Transcripts have been released. Mr. President , was Marie Yovanovitch the target of a Smear Campaign by your allies . Tonight what we learned from Marie Yovanovitch about igor and live and rudy and hadntity . As the white house blocks more key witnesses. We have seen a series of shifting, everchanging rationales for this campaign of obstruction. Plus the mutating republican logic defending the president. If there was a quid pro quo, it certainly wasnt a very effective one. And making sense of new battleground polling that shows 2020 could look a lot like 2016. Youre reading the wrong polls. When all in starts right now. Let me just tell you, i have the real polls. Good evening from new york, im chris hayes. We are starting to see the actual testimony from the depositions in the impeachment inquiry so far, the transcripts, and they are as damning as expected for the president and his allies. Republicans whined for weeks and weeks about the fact depositions were being held behind closed doors despite many of the fact many of them were actually attending those same hearings. The president tried to get out ahead of the release for the wordforword transcripts saying they would be faked and republicans should release their own, indicating that he was clearly not happy with what was about to come out. Well, today we got the first two transcripts from former Top State Department official Michael Mckinley and former u. S. Ambassador to ukraine Marie Yovanovitch. We already know a lot about what mckinley testified about, including that he resigned his post because of the failure to the state department to offer support to Foreign Service employees caught up in the impeachment inquiry. Mckinley, who was Senior Advisor to secretary of state mike pompeo, also testified, again, under oath in this deposition, that he told pompeo about his concerns multiple times before he resigned, which makes what pompeo said last month so much more interesting. Listen to the way that pompeo gives himself absolutely no wiggle room on this question. Mike mckinley served me well for a year and a half. I chose him. I had people tell me he was a great Foreign Service officer. In fact, he served america wonderfully for 37 years. He in fact had the office that was just behind mine, it had a door that he could walk in any time and say whatever he wanted. You know, from the time that ambassador yovanovitch departed ukraine until the time that he came to tell me that he was departing, i never heard him say a single thing about his concerns with respect to the decision that was made. So you were never asked not once. Not once, george, did ambassador mckinley Say Something to me during that entire time period. Thats interesting. So maybe he said it outside that time period or maybe mckinley is lying or maybe pompeo is lying. The story, though, that is told in these depositions is of someone who was in the way of the corrupt quid pro quo abuse of office. The president and Rudy Giuliani were running to try and squeeze ukraine to manufacture dirt on the president s political rival. Particularly that of the ousted ambassador yovanovitch to ukraine whose career was a casualty of that scheme. She testified that she learned from ukrainian officials that Rudy Giuliani planned to target her. Yovanovitch was asked what she thought President Trump meant when he said on the phone call with the ukrainian president that she was, quote, going to go through some things. Yovanovitch said i didnt know what it meant. I was very concerned. I still am. She testified that a concerned senior ukrainian official told me, quote, i really needed to watch my back. The former ambassador told congress the same ukrainian officials warned her about, quote, two individuals from florida, mr. Parnas and mr. Fruman working with Rudy Giuliani and they were interested in a different ambassador at the post because i guess they wanted to have business dealings in ukraine or additional business dealings. I didnt understand that because nobody at the embassy had ever met these two individuals. Now, the president gets to appoint ambassadors and he gets to recall them, but in the case of ambassador yovanovitch, lets remember, her position and removal are also at the center of a criminal case thats currently being brought by the u. S. Attorney in the Southern District of new york against two men who are associates of the president s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, who reportedly paid giuliani half a million dollars, who hung out at yankee games among other places with rudy and got prime seats at a 2018 trump rally and represented themselves to congress in an official letter as members of the president s legal team. And lets remember part of the charges against these two men is that they were giving donations to a member of congress as part of this sprawling effort to get rid of ambassador yovanovitch so that they could corruptly install friendly associates to promote their business interests in ukraine. Yovanovitch was standing in the way of making ukraine more corrupt on behalf of President Trump and Rudy Giuliani. And i should tell you we just learned tonight that one of these guys, lev parnas, seems to be ready to cooperate with congressional impeachment investigators. Righters reports parnas is prepared to comply with requests and his lawyer has confirmed that to nbc news. Joining me now for more on what we learned today, zoe tillman of Buzzfeed News and natasha bertrand. Natasha, let me start with you on the parnas news. His old lawyer had been the president s