, I'd like to direct you to C-SPAN,
the network of empty chairs and sleeping congressmen.
C-SPAN is normally a source of calm and consistency,
but the tone was a little different today
when they were taking calls on impeachment
and someone from Florida called in
after someone from Alabama and said this.
-Howdy.
I just want to apologize first and foremost
for all the morons on the calls earlier,
especially from Alabama and all that.
Secondly I just want to say impeach the [bleep].
Have a great day.
[ Laughter ]
-Thanks, Monty, in Florida.
That's it for phone calls right now.
-Oh, my God.
Impeachment has been so crazy,
C-SPAN is turning into "Howard Stern."
[ Laughter ]
So that's just a little glimpse
in how crazy Washington's been this week.
Now, the actual impeachment hearings
have been nothing short of jaw-dropping,
with one bombshell after another.
The testimony this week has directly tied virtually
every senior official in Trump's inner circle
to a corrupt quid pro quo in which the President used
hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer money
appropriated by Congress to solicit a bribe
from a foreign country to help him in the 2020 election.
That's it.
That's the major takeaway I wish everyone would remember.
In fact, if I knew how to cross-stitch,
I'd get that sewn onto a pillow and sell it in the NBC store.
[ Laughter ]
Although the merch in the C-SPAN store is much better.
[ Laughter ]
Now, remember, before these hearings,
the only line of defense Trump and his allies had,
the line they kept repeating over and over and over again
was that there was no quid pro quo with Ukraine.
-There's no quid pro quo, no demand,
no pressure, no threat.
-There's no quid pro quo.
-There was no quid pro quo.
-There is no quid pro quo. -There is no quid pro quo.
-There was no quid pro quo. -There was no quid pro quo.
-There was no quid pro quo.
-But listen to this. There is no pro quo.
-In a way, that's Trump's best defense.
"How could I be guilty of something
if I can't even remember how to say it?"
[ Laughter ]
So there you go.
Trump says there was no pro quo,
which sounds like something a tourist would say in Europe when
one of those dudes comes into the restaurant, selling flowers.
"Scuzi? No, no pro quo."
[ Laughter ]
But yesterday that talking point was completely blown up
when Trump's hand-picked ambassador
to the European Union, Gordon Sondland,
a businessman who donated a million dollars
to Trump's inaugural committee and who was a central player
in the Ukraine scheme said there was, in fact, a quid pro quo.
-Was there a quid pro quo?
As I testified previously
with regard to the requested White House call
and the White House meeting, the answer is yes.
-Man, not only did he answer the key question,
he asked it himself.
Gordon Sondland was so determined to bring down Trump,
he didn't even need anyone else in the room with him.
He could've just interviewed himself.
"Mr. Sondland, was there a quid pro quo?
Yes, Mr. Sondland, there was.
And that's the T."
[ Laughter and applause ]
So there it is.
He settled it definitively once and for all --
there was, in fact, a quid pro quo.
What could Trump's defense possibly be?
"I never said there was no quid pro quo.
I said there was..."
-No pro quo.
-"Totally different."
So everyone in the White House knew what was going on.
In fact, Sondland named tons of people,
from Trump to Vice President Mike Pence,
all the way down the chain.
-President Trump, Vice President Pence,
Secretary Perry, Ambassador Volker,
Secretary Pompeo, Ambassador Bolton,
Chief of Staff Mulvaney, Rudy Giuliani.
-My God, it's like he was reading from
a phone book of criminals.
I guess in this case, it would be called the very white pages.
[ Laughter ]
So everyone knew what was happening,
or as Sondland put it in his testimony yesterday...
-Everyone was in the loop.
It was no secret.
-Of course, this administration has no secrets
because every time they do something secret,
Rudy Giuliani runs to the nearest TV camera,
confesses to everything, and gives us the evidence.
-Did our State Department ask you to go on a mission for them?
-They did.
-So you did ask Ukraine to look into Joe Biden.
-Of course I did.
And you know who I did it at the request of?
The State Department. It's all here, right here.
-He literally confessed to all of it
then showed us the evidence.
Rudy already held his own impeachment inquiry by himself.
He's like a guy who sees the cops at his door and breaks down
before they ask him a question.
"Fine, I robbed a bank.
Here's the gun I used, and here's the cash."
"Sir, I am just here to check the meter."
