End of the fiscal year, we did and an analysis of what other countries were doing. And i cant remember if it was zero or near zero dollars from any European Countries for lethal aid. Youve heard the president say we give them tanks and other countries give them pillows. That is right. As vocal at the europeans are about supporting ukraine, they are really, really stingy when it coming to lethal aid. They werent helping ukraine and to this day are not. And the president did not like that. Long answer, but im still going. Those were the driving factors. Did he also mention to me that the corruption that related to the dnc server . Absolutely. No question. But that is it. And that is why we held up the money. So the demand for an investigation into the democrats was part of the reason that he ordered to withhold funding to ukraine . The look back to what happened in 2016 certainly was part of the thing that he was worried about in corruption with that nation. And that is appropriate. To w
outside adviser to the president is problematic? that is the president s call. steve scalise got asked this and he said you may not like the fact i understand from reading his opening statement that sondland didn t like giuliani was involved and great. you may not like the fact. that is great. it is not impeachable. the president can use whoever he wants to use. if he wants to fire me today, he can. the president gets to set foreign policy and he gets to choose who. as long as it doesn t violate any laws regarding confidential information or classified material, the president gets to use who he wants to. did the president direct you or anyone else to work with rudy giuliani on ukraine? yeah, when was it, there was a may meeting and i think thisw. sondland mentioned it and i m
i think pick mullpick mick m just basically printed himself a ticket to come down here and testify. sondland has been in this room a couple hours thousand. and his opening statement tries to pull sonde land out of the fire saying he was not as involved as folks would like to believe. but he does point the finger back at president trump saying that president trump s lawyer rudy giuliani was not freelancing here, that in fact it was the president of the united states who directed he gordon sondland, rick perry and others that if they wanted to work on ukraine issues, do it through rudy giuliani. in the big picture part of this, it just puts all the focus back on the president of the united states and the folks he had working for him doing what amounts to off the books diplomacy. and in this case rudy giuliani. it lines up with what we ve heard from other witnesses that the state department, the ambassadors, folks supposed to be doing this kind of foreign
northern triangle countries so that they would change their policies on immigration. by the way, and this speaks to an important story? this speaks to an important point. i heard this yesterday and i can never remember the gentleman. mckinney? i don t know. but he testified yesterday. and if you believe the news reports, because we ve not seen any transcripts of this, the only transcript i ve seen is sondland s testimony morning. what did mckinney said? he said that he was upset with the political influence in foreign policy. that was wochbts reasoone of re was upset. i have news for everybody. get over it, there is political influence in foreign policy. elections have consequences. foreign policy will change from the obama administration to the trump administration. and what you are seeing now i believe is a group of mostly career bureaucrats who are saying that i don t like president trump s politics, so i m going to participate in this
was with the acting chief of staff, not the press secretary. it is an incredible break with tradition here at the white house to not have daily press briefings. and so we crammed in a lot into this one briefing. it is worth noting though at the end of it, he did get a number of tough questions about the news of day, about key topics, but we sure do have more questions. so would welcome another briefing tomorrow and every day, you know, until election day. let s put it that way. we certainly appreciate mick mulvaney s time and being so candid, but guess what, we are not going to get distracted. so let s go to you, garrett haake and more about gordon sondland, ambassador to eu. mick mulvaney pressing again why it made since sonde land would be in the conversation regarding ukraine. we need remind our audience, ukraine is not part of the eu. tell us what is going on with sondland right now.