Says needs to resign now. Live from studio 6a in rockefeller plaza, all in starts right now. Hello, everybody. Hello. Good evening. Good evening. Thank you. Thanks to everybody for being here. Its great to be back here at 30 rock with all of you here. Good god, today has been ten days and this week has been ten weeks. And there are a million things happening at once. Just in the past couple of hours, for instance, we just got this incredibly incriminating and damning behind closed doors testimony from a u. S. Foreign Service Officer that was still supposed to be kind of like the b story today, the sideshow. Its a guy who works in the u. S. Embassy in ukraine, a guy named david holmes. He testified behind closed doors that he could hear President Trump talking on the phone to the u. S. Ambassador to the European Union who was an bucks to trump, Gordon Sondland, and they were in a restaurant in kiev and the president was shouting so loudly on the phone that sondland had to hold the phone away from his ear because it was hurting his eardrum, so then everyone could hear. And after he hung up with the president , sondland told this guy who testified, david holmes, that the president does not give and im quoting now so i can say it, does not give a shit about ukraine, he only cares about the big stuff and by big stuff he means investigations into the bidens. Right, yeah, thats the right reaction. In a restaurant in kiev, shouting through the phone. So that just happened. Were going to have more on that very crazy testimony later. But this was just week one, keep in mind, in the public televised impeachment hearings of the president of the United States. Its just the fourth time in American History that were all going through this process. I think its fair to say, and maybe im a bit biased but i think its fair to say its not gone really well for the president the first week. Today even before that breaking news it was an especially busy day in the criminal chronicles of one president donald j. Trump. So the president s longtime adviser and associate roger stone today was convicted on seven counts in a federal courthouse. Thats he was thats it. Unanimous jury of his peers. If youre keeping track, and its probably worthwhile to do so, the list of people surrounding the president who have been convicted of, pleaded guilty to a felony now includes the president s former personal lawyer, his campaign manager, his Deputy Campaign manager, another Trump Campaign staffer, his First National security adviser, and now the man who has been trumps political adviser since the reagan administration. So thats the sixth person in the president s close orbit convicted of crimes committed while in the service we should mention of donald trump. And i want to be transparent here. I am not including the president s current lawyer, rudy giuliani, because to be clear hes just under investigation for a number of federal crimes. Hes not been indicted. Im also not including giulianis associates, our good friends lev and igor who were arrested last month while trying to flee the country. Theyve just been indicted, innocent until Proven Guilty in america. So this morning, trumps adviser roger stone was convicted. He was convicted of one count of obstruction, five counts of making false statements, and this is an important one, one count of witness tampering. Its a federal crime. Its in the federal statute. He was tried for it and he was convicted then. The crazy thing about the world in which we live is the very moment we learned about that verdict the former u. S. Ambassador to ukraine was testifying publicly in the impeachment inquiry of donald j. Trump, her name, maybe you saw this today, her name was Marie Yovanovitch. An ovation for Marie Yovanovitch. She goes by masha to her friends. She speaks different languages, spent over three decades in the Foreign Service. Most recently she was bullied out of her job by the president and his henchmen for lack of a better word. She had assignments all over the world. She was in places like somalia and armenia. Most recently and relevantly she was in ukraine where she focused especially intently on a kind of anticorruption program. In fact, she was doing so well there aiding a young democracy, trying to root out endemic corruption she was asked to stay on for another year until one day out of the blue to her, out of the blue she gets a call. Ambassador yovanovitch, on april 24th of this year at approximately 10 00 p. M. , you received a telephone call while you were at the embassy in kiev from the director general of the state department. At the time that this urgent call came in, what were you in the middle of doing . I was hosting an event in honor of an anticorruption activist was an anticorruption activist in ukraine. She very tragically died because she was attacked by acid and several months later died a very, very painful death. After you stepped away from this anticorruption event to take this call, what did the director general tell you . She said that there was great concern on the seventh floor of the state department, thats where the leadership of the state department sits. What happened next . Around 1 00 in the morning, she called me again and she said that there were great concerns, there were concerns up the street, and she said i needed to come home immediately. Get on the next plane to the u. S. , and i asked her why. And she said she wasnt sure but there were concerns about my security. I asked her my physical security because sometimes washington knows more than we do about these things, and she said, no, she hadnt gotten that impression that it was a physical security