democrats main rmts arguments i of this. and when you look at what these all create is an opportunity where there are few opportunities to present conflicting information and will make them more difficult to stick with voters and people who are watching because of the polarization of the way it s being covered. you have some reporting of what it was like inside that room during yesterday s hearing. pretty tense i can imagine? it was tense. it was also an interesting case in which there were a number of people who were dozing off during the second half of the hearing because it went so long. there were err number of seats that were left vacant who were not there. many republican members who weren t on committees actually senate to hear it than democratic members. there were four massive tv screens that showed text message exchanges between witnesses, a match ukraine, various excerpts from president trump s call with
pressure to be kicked out of her job. she felt threatened, so on and so forth. with each of these, the focus has been a little bit different. what are we expecting today? basically what they re doing on the democratic side of the aisle as they are building a narrative. they release the transcript yesterday from gordon sondland, the ambassador to the european union, and he was involved in a series of text message exchanges with bill taylor. bill taylor was flagging here. he thought maybe there was a question of a quid pro quo with the president and ukraine in exchange for this aid. that s important. we have the sound than testimony release yesterday and we get the taylor transcripts, that will fill in the other part of the equation. that s why has testimony from a democrat perspective is so important next week and a public session. i should reiterate, democrats get to call the shots on this. the resolution they passed this week in the house, this falls under the purview of the house i
request for investigations to achieve president trump s domestic political goal. and just for a little bit more background, abby, he was he served as u.s. ambassador to ukraine from 2006 to 2009. he is deeply respected in diplomatic circles. he had retired. he was called back in to service because of after the marie yovanovitch was recalled and ousted from that position. and he was reluctant to do it. he was reluctant to do it as our reporting shows. but mike pompeo and kurt volker talked him into it, said they needed him, so, you know, it seems as though he will be from everything we know about him candid, forthright in explaining all that he saw around him. yeah, it does feel like bill taylor s text message exchanges even though they weren t even provided by him, really blew this whole thing open. it showed that internally within the people who were responsible for this policy, there were concerns at the time about what was going on, and in fact, the concerns, you know,
ties beyond politics even today. which is nice that does still exist. it does. used to be more common as you know and you often hear republicans and democrats talk about a different time when they did know and spent time together. let s hope that there are repeats of that kind of relationship going forward. dana, thank you very much. all right. at any moment this morning, a key player in the impeachment inquiry, u.s. ambassador to the european union, gordon sondland is expected to arrive on capitol hill. a go-between for the trump administration and the ukrainian government, he s the central figure in the president s pressure campaign to dig up dirt on political rivals. congress will want to know about multiple exchanges, text message exchanges between sondland and another top u.s. diplomat in ukraine. that s bill taylor. taylor concerned about withholding military aid to ukraine saying, you know, is this just a political campaign followed with a reply from sondland about five
right, the five hours, but then also, we shouldn t make this about the text message exchange. we also have to talk about what is the broader culture that would lead to taylor making an assertion this is about political exchange of favors or something like that. what would lead to that. much more expansive interview testifying around the culture and the environment and the moment that would lead to those text message exchanges. that s what congress was interested in hearing about during this kind of interview. lastly, josh, back over to you. manu just reported in addition to all the things we re talking about. one of those giuliani associates. the house intelligence has reached this understanding and that this individual is cooperating. how does that sit with you? what are you thinking? well, there are a number of key figures around juligiuliani are under intense scrutiny.