old lawyer, john dowd, who had written a letter like hes part of the team and hes not going to show up and do anything. Hes now dumped john dowd and now hes going to cooperate. Is that whats happening . Yeah, chris. I mean it certainly seems like parnas is angry. Hes angry that the president has said he doesnt know who he is. He feels like the president has completely mischaracterized their relationship. You have to be inclined to believe parnas a bit because there are so many photos of them together over the last two or so years, at political events, at galas, at fundraisers. Parnas and fruman were everywhere and surrounded the president at many pivotal moments. So they have opened the door to cooperation with the congressional committees. That doesnt necessarily mean of course that its going to happen because a lot of the documents that the congressional committees want are in the hands of the fbi, which of course raided parnas and frumans belongings as part of their indictment. It also remains to be seen whether or not his lawyer is even going to let him testify because hes in the middle of a criminal probe. But this does indicate at least a shift for now in how he perceives the president. Trump really hasnt learned this lesson, that, you know, when these people are under scrutiny and he continues to criticize them, his former allies, and says i dont know them, they usually have receipts. Zoie, what did we learn today in the yovanovitch testimony, in terms of the nexus between this sort of strange plot that was hatched by parnas and fruman for a variety of reasons, perhaps personal business reasons as well as ingratiating themselves to the president , and the president and Rudy Giulianis attempt to squeeze the Ukrainian Government for dirt on their political rival . What we saw was perspective from yet another witness in the impeachment inquiry sort of explaining how they learned that there was this other channel between the white house and ukraine that was unofficial, not sanctioned, and involved a cohort of nongovernment officials, in this case Rudy Giuliani, lev parnas and igor fruman who for months had been traveling around, trying to set up connections in ukraine in an effort to dig up dirt on joe biden, trying to discredit the mueller investigation, but all while making entrees into very official circles in ukraine to the dismay of the career civil servants, you know, whose job it was to establish those formal channels between the administration and these Foreign Government entities. What we heard, what we saw in the transcript was the former ambassador, Marie Yovanovitch, saying, you know, learning about this back channel and being perplexed and concern by it but not really seeing a way out and being told that if she wanted to keep her job, she needed to ingratiate herself with the president and not make waves about this. Yeah. At one point she testified she was told to tweet support for the president. I mean, whats fascinating here, natasha, you have these comparative means of conducting yourself. Marie yovanovitch, the lifelong Foreign Service officer whos there and whos trying to steer american policy and then the parnas, fruman and giulianis of the world who are wheeling and dealing and taking meetings and doing god knows what at god knows whose behest and those are who the president is listening to and has the entire american state behind him. Exactly, chris. Marie yovanovitch testified that this wasnt something that the state department could just ignore. They felt really hamstrung by the fact that this dual Foreign Policy track was taking place and at one point she said the ukrainians didnt know who to talk to. They didnt know whether we represented u. S. Policy, whether they should be listening to giuliani and parnas and fruman. And the rug really felt like it was being pulled out from beneath us. We have to remember this is a very sensitive moment, it has been a very sensitive moment in ukraine for last five years since the russians invaded eastern ukraine. At this moment they are trying to negotiate peace in the east with the russianbacked separatists. So for the aid to be withheld at this sensitive time was extremely troubling to the ukrainians. On top of that, they didnt even know who the interlocutors were they were supposed to be communicating with. Fast forward to yovanovitch being removed, someone they really trusted. Now they have no choice really but to try to negotiate with the president in the best way that they can, which is zelensky, you saw in that phone call kind of saying to the president , yes, well investigate. Yes, well do what you want essentially to try to appease him. Because, again, ukraine faces an existential threat to its east. They are trying to navigate that right now the best way they can. Were also getting a lot more backstory on the origins of this i think deranged and insane Conspiracy Theory, zoe, about ukraine involvement in the 20 2016 election. That it was an op they conspired to blame russia for. It doesnt actually make sense when you sort of square it up, but this article in the New York Times that manafort was actually spread that in 2016 and its been germinating and sold to the president time and time again, what do we know about that . So over the weekend buzzfeed and cnn received a new cache of documents from the justice department. It was hundreds of pages of records of notes that were taken during the mueller investigation. And in one set of notes from rick gates, who had been the Deputy Campaign manager, he had been Paul Manaforts righthand