[ Laughter ]
So, in many ways, we already knew the core facts
at the heart of the case,
but this week's testimony has made it clear as day,
yes, there was way quid pro quo,
yes, it was ordered by the President,
yes, everyone else knew about it,
and, yes, it was designed specifically to help Trump
win the 2020 election,
which is important because the other line of defense
Republicans have used was that Trump was concerned about
corruption in Ukraine in general.
In fact, Rudy Giuliani,
who is reportedly under criminal investigation,
repeated that argument yesterday in an interview with Glenn Beck,
but I don't think it came out quite the way Rudy intended it.
-It's rumored they're investigating me for bribery.
I'd like to know who I bribed.
I don't bribe people.
I've been doing this for 50 years in my life.
I've never had a complaint.
I think people understand
that I have a very, very great passion for corruption.
[ Laughter ]
-No, that didn't --
that didn't come out the way he wanted it to.
You made it sound like corruption
is one of your hobbies.
That's how someone would describe themselves
in their Tinder bio.
"I have a great passion for swimming, horseback riding,
corruption, and pulling the skin
all the way back behind my head."
You got to be careful how you phrase stuff, man.
Rudy saying he has a great passion for corruption
would be like O.J. saying,
"Man, I'd kill for a ham sandwich right now."
[ Laughter ]
Two people?
[ Laughter and applause ]
But obviously this was not about corruption in general.
This was about helping Trump specifically.
Yesterday, for example, Sondland admitted in an exchange
with Congressman Sean Patrick Maloney
that the investigations were explicitly designed to benefit
Trump, although it took some coaxing to get it out of him.
-Who would have benefited from an investigation
of the President's political opponents?
-I don't want to characterize
who would've and who would not have.
-I know you don't want to, sir.
That's my question.
Would you answer it for me?
-Restate your question.
-Who would benefit from an investigation
of the President's political opponent?
-Well, presumably the person who asked for the investigation.
-Who is that?
-If the President asked for the investigation, it would be he.
-Well, it's not a hypothetical, is it, sir?
Who would benefit from an investigation of the Bidens?
-There are two different questions.
-I'm just asking one.
Who would benefit from an investigation of the Bidens?
-I assume President Trump would benefit.
-There we have it, see.
[ Applause ]
-Trump. The answer was Trump.
That exchange was excruciating.
It was like watching someone else open a pickle jar,
and when they finally got it open,
the only pickle inside was one with weird hair on it.
[ Laughter ]
So, you heard Sondland very clearly there.
This was all orchestrated to hurt Trump's political rivals
and help the President win.
And today we got more testimony to confirm that fact
from a state Department official named David Holmes.
Holmes was with Sondland in Ukraine
when Sondland called Trump to talk about the scheme
and Holmes overheard that conversation.
Now, you'll recall that yesterday Sondland confirmed
the account that Holmes had given,
an account Holmes repeated today.
-I heard Ambassador Sondland greet the President
and explain he was calling from Kiev.
I heard President Trump then clarify that Ambassador Sondland
was in Ukraine.
Ambassador Sondland replied, yes, he was in Ukraine,
and went on to state that President Zelensky
"loves your ass."
I then heard President Trump ask,
"So, he's going to do the investigation?"
Ambassador Sondland replied that "he's going to do it."
-He also testified that you confirmed to President Trump
that you were in Ukraine at the time
and that President Zelensky "loves your ass."
Do you recall saying that?
-Yeah, it sounds like something I would say.
[ Laughter ]
-That is the face of a man who has no [bleep] left to give.
[ Laughter and applause ]
"Yeah, man."
[ Cheers and applause ]
"Oh, yeah. That sounds like Gordon Sondland.
About to crack open a brewski. It's party time."
[ Laughter ]
So Holmes overheard Trump ask Sondland
about the investigations, and just in case
it wasn't absolutely clear what they were talking about
when Sondland got off the phone with Trump,
Holmes asked him to clarify
and Sondland confessed to everything on the spot.
-After the call ended, Ambassador Sondland remarked
that the President was in a bad mood,
as Ambassador Sondland stated was often the case
early in the morning.
I then took the opportunity to ask Ambassador Sondland
for his candid impression of the President's views on Ukraine.
In particular, I asked Ambassador Sondland
if it was true that the President did not give
a expletive about Ukraine.
Ambassador Sondland agreed that the President
did not give an expletive about Ukraine.
-Hey, man, you don't got to bleep yourself.
You could just say it.
We're way past bleeping.
