About the revelation that he was in fact listening in on that july 25th phone call in which President Trump asked the president of ukraine to investigate his political rival, joe biden, and bidens son hunter. This is a fastmoving story covered from the white house and all the way to ukraine. Start with manu raju. What did the House Democratic chairman have to say to the secretary of state . Reporter they pushed back rather aggressively saying any efforts to deny these witnesses from coming forward, these are current, former state Department Officials, the democrats wanted to depose beginning tomorrow. Any efforts to block that from happening would constituteir imt investigation. And said moments ago, any effort to intimidate witnesses or prevent them from talking to congress including state Department Employees is illegal and constitutes evidence of obstruction of the impeachment inquiry. In Response Congress may infer from this obstruction any withheld documents and testimony would reveal information that corroborates the whistleblower complaint. Now, reading between the lines, what theyre saying here, jake, theyre not, they dont have the patience tore a is a stafor a s with the Trump Administration. Subpoenas issued, trump add min station not complying say and democrats dont want to go that route and suggest any efforts by pompeo and others in the Trump Administration to not give what they want, not turn over documents or provide testimony required by the subpoenas essentially could 0 amount to an impeachable offense, obstruction of congress being that impeachable fence is what democrats are saying. Well see what ultimately ends up happening. Witnesses scheduled to come tomorrow, unclear if that person will be deposed. Democrats at the moment saying it could lead to a rather quick impeachment this fall. And a House Democrat reminded me last week obstruction of congress one of the articles of impeachment against president nixon. Manu where do things stand on the possible interview with the whistleblower by the House Intelligence Committee . Reporter talks are still ongoing about bringing this individual forward. The house intelligence foreman adam schiff is confident that the whistleblower will come forward but just arrived here on capitol hill. I tried to talk to him about this and other matters. He declined to comments. Also, the senate Intelligence Committee wants to bring that whistleblower forward but there are concerns the president s attacks against this whistleblower could essentially prevent him or her from coming forward and in fact today, jake, a top republican, chuck grassley, sitgrassley sits on the Senate JudiciaryCommittee Says those should be left off the table and are not helpful for this country. Grassley, ardened supporter of whistleblowers. Thank you, manu raju on capitol hill. Down the street to the white house where we find cnns abby phillip. Weve not seen President Trump in public. Hes made his presence enfelt on twitter. Reporter loud and clear and attacking this whistleblower. This morning sending a tweet that is misleading at best. It said, so if the socalled whistleblower has all secondhand information and almost everything hes said about my perfect call with the ukrainian president is wrong, why arent we entitled to interview and learn everything about the whistleblower and also the person who gave him false information . But the problem is that yesterday there was an extraordinary letter coming from the Inspector General of the intelligence community, michael atkinson, who the president appointed that pushed back on that very narrative. Heres what the Inspector General wrote. The whistleblower stated on the form that he or she possessed both firsthand and other information. The icig reviewed the information provided as well as other information gathered and determined that the complaint was both urgent and that it appeared credible. So a strong pushback there on this idea that the whistleblower is simply trafficking in hearsay, not only is the Inspector General saying that firsthand information isnt necessary, but also saying that the whistleblower did provide some firsthand information and the secondhand information was corroborated by an investigation. Yes. In fact, corroborated by release of the transcript and by the white house admitting he took the transcript and put it in the super secure server as well. Abbey abo abby, what about the president s plans to mount a defense during this impeachment inquiry . Reporter so far not much in the way of an organized coordinated defense. The president has been taking matter into his own hands on social media. Last week we started a process of talking, his aides, aides in the white house and his lawyers both inside and outside of the white house got together to try to come up with some kind of strategy and theyre expected to present him with a plan this week, but there is a sense of anxiety among the president s aides that they are not fully prepared for this. The idea this week is come up with some plan both Communications Plan and a legal plan to help them cope with this fastmoving impeachment inquiry. Meanwhile, President Trumps aides and advisers and allies have been fanning out on television trying to defend him, attacking the whistleblower, all of them trying to mount a defense as this investigation seems to be moving very, very quickly underneath