man, rick gates told investigators that basically as soon as news broke in 2016 that the dnc had been hacked, that wikileaks had these messages and were going to release them, Paul Manafort was immediately saying it wasnt russia, it was ukraine. Michael flynn, who was at the time a Senior Advisor to the campaign, later became trumps shortlived First National security advisor also was immediately saying adamantly it wasnt russia, it wasnt russia, look at ukraine. So we had at the time three years ago two senior officials in the Trump Campaign trying to direct the narrative away from russia towards ukraine. It raises all sorts of questions of who they were talking to. Yes. Whose ear they had. Its a theory thats persisted not withstanding the findings of the u. S. Intelligence committee that it was russia that orchestrated the hack of the dnc that was responsible for coordinating with wikileaks. But this is a narrative thats persisted. Its persisted in far right corners of the internet and its persisted with the president. We heard him or we saw a record of him saying to the ukrainian president in july that he wanted him to look into this ukraine issue and look into the server and still pushing this narrative. Yes. It is a kremlinfriendly line of disinformation that has ascended to the highest commanding heights of American Power and is a formal ask by the president to another nation. Zoe tillman and natasha bertrand, thank you both. Thank you. Thank you. Joining us now, one of the members of Congress Investigating the abuse of power, ted lieu, hes a part of the house judiciary and House Foreign AffairsCommittee Part of the committees undertaking the impeachment inquiry. Congressman, let me start with the noshows from that white house. Four official, i believe, did not appear today citing, i think, executive privilege. The white house not wanting them to appear. Whats your reaction to that . Thank you, chris, for your question. The American People should be asking what is the white house trying to hide . If they really thought that this was a perfect phone call, as donald trump alleges, then they would be happy to have the white house officials come and explain about that phone call, explain what the message was with regard to ukraine. Instead, theyre obstructing witnesses, theyre telling them not to come and its very unfortunate were not going hear their stories today. What do you make about the revelations in Marie Yovanovitchs testimony that at one point the secretary of state says that he will call sean hannity to try to find out what the deal is with this Whisper Campaign of slander that is being directed at her to get her removed . All of these witness depositions being released, theyre going to show one central narrative, which is that donald trump was using the levers of governmental power to benefit himself personally and politically instead of benefitting the u. S. National security. In addition, he was trying to run this shadow Foreign Policy using people like Rudy Giuliani and people outside the government to try to pressure ukraine to launch these bogus investigations. One of those folks that got caught up may have been sean hannity. It is quite disturbing that his name would even be involved in any of this. Well, what do you make of mike pompeo and how he comes across in the testimony that was released today by his closest deputy who resigned essentially in protest of pompeos inability to protect folks at the state department and yovanovitchs testimony . I believe secretary pompeo is going to go down in history as one of the worst secretaries of state ever. He is not backing and sticking up for his career Foreign Service officers. He has completely taken the administrations line of obstruction. He has in fact tried to cover up what donald trump has done by preventing his officials from coming to congress. Thank goodness many of them are ignoring him, coming to congress and telling their stories. Do you think that the republicans, your colleagues who have been sitting in these depositions, are going to change their tune now that the deposition transcripts are being released . Absolutely, they have changed their defenses multiple times. First they started with hearsay. Then they started with a process attack. Then they started blaming adam schiff. Then they said all this stuff is behind closed doors. Now that witness deposition testimonies are coming out, theyre shifting again i think to now really saying the quid pro quo is okay and with that theyre going to lose their last shreds of integrity. The president has targeted some of the folks who have testified, including Lieutenant Colonel vindman. He has called for unmasking the name or revealing the identity of the whistleblower, which is protected by the law. How much do you take this seriously and how much do you think its actually sort of a concrete threat to these proceedings . So we know that the whistleblowers identity is no longer relevant because everything he said has now been corroborated by other witnesses. And the white house has released the call transcript, the summarized version of it. We dont need to have the whistleblower tell us what was on that phone call because the American People already know. In addition, President Trumps attacks on colonel vindman are very unfortunate. Lieutenant colonel vindman served in iraq. He shed his blood, got a purple heart. He told his story to congress and he should not be attacked. Congressman ted lieu, thank you very much. Thank you, chris. 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