Were investigations into the bidens, john bolton told fiona hill, you go and tell National Security council eisenberg i am involved in whatever they are tooking up on this. Km donald trump argued once again that he a perfect phone call with the president of ukraine. When by any standard it is not perfect. After calling for democrats to stop Holding Hearings behind closed doors today decried democrats for making next weeks hearings public. Reporter two of the most central players in the relationship with ukraine putting the chief of staff at the center of the scandal and delivering the harshest blow to the claim there was no quid pro quo. This is a hoax. This is just like the russian witch hunt. Reporter Lieutenant Colonel vindman the top ukraine expert telling lawmakers there was no ambiguity that in order for kraens the ukraine president to get a meeting at the white house, they have to investigate the bidens. There was a july on july 25th which he said left no doubt that this is what was required in order to get the meeting that the ukrainians had been aggressively pushing for. Vindman heard that message from Gordon Sondland, u. S. Ambassador to the European Union relaying a message from mulvaney who admitted the quid pro quo last month. Get over it. Reporter he responded that it was inappropriate and had nothing to do with National Security. Well i want to thank colonel vindman for his courage in coming forward and his willingness follow the law, to do his duty. Reporter vindman wasnt alone. His then boss fiona hill read the transcript and was shocked. I sat in an awful lot of calls, she said, and ive not seen anything like this. And hills had been told by sondland that mulvaney skrated the ukrainians would get a meeting with the ukrainians started up the investigations again. Hill testified that sondland told this directly to the ukrainians in a july 10th meeting. John bolton, National Security adviser at the time suddenly ended the meeting. Bolton then told hill to report it to the top nsc lawyer saying im not part of whatever drug deal sondland and mulvaney are cooking up. Vindman, who is also disturbed by the meeting reported it as well. Hill and vindman had both known about the role that Rudy Giuliani was playing in ukraine, pushing the conspiracy theories and working to get the u. S. Ambassador removed. After he was successful, bolton told hill that giuliani was a hand grenade that is going to blow everybody up. Hill left the white house in august and said that during her time there and since then she has gotten all kinds of threats including death threats, called with obscenities to her house and people hammering on her front door. She was called a mole for george sur os which is a common antisemitic slander and accused of colluding with enemies of the president. Jake. Alex marquardt, thanks so much. Lets chew over there. Mary katharine, vindman testified that sondland, who is the ambassador to the eu, who was running a point for the white house on ukraine and sondland told him he was coordinating with Mick Mulvaney on the necessity to launch investigations in order to secure a white house meeting with zelensky and trump. Answer, this is vindman. So i heard him say, sondland, this is coordinated with white house chief of staff mr. Mick mulvaney. Question, what did he say about that . He just said that he had conversation with mr. Mulvaney and this is what was required in order to get a white house meeting. Question, did he explain what the investigations were that were needed. Vindman he talked about the investigations which i guess ill refer to my statement, the 2016 these things tend to be conflated so hes talking about the 2016 elections and an investigation into the bidens and burisma. Both fiona hill and vindman testified that sondland said mulvaney is running point on this. Yeah. Look, i think from the time that the rough transcript came out, its been fairly obvious this was obvious and obviously wrong what was going on here. Now whether it rises to impeachment and removement is the question we have obviously backup on that. And i think to me what is compelling and should be compelling to those who argue this might be some politically motivated attack is that vindman was reporting this in the regular channels as soon as it happened. And when you have contemporaneous concern that it was reported in a responsible way that means there might have been something up here, guys. So i think that cuts very hard against the argument against this. An hour after that he went to the National Security council lawyer eisenberg and yet a lot of the president s allies and including President Trump, his number one ally, attacking Lieutenant Colonel vindman. I think theyre afraid right now. I dont think theyre on the best footing, the Republican Party and the president himself and you could see the impact of impeachment where theyve said this is political suicide and not playing out right now. And i think you could see that from the most recent elections as well so i think the president and the administration right now is scared and theyre showing it. Pick up on one thing Mary Katharine said about the contemporaneous character of what colonel vindman did, or the john bolton quote where he said after the meeting tell eisenberg i dont want to be part of that drug deal. You go to the White House Council office and i dont want to be part of that drug deal. Ive known john bolton and worked with him and hes a friendly acquaintance, i would characterize. John bolton is not a bureaucrat or Government Official who is close to the line or a little controversial, john bolton has pushed the edge, not in a legal way but aggressive way for years in government and that is why people didnt like him. And bolton heard this, National Security adviser to the president , and 30 years of government experience and here is this thing going on that said im out of here and you go talk to the White House Council. You worked in the white house, where at the end of it an extremely senior person said to the deputy, you better go talk to the white house counsel. That is contemporaneous evidence of how rotten it was. And we were told well we learned that boltons attorney told congress that he knows even more. Stuff that we dont even know about. I cant wait to learn it when he testifies. If he testifies. If he testifies. I think democrats would love to hear from him. There is no question about that. As we saw from the news yesterday, they dont want to go through a court bat thal could delay this by months. There are a bunch of interesting things about how close this circle is getting to President Trump. Mulvaney you mentioned is the chief of staff. You could hardly say i dont know that guy. Also that White House Council knew about this and reported up through eisenberg and he sat on if well we dont know what he did. Maybe he talked to trump and maybe he didnt. But it is becoming closer and closer to trump and in addition to the transcript of the call that we already know about as well as the meetings. But there is a lot players he cant claim to not know. But as Mary Katharine pointed out you cant get closer to trump than trump. I did the thing. Here is the transcript. Here is the rough transcript. It is a perfect phone call. At the end of the day, he keeps saying this is a perfect phone call and that is designed to serve as some sort of gaslighting talking point because it is obviously not perfect because if it were he wouldnt be in the middle of being impeached. But it would be the more politically effective argument to say the way he was handling this was clearly wrong. My bad. Apologies. The money eventually flowed. I was talked out of that bad thing i was doing and ive done a lot of bad things anz talked out of them and there is no deliverable and move forward and work for the American People but he wont allow that argument to be made because he continues to say it was perfect. Everyone stick around. We have a lot to talk about with the transcript and two key witnesses to testify. What is the democrats strategy if any for the next week public hearing and well talk to one of the key house committees next. And good for democrats or better for trump . 