We are back. we are minutes away, we think, from the resumption of questioning of today s witnesses, fiona hill and david homes. we re joined by nbc s garrett haake live for us on capitol hill. garrett, what is the plan for this afternoon and what do the democrats think they gained from these witnesses, and what if any cautions will the republicans take? reporter: nicolle, democrats feel like there s more to be gained from fiona hill and her expertise particularly on the questions of russian interference. i think they re going to want and use her as a proxy for john bolton in a number of ways about what his view was of this entire ukraine scandal. it s increasingly clear to me at least from my conversations with democrats on the committee, they
President cares about is this fantasy about the 2016 crowd strike and joe biden s son. there is no conceivable way that is that would be very listen. of all the corruption in ukraine if it were true, and i m not saying it is, but if it were true that the president believed that the vice president s son got a payoff to influence u.s. policy, and if it were true that ukraine interfered in the 2016 election, that would be incredibly significant. there is no basis for that. you can t assume fantasies. you can t that s what i m saying. what s in the president s head matters. but we do know, based on david homes, the political counselor, the counsel forr political affairs in ukraine who overheard a conversation directly from the president with ambassador sondland and then ambassador sondland said according to david holmes, the president doesn t care about ukraine.
Lock her up t-shirt that will be the totem for today s news forever. okay, here s what we know we don t have on monday. we know we don t have a jury verdict coming in on monday. we know we don t have a public hearing. but president trump will be allowed to tweet on monday. who knows what happens monday. i m compartmentalizing and refusing to think about that. see you monday. the breaking news of the night is that closed-door deposition of david homes that started this afternoon, just ended about six hours after it started, going late into the night tonight. one of the members of congress who was in that deposition will join us as soon as he can get to us. david holmes opening statement has been obtained by nbc news, and it has rocked washington as much as any of the testimony already made public. and it will have a profound effect on next week s hearings in the impeachment inquiry. one of the striking things revealed in david holmes opening statement is that his testimony was
Undercuts the defense that the president was merely interested in rooting out corruption in ukraine. according to this testimony, what the president was dead set on was ukraine investigating joe biden. also in this testimony, erin, david holmes testifies about this aide, and there were roughly $400 million in security aid that had been withheld and he says that president zelensky of ukraine was supposed to go on cnn and make an announcement that this investigation was going to happen. he makes clear here, erin, that he was concerned that president zelensky would go on it on national television and personally commit to a specific investigation of president trump s political rival. that didn t happen. but couple of days later the aid was released and sent to the ukraine. thank you very much, manu. this is pretty stunning stuff, as you said. i want to go to congressman david swallow, he just attended david homes deposition and i
Where investigations were specifically brought up. he then asked sondland what he thought about ukraine and sondland said he cares more about the bidens than ukraine. this will be their first opportunity to speak to david homes and an important event. house speaker nancy pelosi went further in her accusations against the president. what does that signal? she s laying out the full scope and scale of the investigation and what she believes they found and one important word. what president trump has done on the record, in terms of acting to advantage his foreign power to help him in his own election and the obstruction of information about that, the cover-up makes what nixon did look almost small. the president has admitted to, and says it s perfect. i say it s perfectly wrong. it s bribery. reporter: wolf, it s that