Who was forced to fight back against republican smears on his loyalty. Lieutenant colonel alexander vindman. In his opening he thanked his father for moving his family here from the soviet union when he was just a child and reassured his father, dont worry, ill be fine, im telling the truth in america. And then this powerful follow. And why do you have confidence that you can do that and tell your dad not to worry . Congressman, because this is america. This is the country i have served and defended, that all my thank you, sir. I yield back. Not a lot of applause in that room today. It was something left, right and reasonable could all hold on to with meaning. Congressman Sean Patrick Maloney was questioning vindman there. The intel members with us now. Thank you for doing this after a day of that kind of battle. Appreciate it. My pleasure. So going after witness credibility is always an aspect of any confrontational setting, but to go after a guy wearing a purple heart and then to bring in his superior morrison to suggest he went outside the chain of command, what did that mean to you as a tactic, that vindman isnt just the uniform, he may have ulterior motives. Republicans didnt lay a glove on him about any of the substantive testimony he gave. He knew it was wrong and reported it. Instead they come up with maybe youre not loyal to the United States because he emigrated here as a 3yearold and his dad learned english and put three kids in the military. Maybe youre not loyal even they you wont to iraq and end a purple heart in combat. One of my colleagues says what you are doing wearing your uniform here today as if theres something inappropriate today. This is what republicans are left with when they cant talk about the facts. 3 years old he was here, three brothers in the military. They asked this guy three times to be the defense minister of ukraine. Who does that . The president retweeted that from somebodys account. He wasnt tweeting himself this morning. Hopefully everythings good with him but he just decided to stay quiet. What did you take from that . Three times they asked. Of course it was a halfbaked joking offer we now know from the ukrainians because he has a connection to the country and they were so impressed with him they made this joking offer that he become the defense minister of ukraine. Its a way to insinuate hes not loyal. Thats an old one in american politics. You heard the applause when he talked about his dad. You couldnt look at this guy and not say thank god for guys like Lieutenant Colonel vindman who know right from wrong and when they see wrong have a larger loyalty to the country, not cover up for President Trump. Why did you think this is a big day . These are witnesses they asked for and they got hill. Heres volker, who previously said i always just thought these were general corruption investigations. He comes in today and says in hindsig hindsight, i was wrong. Burisma meant biden and if i had known it meant biden how could he not know . Thats a great question. At the end of the day i asked him, gee, you missed it on about a half what dozen different occasions but we appreciate him coming in now saying in hindsight having heard all the testimony look, it was giuliani feeding these things to him to change the statement that the ukrainian president was supposed to say. Point being we appreciate that ambassador volker came forward and made clear what he knows its wrong to ask for an investigation of the bidens. Big member with volker from the other side, congressman stefanik. Heres a little bit of their exchange. Was there any reference to withholding aid . No. To bribery . No, to quid pro quo in. No, there was not. Any reference to exextortion no, there was not. Did your ukrainian counterparts mention the withholding of aid . No, they did not. Any quid pro quo. No, they did not. Did they mention bribery. No, they did not. The day after the call you met with president zelensky on july 26. In that meeting he made no mention of quid pro quo. No. He made no mention of withholding the aid. No. Of bribery. No. The ukrainians were not aware of this hold on aid. Is that correct . That is correct. Do you accept that in. They try to get these fact witnesses to jump to these legal conclusions. The witnesss testimony, the factual testimony, which is all they can do, paints a very serious picture of President Trump using taxpayerfunded military assistance to pressure a foreign leader to get help in his reelection. Thats soliciting a bribe. Theyre not supposed to make those conclusions but their testimony is clear about burisma and the investigations, you heard mr. Morrison talk about, hey, i ran to nsc legal when i heard the call, in his own word, the president , you saw vindman talking about i knew it was improper and the fact is the republicans are trying to jump to the end and get these guys to make a legal conclusion they cant make because they cant talk about the facts. They cant talk about the devastating evidence that the president abused his office. The idea that the president honestly believes that ukraine had something to do with 2016, if thats true, that he honestly believes that the bidens were dird dirty, if thats true, does that remove the wrong doing . You heard them all say they would consider it