Im his defense lawyer. Tonight inside the explosive admissions in todays impeachment inquiry transcript that left trump defenders dumb founded. Plus republicans keep pushing to out the whistleblower. The whistleblower statute was never meant to give you anonymity. And has rudys indicted associate considers flipping i dont know those gentlemen. You were in pictures with them. And trumps longtime political guru faces trial. Roger wasnt on my campaign except way at the beginning. A look back at just who the president surrounds himself with. I havent spoken to michael in a long time. When all in starts right now. I didnt know manafort well. He wasnt with the campaign long. Good evening from new york. Im chris hayes. Yes, there was a quid pro quo. It has been clear for a while. It is clear as day in the call notes the white house itself released when the president of the United States tells the president of ukraine, whos asking for military aid, i would like you to do us a favor, though. On friday on this show we laid out nine pieces of evidence of the quid pro quo. It is becoming more and more preposterous for anyone to even try and say there wasnt one. But today we got the most hi lay hilariously answer when we saw Gordon Sondlands testimony transcript. It is over 370 pages in which sondland skirts around whether or not there was a quid pro quo. But then after a few weeks of, oh, i dont know, Reading Press reports about what other witnesses were saying, sondland said, oh, yes, i do remember now. There was actually a quid pro quo that i personally delivered to the Ukrainian Government. Yesterday the day before his testimony is publicly released, sondland sent a fourpage addendum to congress saying other publicly released depositions, quote, have refreshed my recollection about certain conversations in Early September 2019. He then explains, and i quote, i now do recall a conversation on september 1st, 2019, in warsaw with a top advisor to the ukrainian president. I said that resumption of u. S. Aid would likely not occur until ukraine provided the public anticorruption statement we had been discussing for many weeks. Gordon sondland delivered the quid pro quo. He testified to it in sworn testimony and put a stake in this heretofore unkillable question of whether there was a quid pro quo. The final one, i would hope. There was a quid pro quo. But that is not all we learned. We now know even more about this just bizarre world we live in in which Rudy Giuliani as the president s private attorney, no actual official u. S. Title, is wielding the full power of the u. S. State. Sondland describes a may Oval Office Meeting where President Trump expressed concern about ukraine. Quote, he just kept saying talk to rudy, talk to rudy. Sondland said trump was not clear what he meant other than, quote, ukraine is a problem. Sondland was asked, quote, did you ever discuss Rudy Giuliani with secretary pompeo . He responded pompeo rolled his eyes appeared said, yes, its something we have to deal with. Secretary of state mike pompeo telling the ambassador to the european union, yes, i know Rudy Giuliani has no real business doing this, but hes running a shadow Foreign Policy and its just something we have to deal with. Heres how sondland describes how people perceived guiliani in the state department. Quote, people usually smiled when they heard rudys name because he was always swirling around somewhere. Swirling around somewhere. The story of Rudy Giulianis farreaching tentacles was a recurring theme in the other transcript released today when former special envoy to the ukraine, kurt volker, a guy who has served under the last four president s, recounted trying to explain to President Trump that the new ukrainian president was committed to fighting actual corruption, the real kind. According to volker, he just did not believe it, he was skepti l skeptical. He said thats not what i hear, i hear he has terrible people around him. He referenced he hears from Rudy Giuliani. Volker had his own meeting with the ukrainian president where he described something he called the guiliani factor. Quote, i explained that i thought there was a negative narrative about ukraine that is counteracting all the good things he is doing and this is being amplified by Rudy Giuliani. Rudy giuliani was running a shadow Foreign Policy that completely circumvented normal channels. The people that usually operate within the normal channels just had to follow along. Heres how trump appointee Gordon Sondland, a man who paid a Million Dollars to be part of the administration by donating to the Trump Organization described the downward spirl. It started as talk to rudy. Then lets get the ukrainians to give a statement about corruption. No, corruption is not enough. We need to talk about the 2016 election and the burisma investigations. Thats of course Hunter Bidens firm. It kept getting more insidious as the timeline went on. Its just become more and more clear every day how rotten and corrupt this whole thing is. This is not just an addendum, not just an ask or demand. Its not just a bit of impeachable extortion. This is the entirety of u. S. Policy with regard to ukraine and the entire geostrategic lay of the land with this occupied country. And it revolves around the president s personal lawyer and shadow Foreign Policy and a whole conspiracy to squeeze this nation, ukraine, that the president has come to hate because Rudy Giuliani along with putin and others told him. To here with me now, someone who was in the room when Gordon Sondland testified, democratic congressman Sean Patrick Maloney of the house who sits on the house intelligence committee. Your reaction to the addendum from ambassador sondland. Right, well, its