Direct pitch for the president of ukraine to investigate joe biden and his son. Heres one of the quotes. Theres a lot of talk about bidens son, quote, that biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that. Whatever you can do with the attorney general that would be great. The attorney general hes referring to is attorney general barr. The president used the name of attorney general barr and Rudy Giuliani who he said would be looking into the matter. He said both men would reach out to the president of ukraine and ask him to get started on this. The president of ukraine said he was going to investigate the matter. They had a fairly extensive conversation about this. The president mentioned he wanted to enlist the attorney general. What has the attorney general said about the fact the president mentioned him in the phone call. A rather extraordinary set of events took place after the Inspector General got word of the whistleblower complaint. He referred it to the Justice Department involving possible campaign violations. The Justice Department did a review involving the National Security division and the criminal division. They concluded that there was no violation, potential violation of the Campaign Finance laws. They also say that attorney general barr was not involved in knowing about this request by the president of the United States, he never talked to the president about this particular request and also that he never spoke with Rudy Giuliani about this request either. Pierre, in the course of the phone conversation, the president not only mentions joe biden, he also talks about this crowd strike issue which was related to the hacking of the dnc emails in 2016 and asked the president to look into that as well. He did, george. He seemed interested in wanting to know what role the Ukrainian Government might have played in that. He men shunsed in a derogatory way bob mueller. He talked about how incompetent bob mueller was as well. They discussed investigating the the u. S. Service officer who has been the ambassador to ukraine. He did indeed. The president had negative things to say about this ambassador. The other thing thats interesting is weve got a little more detail about the whistleblower and how all this came about. The office of Legal Counsel point out that the whistleblower supposedly heard about this conversation, this phone call between the president and the president of the ukraine from white house officials. Pierre, before i let you go, we have the president saying as you mentioned in the phone call that he would like to have the attorney general call the president so he can get to the bottom of all this. The attorney general is saying he never spoke to the president about any of this . The attorney general is saying flat out he never spoke with the president about this. He never spoke to Rudy Giuliani about this. The first time the attorney general became aware of this is when the Inspector General and the dnis auoffice contacted th Justice Department. Pierre, thank you. I want to bring in jon karl. Pretty extraordinary bits of information in this phone call. The president clearly asked for joe biden and his son to be investigated. This will be seen as more democrating than anticipated. The president is explicitly looking for help here. The president says the United States has been very good to cr ukraine. Then he says i would like you to do us a favor. The first favor is the crowd strike. He brings up a server. Theres only one serve thats been in the news. He said the server they say, ukraine has it. I dont know where thats coming from. Hes asking for an investigation. He says your economy will be Getting Better at a time we know he had been withholding aid. I think this will be more explosive than anticipated. Its interesting that the white house decided to put this out. We were being told over and over this wont be so bad once people see it. This looks damning. Its a multi tiered effort. When giuliani said he was going to go to ukraine there was an uproar. Here we have the president saying hell be involved and william barr. The president bringing up the attorney general more than once. Ill have the attorney general and Rudy Giuliani contact you. Hes explicit here. Dan abrams. The critical thing is what has the president said to this point. He said it was a discussion about trying to root out corruption in the ukraine and ensuring the money was going to the right places. Theres almost nothing about that in this transcript. This transcript is almost you can say largely about the personal agenda of the president. When you read through it, the majority of the what the president is talking about is with regard to personal agenda items, the crowd strike, hunter biden, joe biden. He repeats again and again the ambassador. Who was on president obamas side according to the transcript. Right. Talk to my attorney general. The most important point is the biden piece. You can say that the Hillary Clinton piece is inappropriate, shouldnt have done it. When youre talking about trying to get information about your potential 2020 rival, youre now crossing into potential legal issues. Youre now talking about the possibility of influencing an election. Thats different than just looking back. Lets break that down a little bit. We should remind everybody this is the day after Robert Muellerer testifies on capitol hill. Theres a different between what is illegal and impeachable. You had the criminal referral from the intelligence Inspector General sent to the Justice Department, cleared by President Trumps Justice Department. Thats almost meaningly. The reason you have a special counselor independent counsel is because you dont want the president s appointee judging the president on something this important. Thats why when people said barr came to his on conclusion about the mueller report. The whole reason Robert Muellerer came in is so the attorney general doesnt make those decisions. Here you see the department of justice making a decision on important questions. And deciding to not turn over to congress the complaint. Theres a difference between what is illegal and whats impeachable. That gets into that question. The president brings up mueller just testified. He said as you saw that whole nonsense ended by the very poor performance by a man name Robert Mueller. Its extraordinary hes bringing up Robert Mueller with the president of ukraine. That was about whether or not there was conspiracy, collusion. This is worse than i think people expected, meaning, when we were on with Chris Christie earlier this morning, the s suggestion was it wasnt a big deal. Or it might have been vague. Maybe he asked him something about joe biden. This is unambiguous. Lets bring that to mary bruce on capitol hill. Any initial reaction on capitol hill . This is likely to add fuel to the impeachment fire. Democrats are getting out of their weekly meeting, all the House Democrats have been huddling with nancy pelosi. Theyre walking out to a sea of cameras and reporters asking for their reaction. Democrats