It's Friday night. I am Chris Cuomo. Welcome to prime time. The big unknown at this point is if the president's going to control the Senate the way he did the Republicans in the House and it looks like he just made the question. How's that okay?

You're going to hear from one of the president's closest confidants who just met with him and Rudy Giuliani back at the White House this Friday the 13th Dishing Ukraine Dirt. Another question is the plot that set off this whole mess still underway. What do you say? Let's get after.

All right, we know the full house votes next week. Two articles of impeachment they passed earlier in the judiciary committee. Two party line votes of course 2317. So how's the president feeling about it tonight?

I think it's a horrible thing to be using the tool of impeachment which is supposed to be used in an emergency. It's a scam. It's something that shouldn't be allowed and it's a very bad thing for a country.

Democrats argue that he is what is bad for our country by failing to uphold the law and abusing his power. That's why congressman Cecilini last night made his historic aye vote actually made it today.

He will be part of the judiciary committee that passed these first two out of the committee. Remember it's all history. Now it goes on to the full chamber vote.

I'm going to ask you a question. What happens next? He joins me now. Thank you very much. Appreciate it after a week. Not the kind of history you hope to make when you go to congress but here we are nonetheless.

The outrage from your colleagues on the right. I would often read on your face that you were picking up some of it as feigned. Like you were looking on with a little bit almost as where is this coming from?

Do you believe that some of their outrage at the process and outrage at how this was going was pretend?

Look, there's no question that they were talking about process for most of the evening because they really couldn't answer the facts.

They couldn't really respond to the overwhelming evidence that the president of the United States attempted to a course, a foreign leader to corrupt our elections by dragging them in to help him cheat in the 2020 election and used hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer money as leverage.

What was just shocking is there was no ability or willingness of our Republican colleagues to acknowledge is that okay? Is it ever okay for the president of the United States to reach out to a foreign power and try to get them to help him or her win re-election and to cheat in this way?

And the truth is if we let that happen we will have lost our democracy because you know who gets to decide who's going to be the American president, the American people, the citizens of this great country.

And the idea that all throughout the night we try to ask them is this okay? And then I finally asked them what about in your own re-election? Would it be okay for you to reach out to a foreign power?

Raise your hand and they wouldn't do it. And I think we were exasperated. They couldn't respond to the overwhelming evidence, really un-contradicted. So what they talked about was process process process.

Two points. One is why so fast? They kept saying why not witnesses? Why didn't you bring us witnesses? What's your answer?

Well, first of all, we had 17 witnesses over 100 hours of testimony. But the real answer is the president is a danger to our democracy. This is an ongoing crime. This is a crime in progress.

We have an election right around the corner. If we don't stop this by holding the president accountable and moving forward with articles and impeachment, he will think that he can continue to behave this way. It will be a message to him and to other future presidents or presidential candidates that you can seek foreign assistance.

If you're facing a tough re-election, pick up the phone, call the Iranians, the Chinese, the Russians. We will lose our democracy, we will end up with a dictatorship or monarchy.

The most sacred right we have is to right to decide our own future by electing our own president and other elect officials. This is the heart and soul of our democracy. The president abused the enormous power of his office.

He betrayed the national security interests of the United States to advance his own personal interests. It's exactly what our framers spoke about when they talked about impeachment. It's when a president abuses the power of his office, betrays the national interests to advance his own personal political financial interests.

That's exactly what we have.

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