about time. Ambassador sondland has now aligned his testimony with the testimony of everyone else who spoke to him, who were in these key conversations, and who under oath said Something Different than he did. He has now aligned that testimony with them. So he has got the message that he needs to deliver the truth and the whole truth to the congressional committee. Im glad weve got the addendum, it clears up the point you made very clearly that there was absolutely a quid pro quo. Not necessary, by the way, for a tremendous exercise of president ial abuse of authority and a bunch of other wrongdoing. But critical to obliterate the republican talking point that without a quid pro quo, there was somehow not enough to be concerned here. Theres a clear quid pro quo. Its an abuse of power. Sondland confirms it like everybody else. In terms of everybody else, so walk me through this. One of the justifications made for this portion of the process, closed door depositions that are not public, right, is that witnesses cant align their testimony with each other. But of course weve been getting a lot of reports about it. What does sondlands addendum mean for the logic of that process . Well, it means that it was a good idea and it means that theres a reason why professional people do it this way. Normally youre not treated to all the nonsense that flies around about it, but ambassador sondland is exhibit a of how important it is to be able to put people in that vice of having no other choice but to tell the truth for fear of perjury prosecution or contempt of congress, but also because they dont have the benefit of knowing whether everybody else is conveniently forgetting something or shading a truth. When they get in that prisoners dilemma, they then are forced to come clean and i think thats what were seeing with ambassador sondland. Its about time. Theres plans to call Mick Mulvaney as well, i believe. Ambassador bolton is awaiting a ruling from the courts on one of his deputies who asked for a proactive ruling. What is your expectation about the rest of the witnesses . My expectation is that they need to have a very good reason or a court order or an invocation of privilege with some real meat on the bones to ignore a lawful congressional subpoena. Thats true, by the way, for the documents the state department and other agencies are withholding because all these witnesses or many of them took notes, so its not just their testimony under oath, its the contemporaneous record they made of those conversations. We dont have a lot of that information. We do have Text Messages and some other information. But the point is we need to make these requests to make clear that they have been instructed lawfully to produce that evidence testimony. Some may refuse to do so but were not going to slow down, were going to keep moving forward. I believe sondlands phone that he was using, it was a state department phone, the state department has that, right . Theres documentary evidence the state department has possession of. The state department is sitting on a bunch of evidence that is directly relevant to the testimony these witnesses have given. Bear in mind that puts the witnesses in a very difficult position because they they need to in most cases give sworn testimony without the benefit of refreshing their memory. Of having those documents in the possession of the investigator whos going to walk them through them. So it puts them at some risk. More importantly, it keeps the truth from the american public. Were okay with the facts, let me just say that. I think that if this administration wants to have a fair process as it keeps saying, it should turn over this information and it should it should let the public see it for itself. Final question. Senator Lindsey Graham, there was not a lot of response to this sondland testimony but snar senator Lindsey Graham says i dont care about it. Im giving up on the whole process. I understand why hes giving up, the facts are not on his side. The facts are burying this president. Those who have tried to whistle it away, said silly things about character assassinations or the process and denying there was a quid pro quo when there quite clearly was, they keep moving this goal post. Theyre now at the point where theyll have to say yes, it happened. Yes, it was terrible. But its not enough it doesnt rise to the level of impeachment. That i suppose is a fair argument, but they should cut the nonsense and just get to the truth because theres an overwhelming amount of evidence and they should get there. Congressman, good to have you here in studio. My pleasure. Two people who have been following this very closely, an Investigative Reporter from the Washington Post who wrote about the revised attorney and barbara mcquade, also an msnbc legal analyst. Barbara, let me start with you. How significant is this remarkable addendum from the person who i think at this point its fair to say in terms of the people that have testified is one of the key witnesses. I think its very significant. One of the things that is especially probative about this statement is Gordon Sondland is someone who is allied with President Trump. He cant be written off as a deep state operative, someone who is a Career State Department person. This is a person who was appointed by President Trump to be an ambassador who gave millions of dollars to his campaign. And so for him to come in and change his story i think is very significant. I also think its very significant that he didnt tell this story the first time. That he now only recalls it after having his memory refreshed by hearing about the testimony of other people. I think this shows this idea of consciousness of