their feet, jake. Abby phillip at the white house, thank you, and now to kiev, ukraine, we find clarissa ward. The president of ukraine addressed this controversy today. In fact, you asked him about the military aid and any pressure he may have felt from President Trump. Reporter thats right, jake. He didnt want to answer these questions. He started out the press conference saying he would only talk about the situation here in eastern ukraine, but we pressed him on the issue. Believe me, his answer was evasive relying on semantics to try to avoid being pinned down. Take a listen. Did you feel pressure from President Trump to investigate the bidens in order to unfreeze military aid . [ speaking in Foreign Language ]. Translator i understand institut. I never feel pressure pe. Im the president of an independent ukraine and would like to think and my actions suggest no one can put pressure on me. Reporter you hear there, he says no one can pressure me, jake. Different from saying, no one did pressure me. But the message we got from the president was, listen, i can thought seem to be taking sides in americas domestic political turmoil. Ukraine relies heavily on u. S. Aid and no mat here is the president , democrat or republican, its crucial for ukraine to have a good relationship. This president is really hoping that all of this is going to blow over, jake. And clarissa, president zelensky spoke about Rudy Giuliani. Reporter thats right, jake. Asked whether he had ever met with Rudy Giuliani, although we should say theres nothing to indicate and no suggestion he has and he was unequivocal in his answer. Take a listen. Ooicive never met rudy giul, never. And never had any phone calls with him. Reporter important for viewers to remember, though, jake in that transcript or summary of the conversation, infamous conversation between zelensky and trump, zelensky himself brings up giuliani. He says one of my assistants has spoke ton giuliani. We look forward to inviting him to ukraine. Certainly a fair question to ask. Rudy giuliani reached out to one of sln szelenskys aids. And names appearing in the whistleblower complaint, well take a deeper look at roles played by all of the president s men coming up. Youre watching a special edition of the lead. The white house in crisis. Stay with us. So i can buy from enterprise car sales and youll take any tradein . Thats right great here you go. Well, it does need to be a vehicle. But i need this out of my house. vo with fair, Transparent Value for every tradein. Enterprise makes it easy. Asbut when your team is always dealing with device setups, app updates, and support calls. You can never seem to get anywhere. Thats why Dell Technologies created unified workspace, powered by vmware. A revolutionary solution that lets you deploy, manage, support and secure all your devices from the cloud. So you can stop going in circles, and start moving forward. At humana, we believe your healthcare should evolve with you. And part of that evolution means choosing the right medicare plan for you. Humana can help. 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Neil, start with you. Pompeo accusing democrats of intimidating and bullying his own employees and democrats saying pompeo is doing this . You know, the nefg going out of this white house is this was a perfect call. That everyone was above board here and then you have pompeo, that he was on the call. The idea he is now saying its really the democrats who are bullying these folks who may very well want to add information to the publics knowledge of this call of what was going on with ukraine. It does seem like he is signaling to the folks who might want to come forward its an uncomfortable thing for them to come forward. This idea theyre being bullied by pompeo seems to be that thats what hes trying to do essentially chill their testimony before coming forward. And the irony here, when the president wants to meet the whistleblower facetoface so he can bully him and says that adam schiff is treasonous which by the way is potentially something you can be executed for, and then the secretary of state says, its like he joined a frat and said, wow, theres hazing here. They both need to settle down. Both right out of the president s playbook. Which weve seen. Undermine the institution investigating you, claim youre the victim and then question the legitimacy. Pompeos going it. Not using the language the president uses. Not using terms like treason and so on but its the same thing. You just say theyre not legitimate and not able to investigate you. Its so striking the difference between what we heard from mike pompeo and heard from mark esper end of last week. Of course, give you whatever you want. Whatever Congress Wants to investigate happy to turn it over and then someone like pompeo very close to the president on this call and sounds exactly like the president and i do think, and i know the tone the president has taken, but if youre one of these career officials and you have been working on this issue, i think it matters if you hear mike pompeo saying what he says versus if you hear mark esper say what he said. Definitely sends a different signal. Absolutely. I feel like im at a heavy metal concert and near earplugs. Mike pompeo can write back, witness needs time, goes out on twitter trumpstyle, playing to the boss. Your response to President