A porn star went on TV
and talked about the President's [bleep]
and people dropping F-bombs on C-SPAN.
We are through the looking glass, baby.
[ Laughter ]
But then Holmes continued and said that Sondland
made it clear to him that all Trump cared about
was investigating his political rival, Joe Biden.
-Ambassador Sondland agreed that the President
did not give an expletive about Ukraine.
I asked why not.
Ambassador Sondland stated that the President
only cares about big stuff.
I noted there was big stuff going on in Ukraine,
like a war with Russia.
And Ambassador Sondland replied that he meant big stuff
that benefits the President,
like the Biden investigation that Mr. Giuliani was pushing.
I briefed the call in detail to the deputy commission,
went away for a week, come back,
I referred to the call, and everyone is nodding.
Of course that's what's going on.
Of course the President
is pressing for a Biden investigation
before he'll do these things the Ukrainians the want.
There was nodding agreement.
Everyone by that point agreed.
It was obvious what the President was pressing for.
-It was obvious this is about the Bidens.
Sondland said it himself.
In fact, I got Rudy on FaceTime right now.
Rudy, did you ask Ukraine to investigate the Bidens?
-Of course I did. -Thank you.
[ Laughter ]
And if you're wondering how Holmes could've overheard
Trump speaking on Sondland's phone,
Holmes even did a physical re-enactment
to show just how loud Trump was yelling.
-When the President came on, he sort of winced
and held the phone away from his ear like this,
and he did that for the first couple of exchanges.
That's how I was able to hear it.
-I definitely believe that's how it happened.
That's just how old people talk in a phone.
They think every phone is like a ham radio during World War II.
"Hello, is anyone out there?!
Are you receiving this message?!
Does he love my ass?!"
[ Laughter and applause ]
So Rudy was at the center of this,
and everything he was doing, he did at the express direction
of the President.
Everyone knew what was going on,
even if they weren't happy about it.
In fact, Sondland made that clear in his testimony yesterday
and again today Holmes
and former national security official Fiona Hill
made it clear, using several colorful metaphors.
-President Trump directed us to "talk with Rudy."
Mr. Giuliani's requests were a quid pro quo.
Mr. Giuliani was expressing the desires
of the President of the United States.
-Ambassador Bolton had looked pained,
basically indicated with body language
that there was nothing much that we could do about it.
And he then, in the course of that discussion, said
that Rudy Giuliani was a hand grenade
that was going to blow everyone up.
-Someone wondered aloud why Mr. Giuliani was so active
in the media with respect to Ukraine.
My recollection is that Ambassador Sondland stated,
"Damn it, Rudy.
Every time Rudy gets involved, he goes and effs everything up."
-I love that they were all mad at Rudy for going on TV
and blabbing about their scheme.
They're like guys planning a bank heist going,
"Alright, it's a perfect plan.
There's no way we'll get caught.
Wait, wait, wait, no, no, no, where's Rudy?
Where's Rudy? Oh, no, no, no."
[ Laughter ]
So Holmes shared his recollections
of what he overheard on the phone call with Trump.
Trump was on the other end, but he was speaking loudly enough
that Holmes could hear him, an account that Sondland himself
confirmed yesterday, but still,
Trump and his allies remain unconvinced.
Trump, for example, insisted this morning that overhearing
someone on a phone call was impossible
and he would know because he's tried.
-President Trump not buying it on Twitter, explaining,
"I've been watching people
making phone calls my entire life.
My hearing is and has been great.
Never have I been watching a person making a call
which was not on speaker phone
and been able to hear or understand the conversation.
I even tried, but to no avail."
-You are a weird, weird man.
[ Laughter ]
What do you mean you've been watching people
make calls your entire life?
What do you mean?
I'm willing to bet the only reason it didn't work is
because when he listens to phone calls,
Trump stands right behind you
and makes no attempt to hide himself.
"Oh, excuse me, sir. Do you mind going away?"
"No, I can't go away because I'm listening to your phone call."
Here's what we learned this week.
There was a corrupt quid pro quo
in which the President of the United States
solicited a bribe from a foreign country
to interfere in the 2020 election,
and everyone knew about it.
We have the testimony. We have the evidence.
That's it. It's an open-and-shut case.
The Republicans have no defense.
So all they can do is lie and attack the witnesses.
I don't know what they'll do next,
but as for the Democrats, it sure looks like they're gonna...
-Impeach the [bleep]
-This has been "A Closer Look."