guilt. They knew this was a big deal. They knew quid pro quo sounded really awful. Thats why they tried to conceal that fact. Only after that lie was exposed and he had real concerns about being charged with a crime for lying to congress has he come back with this now i recall the detailed statement. So i think its very significant. I think it explains why republicans in recent days have been saying that theyre changing their strategy about whether there was a quid pro quo and now have this theory well, a quid pro quo isnt that big of a deal and not impeachable. Aaron, what do we know about how sondland got to this point with his testimony . We do know this has not happened just overnight. In fact its been a process here that obviously we saw bill taylor come in and directly contradict Gordon Sondland, who was one of the first witnesses to come in for the impeachment inquiry. Then there was morrison and other National Security officials, vindman who have come in. Now weve had four versus one really and sondlands recollection versus everyone since then. We know that one detail specifically was that this supplemental declaration was brought to the committee yesterday afternoon and over the course of last night and today they have added footnotes to his testimony and we got the product we got today. It really is a reversal on a very important point as to whether or not Gordon Sondland knew about the involvement of money or suspicions about involvement of money, how that was communicated to him isnt always necessarily cleared up in the supplemental. What is very clear now is that he was delivering the message to the ukrainians almost a very threatening message that if President Trumps goals were not met, it was very unlikely, he said, that the 400 million nearly 400 million in Security Assistance to fend off russian aggression would not be released. You know, barbara, you talked about consciousness of guilt obviously in the reversal here of the memory being refreshed here on Gordon Sondland. I think you can arguably say theres evidence of that. Also all of the behavior thats described here, all of this cloak and dagger stuff and Skull Duggery and the fact people were speaking in code and the president says talk to rudy, talk to rudy, because they want to outsource it through rudy. Theyre all from what we know from the record acting in ways where they realize theres something at the core that theyre trying to get that is inappropriate and not acceptable to try to come out and do. Yeah, i think thats absolutely right, chris. All of those things can be circumstantial evidence about whats really going on here. You know, with regard to Gordon Sondland, who said at one point that he never realized that burisma equaled biden, at some point its just not credible when you look at all of these things. One of the things that a jury is typically instructed to consider is because you can not read another persons mind, you are permitted, however, to draw reasonable inferences about what was going on based on the totality of the circumstances. Everything the person said and everything the person did. And so all of this cloak and dagger stuff that youre referring to does suggest that people knew what they were doing was illegal and that certainly contributes to this idea that not only was there a quid pro quo but that they knew it was an abuse of power and a potentially impeachable offense. In his testimony sondland said hes not a lawyer but he assumed that such a direct bid at extortion would be illegal. Aaron, one of the striking things about all of this, right, is that many of these folks, Lieutenant Colonel vindman, bill taylor, Gordon Sondland, they work in the administration. Gordon sondland is the Eu Ambassador at this very moment. I can only imagine the type of pressure he might be under, the type of calls he might be getting from various folks. What do you think this means for him and his future . Well, i do think you have someone here whos a very successful hotelier, really was a selfmade millionaire on the west coast. There is a spoke, ive spoken with family members and friends of his over the last few weeks. I dont think a lot of them think this will be the way he wants to be remembered. Theres a question of whats life like for him to go back to work tomorrow as ambassador of the european union, but beyond that what will be his final chapter in all of this. Weve already seen three acts of gordon sonland. He was the one who wrote the text message who said no quid pro quos of any kind, trump skengt wa doesnt want any of those. That was held up for a while as the defense. In his first round of testimony he did break with the president and say actually i wrote that after i had a direct conversation with President Trump, so those were his words. And i dont know if they were true or not when in fact he didnt know that he was working on one quid pro quo as far as the meeting that the ukrainians wanted at the white house in exchange for these investigations. And now were seeing the other half of this, the one line of defense he had in so far saying that i didnt know anything about the money. Now says in fact he delivered that message to the ukrainians. He couches a little bit saying that was my presumption, i dont know exactly before that meeting in september, but he says subsequently in this supplemental declaration that the terms of the quid pro quo were even made clearer to him, that it would specifically have to be zelensky who went before the public and said that this would have to be an investigation on burisma and the 2016 election specifically. Got to go on tv where the president will see it i believe were the words and some of the testimony released today. Barbara mcquad