inappropriate, president to pressure a foreign leader to investigate a political rival. You can just stop right there. The president can want help in his campaign all he wants but he cant use taxpayer dollars in a corrupt scheme to get a foreign leader to help him in that campaign. We got laws against that. Its a felony to seek foreign help in an American Election and you cant go out and exchange an official act for a thing of personal value. Thats soliciting a bribe. So the president has all kind of crazy ideas but we dont excuse criminality or wrong doing because somebody has such an unusual idea of whats okay and whats not. Congressman Sean Patrick Maloney from new york, thank you so much, especially after such a long day. We will all be watching tomorrow. This is such a big week for the country. My pleasure. Okay. So that is the perspective of somebody who was in the room, all right . The president , now what does this mean for him today . Where is that room . Where is this country in terms of the threshold for impeachment . Lets bring in investigative minds to look at whats there, what needs to be there. Where are we in all this . Next. [sneeze and sniffles] are you ok . Yah, its just a cold. Its not just a cold if you have high blood pressure. 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And non24 can throw my days and nights out of sync, keeping me from the things i love to do. Talk to your doctor, and call 8442142424. Its our job to keep count, not yours, but more than a dozen witnesses have now testified as part of this impeachment investigation. There are people from across different government agency, stationed on different continents yet there is a lot of similarities among their stories. Were trying to help with all these names and Different Things being thrown at us in this. If you look along the lefthand columns. Im not giving you all their titles. Its not relevant t. Theyre all in the mix. Despite all the histrionics in the room today, look at the last column, clears trump. Nobody has come in and said i heard the call, i knew what was going on and i was with the president and he did nothing wrong and nobody has come in in that way. One big reason for that is this president wont let any of the people who can come into that room and say it with the most clear voice do it. For all the calls that we need firsthand experience from those on the right, the people who have it, they havent asked for it once because theyre going with the president , keeping pompeo, mulvaney and keeping who else do they want, mr. Bolton and eisenberg keeping them quiet. Lets bring in Andrew Mccabe and jim baker. Andrew mccabe former Deputy Director of the fbi, jim baker former general counsel of the fbi, director of National Security and Cyber Security of the r. Street institute. Gentlemen, appreciate it. I put up the chart because im trying to simplify that a lot of people say theres something that happened here that shouldnt have happened this way and, yes, it became aware they were asking me for the biden stuff. Volker says he didnt know burisma meant biden. I dont know. Thats what he said. Whats missing . Whats missing, as you said before, a single witness to step forward and say i was aware of what happened, i heard what the president said, i understood what he meant by it and i think it was totally fine. Whats missing on the side that says this is clearly impeachable . The witnesses they put forth arent in a position to say that. These are fact witnesses. They are people who will say where they were, what they heard and what they got out of it. You got that today. Very simple stories, they talked about beingin being on the phone call, both thought it was objectionable and vindman went and reported it to counsel right away. Thats an interesting point. Jim, let me tee up some sound for you that seemed to play pretty relevant today with mr. Morrison. So here is morrison talking about a call or an experience with ambassador sondland who is testifying tomorrow and it shows why there is so much heat on ambassador sondland. Did you tell ambassador bolton about this conversation as well in. Ive reached out to him as well and requested him availability for a secure phone call. And what was his response when you explained to him what ambassador sondland had said . Tell the lawyers. Did you go tell the lawyers . When i returned to the states, yes. Did he explain to you why he wanted you to tell the lawyers . He did not. Now, this shows one thing right away, jim, boy, do we need bolton. I dont want to hear what this guy was told. I want to know why bolton felt it that way, why he felt the need that this needed to be reported. Sondland on a phone call saying if you want this aid, you want to get the meeting, you need to give us the announcement on the investigations significance . Ambassador bolton knew it was inappropriate. I think thats why he told everybody around to go see the lawyers. And the lawyers then had an obligation to figure out what to do. Honestly, as a lawyer, i think it ibt upon us in those kind of situations to try to stop this. Stop what is obviously inappropriate, in an effort to protect the president. I mean, if they are there presumably they agree with the president s agenda and they want him to succeed. And so they need to help him by