Trumps para trade adviser earl on fox business how he described this. This is nothing less than an attempted coup detat and reminds me, the first guy who was head of the soviet union secret cia equivalent, bearia, he said, you know, show me the man ill find you the crime. Every day the president s got to get up and deal with china, deal with russia, got to deal with iran. I understand. And now the house of representative and i dont know which ones more dangerous. I dont know which ones more dangerous. House democrats, china, iran i mean, thats honestly your tax dollars at work. And this is i think a reflection of what theyve been hearing in the conservative chattering class. Some of the talk show hosts, folks like Rush Limbaugh and also their attempt to basically make this one, long narrative. Right . From the campaign to the Mueller Probe tos postMueller Probe to kind of not make the ukrainian issue a separate issue. Thats what democrats want to do. They want to focus on that phone call what the president was doing and so you have all the president s men out there essentially saying this is a democratic plot. What theyve always wanted to do. They think this president is illegitimate and this is part of that long plan that democrats have had. Youve covered this white house. Is there a strategy other than whoever, gathering together all of the loyalists and having them go out there and just throw whatever mud they can against the wall . I think the strategy is fight and deflect. If you were, i think, an organized, smart, intentional white house you might have people going through the transcripts of our calls saying what else do we have that is potentially problematic . What do we need to get organized and in front of . Instead a lot of officials going at it saying this is an extension of the witchhunt pointing their finger at joe biden and hunter biden saying the scandal is over here and more of the same. Rudy giulianis fate to be determined. See more of them, too, maybe. And you heard phil talk about some of the things the president has done condemning the whistleblower suggesting hell find out who he is. Makes comments about excuse cushions when it comes to people who provide information. That is the law of this country, has the president crossed that line . Ngts exa exactly why we have specific whistleblower laws. You dont want to get into hurting peoples free speech rights, silly as that sounds. Crossing into im going to kill this person or muttput a hit ons person it violates the law. The better question, the president is exercising profoundly unsound judgment as president of the United States. Thats what we worry about. Has not yet violated the law. Good point. And bill barr, mike pence, donald trump, try to connect all the president s meant caught um in these impeachment hearings. Stay with us. Do you have concerns about mild memory loss related to aging . Prevagen is the number one pharmacistrecommended memory support brand. You can find it in the vitamin aisle in stores everywhere. Prevagen. Healthier brain. Better life. Hey. Hey. You must be stevens phone. Now you can take control of your home wifi and get a notification the instant someone new joins your network. Only with xfinity xfi. Download the xfi app today. All the president s men now caught up in the ukraine scantaled and impeachment investigation including the president s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, the nations top Law Enforcement agent william barr and the Vice President mike pence and secretary of state pompeo. Why is pompeo attacking democrats today . Clearly upset hes caught up in the web of scandal around that phone call with President Trump and the president of ukraine asking a foreign ally t son hunter. And he yo he didnt want the transcript released and white House Attorneys had this locked up in a classified computer file normally resumed, reserved for state secrets. As you noted hes not the only one. Look at william barr at the Justice Department. Hes roped in because President Trump told the ukrainians they should work with him on this investigation of the bidens even though there was zero evidence the bidens did anything wrong. Also we know the president asked other countries including australia to work with barr on his investigation into the origins of the russia investigation, which so bedevilled the white house. Giuliani, private attorney for the president. Hes caught up in it, same reason. Because the president told the ukrainians work with him and we now know there were ukrainian whose told cnn, yeah. He specifically was looking for dirt on joe biden. Hes been subpoenaed alonged with some of his records and mike pence saying get after corruption. The president equates that with going after joe biden. Pence insists the president did nothing wrong here even though all of this was happening while millions of dollars in u. S. Military aid to ukraine was suspended by the white house. Jake, all you have to do look at all of these men connected to the president who are now also firmly attached to this questionable phone call to a foreign power to get involved in u. S. Politics. Of course, the Republican Echo Chamber says none of these people did anything wrong. If thats the case, then why did all of them seem to want to keep this secret . Jake . Tom foreman, thanks. Joining me someone who knows a lot about all the president