nowhere in that transcript does the president make a demand. you know where the word demand came from? it came from the whistle-blower. that s the first time we heard the wordim demand, when we notified the inspector general for the intelligence community. he said president trump made a demand. he thought he could do that because he thought no one would ever be able to prove, because what president would take the unprecedented step of releasing a transcript with a foreign leader? this president did, something that the whistle-blower never expect expected. president trump, we keep hearing, got caught. president trump, we keep hearing, is obstructing justice. the president thats took the unprecedented step of releasing a transcript so that everyone could see the truth is not obstructing congress. the president didn t get caught.
that think president obama abused his repower, but we didn do thisis to the country. we didn t put him through this nonsense andth this impeachment. youhi all set the standard. we didn t setse it. you said this would have to be bipartisan, compelling and overwhelming. it ain t that. and this looks pretty bad. i yield back. the gentleman yield back. for what purposes miss jayapal seeks recognition? thank you,se mr. chairman. just in response be. strike the lastju word? move to strike the last word. th recognized. in response to my colleague from florida, you cannot argue things both ways. you cannot say that the president was so concerned about ukraine that he released aid, which is true, he released aid in 2017, in 2018, and then suddenly, he became concerned in 2019. right after vice president biden announced he was going to run. if your argument is he was so
us. it is obvious to me that this president has put his personal interests above this country. and with that i will yield back to the gentleman from rhode island. i thank the gentle lady for yielding. we ve just heard our republican colleagues claim that there was no demand, no conditionality for the release of this aids and, in fact it was motivated by the president s deep desire to ferret out corruption. that is laughable. the president of the united states had two phone calls with president zelensky. he never once uttered the word corruption. because it wasn t about corruption and the reason we know that is the department of defense had already certified that steps had been taken to combat corruption back on may 23rd and despite that certification, that hold
answer. on july 25th, another call. president president trump and president zelensky. the word corruption is not mentioned once, but here s what was said. zelensky talks about the defense. and the immediate response is, do us a favor, though. president trump says, i need you to look into some things. not related to procurement of defense arms, but related to a wild conspiracy theory connected to the 2016 campaign and also says, i want you to look into joe biden. then what s interesting, since you thinks it was such a perfe call, he mentions rudolph giuliani. i m looking at the transcripton right now, not once, not twice, three times, why on an official call would the president mention
said, this guy is the real deal, worth the risk, worth sending the hard earned tax dollars of the american people to ukraine. that is what happened. and the facts are very clear. you can make up all the stuff you want, but the facts are on the president s side, always on the president s side. democrats keep saying to get the call, to get the meeting, to get the money there had to be an announcement. december 12th. there has yet to be an announcement from ukraine about any investigation into burisma or the bidens, it s not going to happen because it never needed tove happen. that wasn t the point. they gotat the call, july 25th, got the meeting september 25th and the money september 11th. the other thing i want to point out, i don t know how many times i ve heard this democrats talk about this onemo sentence the president said in the famous call transcript of president zelensky. i would like you to docacr us a favor though. the democrats don t read the