are likely going to pounce on not only we see that the president asked a foreign leader to investigate his political rival, but george, theyre going to have a lot of questions about the attorney general and the fact you see the president offering up his attorney general to help investigate his 2020 rival here. Democrats here on the hill have long questioned the attorney general and the independence of this Justice Department. Democrats often refer to him as the president s personal attorney for the way he handled the mueller report. George, i would not be surprised if they have a lot of questions about the fact that the Justice Department is now in a position of trying to adjudicate a matter that the attorney general was directly involved with. Thats why theyre pursuing impeachment proceedings. I want to bring in terry moran. I want to put that letter up on the screen. He says the other thing theres a lot of talk about bidens son that biden stopped the prosecution. A lot of people want to find out about that. Whatever you can do with the attorney general could be great. Biden went around claiming he stopped the prosecution. Whatever you can do with the attorney general. Those sentences will be the Battle Ground for the coming impeachment. Its fair to say the democrats will move forward on the basis of this alone. Theres more to be found out as they develop the facts in committee hearings. The question will be before the country are those sentences, are the president s actions in the nagt interest or in his own personal political interest. Hell argue corruption is a huge problem in ukraine. Its part of the problem with giving money to ukraine. It ends up in the wrong hands. President obama was aware of that. He will argue that Vice President bidens son hunter who is involved in a company that was involved in corruption is of national interest. I understand thats going to be the defense. Does it pass the smell test when he mentions joe biden . Joe biden was involved with the dismissal of a prosecutors. That prosecutor dropped the initial investigation. That will be hashed out. Theres no question the impeachment will be is the president operating cynically, corruptly or is he pursuing the national interests. That will be the question. Terry raises an important point about the timeline. The prosecutor in ukraine was investigating this company in 2013 for actions that happened in 2013. Hunter biden joins the board in 2014. Theres no evidence that hunter biden was part of the initial investigation. Thats point number one. Point number two is the prosecutor was part of an International Effort biden was involved with because he wasnt going after Corruption Cases hard enough. Correct. If you read Media Coverage of back then of when the ukrainian prosecutor was pushed out, its talking about International Pressure that had been put on ukraine to get rid of him. It didnt smell right. You had the Vice President s son making tens of thousands of dollars a month. You had the Vice President. There was an appearance problem. Look at this. Why would that be of pressing concern right now what would happen in 2014 . Why would this be a pressing concern to be a central part of his call with the president of ukraine . Theres an important point here too. When the president asked him to do this investigation it comes right after president zelensky brings up the issue of military help from the United States. Then the very next sentence from the president is i would from President Trump i would like you to do us a favor though. Youre asking for something . Ive got a favor. Mary bruce were getting reaction from the house speaker. Our reporter john park inson caught up with the house speaker. She said she hasnt read the transcript yet. She stressed no one, not even the president , is above the law. He said in breach of constitution responsibilities has asked him to help him in his police call campaign. That cannot stand. He will be held accountable. Lets go back to pierre thomas. Pierre, take a step back. One of the things revealed in this letter is a multi tiered effort regarding Rudy Giuliani, the president says his attorney general william barr. I know the attorney general said he didnt know anything about this phone call, didnt know the president was invoking them. Have they made any judgment about whether it was proper for the president to be discussing this with the president of ukraine . They have not made any judgment about that. The Justice Department looked at whether it was a Campaign Finance violation. When you look at the transcript, what jumps out to me is the degree to which giuliani is playing a role. Hes not a member of the Trump Administration per se. Hes playing a role where the president is invoking his name. Get this. The president of the ukraine insists that a member of his staff has already been in contact with Rudy Giuliani and he was open to furthering this investigation with Rudy Giuliani. Jon karl, as we look at this now we still havent seen the whistleblower complaint. Hard to imagine you have 200 members of congress for impeachment. What happens next . You had the speaker of the house come out and make the argument not for an impeachment process, but for impeaching the president. Adam schiff said based on what we already know he should be impeached. I think even before this comes out the house was clearly moving in the direction toward impeaching the president. Its hard to see how this doesnt add fuel to that. Dan abrams, one of the questions will be how broadly do they define articles of impeachment. Right. In previous impeachment proceedings, nixon and clinton they went broad. There were numerous counts under each of the broad buckets. Here youve got to believe theyre likely to be more narrow. Theyre likely to want to convince the public theyre not overreachi overreaching. Theyre going to have to prove to the American People its overdue. Its going to involve constitutional principles, constitutional principles, National Security, the executive branch versus congress. Absolutely. The next step is fact and evidence. To do that they have to get the attorney general before congress. They have to get the secretary of state before congress. Rudy giuliani said mike pompeo asked him to go to ukraine. The democrats will want to bolster the evidence in this transcript with witness evidence and others. Among those people who would have been listening into this call as a matter of routine is john bolton the former National Security adviser. It a poppears well get impeachment hearings that didnt appear after the mueller investigation. The white house has released the transcript of the july 25th phone call between President Trump and president zelensky where he asked the ukrainian president to look first, though, the summerlike cities sponsored by sensodyne. And the diane sawyer is going to join us live in our next half hour. Come on back. Diane sawyer is going to join us live in our next half hour. Come on back. Our next half hour. Come on back. 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