saying, mr. President , no, you are cant do this, this goes too far. Policy makers, people like mr. Bolton or ambassador bolton in those kinds of situations are looking for the lawyers to help them steer the client, in this case the president , in the right direction. Thats what were supposed to do. Thats what i did at the fbi to try to help people like andy make tough decisions because they need assistance. Those are very, very hard and demanding jobs and the lawyers need to step up. I have to say i dont think that this whole event has been a red letter day for the Legal Profession in terms of the lawyers who have touched this problem and house of representatives its turned out. Let me get your take on this from both of you here. Lets say youre right, jim. Lets say it wasnt a red letter day for the Legal Community and lets say the president says, you know what, that jim baker, hes a genius, i was not well advised, im new to all this and i think biden was dirty and they told me ukraine helped him out so i didnt want to give money to a corrupt place so thats the only reason i asked. Nobody told me it was wrong. What becomes the bar between inappropriate and impeachable . Well, the house has to decide that. The house ultimately is the one that decide based on all these facts, as andy was saying, all these fact witnesses cant be expected to make the ultimate determination. Theyre saying what happened, their assessment that it was improper, that it was hurting the National Security of the United States because it was interfering with an ally getting military aid promptly. So the president actually if he were to Say Something along the lines of what you described, thats not a terrible defense. Like i thought i was doing okay, i thought it was the right thing to do, these people around me didnt say no, nobody had the courage to tell me andy, mccabe likes what youre saying so little, hes literally moving in and out of the frame falling out of my chair. It not the first time weve disagreed. Its absolutely not the first time weve disagreed. I dont think trump can make that defense. He cant walk in and say i was pushing the ukrainians to investigate my political rival but i didnt know this was wrong. In criminal law, ignorance of the law is no defense. But he swears i dont care that hes my political opponent, ill kill joe biden, i dont need any help beating him, im going to beat him all day, lazy joe, 15 different adjectives for joe. If that were the reason behind his appeals to the ukrainians, they should have been appeals to the department of justice. Thats how you think gets him . Thats absolutely right. Then dont you need, if youre on the side of making the case that this is impeachable, you need to prove the reason the aid got removed is not just coincidental to when the house started to ask questions but you have to get someone to prove that thats why they released the aid and that the president knew damn well that not a dollar would be released until he got the bidens. Somebody gave the order. Somebody told omb the aid goes no further. So that line of direction we know goes back to mulvaney and it ultimately lands on the president s desk. They need a witness to come in and establish that. Tomorrow they have sondland. Chris go ahead, you get the final word because andrew was so rude with the shaking of the head. I disagree back with andy on this one. I agree, that would really be strong evidence and i agree completely on that point. But i think in the absence of that, in the face of the refusal of the president to allow these key witnesses to come forward, the house of representatives is allowed to draw reasonable inferences from the testimony that they do have. And given the number of people that knew exact sli whly what wg on and that the aid was being held and there was a connection to the bidens and burisma, the house is able to, i think, in a criminal case and impeachment setting, they can draw inference from the facts. They can decide whether its strong enough. It not necessary absolutely from a legal perspective in my view to have the smoking gun witness like ambassador bolton come in and put the nail in the coffin. No, it would just be nice if you want firsthand information. But synthesis is sondland tomorrow. When he explains why he thought this is what you needed to tell ukraine and why it was such a priority, thats going to give a very different picture of the complexion of why this happened the way it did. Andrew mccabe, jim baker, thank you for bringing your expertise for the benefit of the audience. Appreciate it as always. Look, one interesting way to mark this is about whether it gets you closer to impeachment or not. Thats what this is all about, right . So we have a Congress Member here who is in no hurry to see this president get impeached and he was surprised by volkers testimony or not . Were going to get gop perspective next. Only roomba i7o multisurface rubber brushes. And picks up more pet hair than other robot vacuums. And the filter captures 99 of dog and cat allergens. If its not from irobot, its not a roombaâ„¢. Montez sweat. Is he right for old spice . Montezs name is sweat. Hes also a powerful defenseman in the nfl. Old spice is a powerful sweat defense in the nfl. 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