issue but they were concerned about my security and i needed to come home right away. You know, i argued. This is extremely irregular and no reason given. But in the end i did get on the next plane home. You said there were concerns up the street. What did you understand that to mean . The white house. She was at an event highlighting a ukraine anticorruption activist who was murdered for her work. She was attacked with acid, and she died. And Marie Yovanovitch gets a call and is told come home immediately, literally gets on the next plane because there were concerns up the street about her. And what became exceedingly clear is Marie Yovanovitch got in Donald Trumps way. As the Deputy Assistant secretary of state george kent said there was ongoing active Smear Campaign that was waged against Marie Yovanovitch including the president s personal lawyer, rudy giuliani, his two indicted associates lev and igor, whose indictment includes a section in the indictment in the Southern District about trying to get you yovanovitch fired. We should say that the president s son weighed in on and this and the president. Now you testified in your Opening Statement that you had left ukraine by the time of the july 25th call between President Trump and president zelensky. When was the first time that you saw the call record for this phone call . When it was released publicly at the end of september, i believe. And prior to reading that call record, were you aware that President Trump had specifically made reference to you in that call . No. What was your reaction to learning that . I was shocked. Absolutely shocked and devastated, frankly. What do you mean by devastated . I was shocked and devastated that i would feature in a phone call between two heads of state in such a manner, where President Trump said that i was bad news to another world leader and that i would be going through some things. So i was it was a terrible moment, a person who saw me actually reading the transcript said that the color drained from my face. I think i even had a physical reaction. I think, you know, even now words confound me. What do you think when you read you were going to go through some things . I didnt know what to think, but i was very concerned. What were you concerned about . Shes going to go through some things. It didnt sound good. It sounded like a threat. Did you feel threatened . I did. So the ousted former u. S. Ambassador to ukraine she goes to Congress Today to testify in the context of course on impeachment inquiry to the president s high crimes and misdemeanors and shes talking about this really Bizarre Campaign to smear her and threaten carried out by a bunch of people but ultimately at the correction direction of the president of the United States himself and shes talking about how she felt threatened by the president. And while this is playing out two huge things happen, okay . One, in the middle of her testimony the president s longtime adviser gets convicted by a jury in a federal courthouse on several counts including witness tampering. Thats one thing that happens. And number two, in realtime the president himself attempts to tamper with the witness. He attacks Marie Yovanovitch while shes in the middle of testifying. I mean, you cannot make this up. As we sit here testifying the president is attacking you on twitter, and id like to give you a chance to respond. Ill read part of one of his tweets. Everywhere yovanovitch went turned bad. She started off in somalia, how did that go . Ambassador, you showed the courage to come forward today and testify. Notwithstanding the fact you were urged by the white house or state department not to, notwithstanding the fact that as you testified earlier, the president implicitly threatened you in that call record. And now the president in realtime is attacking you. What affect do you think that has on other witness willingness to come forward and expose wrongdoing . Well, its very intimidating. Its designed to intimidate, is it not . I mean, i cant speak to what the president is trying to do but i think the effect is to be intimidating. So the president of the United States attacks a 33year vet on of the Foreign Service, a former ambassador to ukraine on twitter. He tach tampers with a witness. Hes insulting and intimidating a witness during his impeachment inquiry, and he does this while his political adviser is about to be found guilty of witness tampering. Now, if you cover as a reporter political corruption outside of this context, if you cover mayors or complaint governors, theres kind of a similar pattern that happens, right . You learn the way they go down is first their lower Level Associates get indicted and its front page news. And those associates start cooperating and its front page news and their associates start cooperating and its a big deal. And then, before you know it a lot of people are going to jail. And ultimately like the last thwack in a large tree, down comes the person in the middle, the corrupt person at the top, right . That is what happened. I watched this happen as a young reporter in chicago. Its what happened to george ryan, whos the former governor of illinois. And the former of detroit. One a republican, one a democrat. Obviously corruption is not confined to one party. You see this around the country in local settles all the time. People around the corruption politician, they start falling and usually the politician in turn ends up in trouble and falling himself. And the reason they fall in the end in these context is because if you were are governor or you were are a mayor, you could actually be indicted by a federal prosecutor. Thats like a