Nancy McEldowney & James Baker on This Week’s Hearings

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Do you believe that this witnessing now by apparently two staff members of a phone call between Ambassador Sondland and President Trump, where they heard him talk about the investigation, is that a critical piece of information and evidence?

JAMES BAKER, FORMER FBI GENERAL COUNSEL: It’s a critical piece of information and evidence, but I don’t think it’s the smoking gun. We have the rough transcript already in which the president is talking about this. And I think objectively, it is not a perfect call. It is — it looks on its four corners like an improper action by the president and abuse of his power to get a foreign country to investigate an American citizen, and not only an American citizen, but a political opponent for the purpose of the president enabling himself to stay in power. That’s really what he’s trying to do. He abused his power to try to stay in power. We’ve got the — you know, we’ve already got the transcript. That was the — you know, in the Watergate era, the transcript that took President Nixon down was the smoking gun. Here, we sort of had that at the start. I think the only other thing, just real quick, is if some of these other witnesses who have spoken and interacted directly with the president come forward and say other things, especially with respect to the withholding of the military aid, that’s been one of the critical things that the Republicans have been pointing to. If they come forward and have interesting or useful information about that, that could really change the tide, I think, with respect to how the Senate thinks about it and how the public thinks about it.

AMANPOUR: Well, it is said by Bill Taylor that Sondland did speak to the – – one of the national security officials, presidential advisers of President Zelensky, and said precisely that. And his testimony, we are told, will be critical next week. But I want to turn to Nancy McEldowney, who knows Ambassador Yovanovitch very well, and obviously, who will be front and center in the public hearings tomorrow. Yovanovitch was not there around this famous phone call and around all this latest. But she was there when she saw the so-called irregular channels, the private freelancing of foreign policy and personal business interests by, allegedly, Rudy Giuliani and his cronies. What will we hear from Ambassador Yovanovitch that will be very important to this process going on right now, since she wasn’t around for that famous phone call?

NANCY MCELDOWNEY, FORMER DIRECTOR, U.S. FOREIGN SERVICE INSTITUTE: That’s right. She had been recalled and fired before the phone call itself took place. But what Yovanovitch can speak to is the fact that for almost a year prior to her removal, there had been a campaign, a concerted and illegitimate campaign that was run at — by Rudy Giuliani at the behest of the president with the help of these two henchmen who are now under indictment to both undermine and smear her,