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Hisamitsu. Tell him were flexible. Dont worry. My dutch is ok. Just ok . This man is very bendy. Tell him we need this merger. He says he needs a hug. Its happening. just ok is not ok. Especially when it comes to your network. At t is americas best Wireless Network according to americas biggest test. Welcome back, more breaking news. Two more impeachment transcript were released this afternoon. One from fiona hill and another from colonel vindman, both testifying about their concerns over Rudy Giuliani and acting white house chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and Gordon Sondland pushing for investigations into the bidens, pushing that crane hope those investigations and in exchange for a white house meeting between President Trump and ukraine president zelensky. Joining me now to talk about this and much more is democratic congressman ted lieu who serves on the house judiciary and Foreign Affairs committee. Congressman lieu, thank you for joining us. So this is colonel vindman testifying about a conversation he had with ambassador sondland regarding the quote unquote deliverables, what ukraine needed to do in order to get this meeting. Question, do you understand how he came to believe this deliverable was necessary . Answer, so i heard him say, sondland, this is coordinated with Mick Mulvaney. And question what did sondland say about that. Answer, he said he had a conversation with mr. Mulvaney and this is what was required in order for the ukrainians to get a meeting. Question, did he explain what the investigations were that were needed and vind mand and he talked about the investigations and the 2016 election and the investigation into the bidens and burisma. Mulvaney defied the subpoenas today to come in and talk to the impeachment inquiry. Your committee is not challenging his defense to the subpoena and not taking it to court. Why not . Isnt mulvaneys testimony essential . Thank you, jake, for that question. All of these witnesses that we have seen corroborate the exact same narrative which is that donald trump solicited foreign interference in our election at the dispense of u. S. National security. We would love to have Mick Mulvaney but we dont need him because we have colonel vindman saying what happened and fiona hill and george kent and ambassador taylor have all corroborated the exact same story that we have enough witnesses to go forward. So the three people publicly testifying next week are bill taylor the top diplomat in ukraine for the u. S. , george kent, a state Department Official and the former ambassador masha yovanovitch. None of them talked to President Trump about this ukraine scandal, wouldnt it be good to have somebody whether ambassador sondland or Rudy Giuliani or Mick Mulvaney, somebody who had talked to trump about this . This is just a first week of public hearings. Were going to have more. If you look at the witness depositions, sondland talked directly to the president a number of times. But beyond that, we have actual call record of july 25th between donald trump and lizzinski talking about military aide and donald trump asked for a favor though and when you read through the rest of the transcript it is investigations into the dnc as well as the bidens so we already know there is no daylight between any of the policies that were being executed by giuliani and mulvaney and donald trump. Theyre saying the exact same thing. Is sondland you said that next week is just the first week of hearings. Are you going to call sondland to testify publicly . That remains to be seen. But with his new addendum to his testimony it is pretty compelling because with his new addendum he explicitly said there was a quid pro quo between the Trump Administration and the ukrainians. Call it extortion or bribery, it is all the same thing when the president used his powers to freeze military aid, to dangle a critical meeting between the white house and the ukrainian leader in exchange for launching two bogus investigations. Sondland did admit in the addendum the meeting would only come in exchange for investigations, although he doesnt use the term extortion or bribery or quid pro quo. John boltons lawyer said today that his clients, that mr. Bolton, the former National Security adviser has significant insights into matters involved in the impeachment inquiry but he will not testify until a Court Resolves whether or not he has to comply with the subpoena. Should you, democrats leading the inquiry wait until you could have bolton testify . It sounds like he knows a lot. Right. Right. So im a former prosecutor and i would love to track down every single lead and every single witness. But in this case, all of the damning evidence really came out pretty early. We have the sum vised call transcript and ambassador volkers Text Messages released showing diplomats under about the quid pro quo. We know that donald trump froze critical security aid to ukraine. Essentially this is a lot of undisputed facts. We would love to have john bolton come in if he is going to wait for a court order, that might take months and months and were not going to way months and months. Is it your believe that the rough transcript of the conversation between trump and zelensky, that that is all you need in terms of firsthand quid pro quo evidence that that is speak it speaks for itself. That is not all that we need. But part of the evidence. This is a monthslong Pressure Campaign by donald trump to try to get the ukrainians to launch these two investigations into the bidens and the dnc so we have the transcript where he mentioned the two investigations and those are the president s own words and then all of the testimony from state Department Officials, Lieutenant Colonel vindman and others who corroborate that exact same story that the Trump Administration was trying to get the ukraine to launch investigations and they did it by with holding military aid and dangling this important meeting with zelensky. Democratic congressman ted lieu, thank you. We appreciate it. A damning portrait of the president in chaos and what would have shown strength. R