badge of honor for a federal prosecutor. Thats not happening in this case. Day after day the guys around the president are being convicted of crimes including today with roger stone. Crimes done seemingly on the behalf of the president and his campaign. But not the president. Because the department of justice has concluded, and i think theyre probably right about this, that a sitting president cannot be indicted while in office. So this is all we get, impeachment literally. That is the way to stop a corrupt president. Thats the remedy, the only way to rein in his criminality is through this process were watching play out, impeachment. Joining me now, one of the members of congress who will be considered whether to recommend impeachment charges against the president democratic congresswoman Sheila Jackson lee of texas and also a member of the House Judiciary Committee where those articles will likely be drafted. Congresswoman, i want to ask you about the president tweeting about the witness today. I saw some people defending him saying, oh, come on, hes just letting off steam, it wasnt so bad. Youre crazy if you think thats witness tampering. What do you say to people who say that . Chris, its good to be with you today and your audience. Let me say what we witnessed today was an abuse of power, a mountain of abuse of power. Contributing to that, of course, was the most devastating and seemingly senseless tweet attacking the witness as she was testifying. That happens to be a federal crime. I was reading the statute that says that any attempt to stop a witness from testifying in a corrupt and intimidating manner is illegal if they are testifying in a legal proceeding or a proceeding that is official. This was an official proceeding. And so whatever argument our friends on the other side of the aisle and let me very clear, democrats want this to be a process where they put their nation and the people of the United States over themselves and the party. Were hoping that a light will turn on that they will look at the facts i dont know how anyone could not see that a witness that has been sworn to testify and is in the midst of her testimony, and a tweet or a statement comes out that smears her and suggests that she is in quotes, no good, obviously could in that moment intimidate the witness. So i dont think that it is in any way a question. I do think that that adds to the facts of this whole umbrella of abuse of power and all the elements that i heard you discuss really play into what the Founding Fathers established as the one barrier or the one law if i might use that terminology that protects the American People against a abusive leader who is using the power of the office not for himself excuse me, not for the American People but for himself. Theres more tonight on testimony of course, we got the testimony, the Opening Statement acquired by cnn we have looked at, of the political officer of the embassy in ukraine who gave the Opening Statement in which he describes the phone call he was present for the day after the president presses ukrainian president zelensky to open investigations of the bidens in which he can hear him talking to Gordon Sondland on the phone. The president , on the phone saying hes going to start the investigation. What do you think the significance of that is . Enormously significant. There are Building Blocks going on right now with what is the investigatory process. What people are seeing now is instead of an independent prosecutor, we dont have that. So the Intelligence Community is doing an excellent job in laying the Building Blocks. Here we have an innocent professional Foreign Service staff person who took an oath to defend the nation and defend the constitution coming forward and saying, the president said i dont give a blank about the American People, ukraine, the jeopardy of russia invading ukraine, the war that is going on, which by the way ambassador yovanovitch went to the front lines more than ten times subjecting herself to violence. I dont care about that, in fact i dont give a blank about it. I only care about dirt on my opponent from a foreign entity absolutely against the law. Here is someone totally out of the stream of witnesses coming forward because of their commitment to the American People, the oath they take. And theyre saying outright that the president s own words loudly in a restaurant in a nonsecured phone, stunning, speaks about i dont give a blank. It is all about me. That is clearly bribery as well. It adds to that because it is rendering something to yourself that is not really yours for something that you have to give or expect to give to someone else. So it is just another brick in the pathway for the committee on the judiciary to move if the decision is made, to move forward in that process of articles of impeachment all based upon a report that is not yet given. But that report has to be given. And once its given, itll have all these elements in it to be given to the judiciary committee. One note of clarification was Gordon Sondlands clarification. Congresswoman Sheila Jackson lee, thank you so much for giving us some time on this friday night. Thank you. Good to be with you. So again weve got breaking news tonight, damning new closed door testimony against President Trump. Remember earlier in this week in public testimony the acting ambassador to ukraine, bill taylor, on if first day of impeachment hearings, he told of an incident hed heard from one of his staffers that hadnt been previously introduced to it record and that staffer was sitting at a table in a restaurant in ukraine with Gordon Sondland, inaugural donor, probably how he got the j