When all in starts right now. Good evening from new york. Im chris hayes. Today was the end of a packed week of testimony in the impeachment of president donald j. Trump. It is likely the final day of televised hearings in this round of the inquiry. Today we heard from the tenth and 11th witnesses. One is career diplomat, a guy named david holmes, whos currently the counselor for Political Affairs at the u. S. Embassy in ukraine and who by his own reckoning did not imagine hed be testifying here. Except he directly heard the president asking the director to the European UnionGordon Sondland about the hit job hed want on his political rival. This is when donald trump called from a middle of a restaurant in kiev. What did ambassador sondland say to you . He said he doesnt really care about ukraine. Did he use slightly more colorful language than that . He did. What did he say he does care about . He said he cares about big stuff. Did he explain what he meant by big stuff . I asked him what kind of big stuff . We have big stuff going on here like a war with russia, and he said no big stuff like the biden investigation that mr. Giulianis pushing. The biden investigation, thats what he cares about. Surprising. The other witness was a reknowned russia expert named fiona hill. Shes a Trump White House official until the middle of july. Her testimony was as reporter alex thomas put it, quote, at the risk of committing puntry, fiona hill is the most competent witness that ive seen before this committee. She might be the most competent witness ive ever seen before congress at any point. I have seen dozens of professors testify in sublt subjects they are experts. My colleague Nicolle Wallace wrote, quote, i spent much of my career in politics. Ive never seen anyone much like fiona hill. Conspiracy theories spewing from the republican members. Some of you on this committee appear to believe that russia and its Security Services did not conduct a campaign against our country and that perhaps somehow for some reason ukraine did. This is fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the russian Security Services themselves. The unfortunate truth is that russia was the foreign power that systematically attacked our Democratic Institutions in 2016. This is the public conclusion of our intelligence agencies confirmed in bipartisan congressional reports. It is beyond dispute. Even if some of the underlying details must remain classified. The impacts of the successful 2016 Russian Campaign remains evident today. Our nation is being torn apart. Truth is questioned. Our highly professional and expert Career Foreign Service is being undermined. Right now russias Security Services and their proxies have geared up to repeat their interference in the 2020 election. Were running rut of time to stop them. And the cost of this investigation i would ask you please not promote politically driven falsehoods that promote russian interests. Shy also delivered damning testimony about the National Security advisor john bolton to demands for ukraine to open those investigations. What was that specific instruction . The specific instruction was that i had to go to the lawyers to john eisenberg. I was Senior Council for the National Security council to basically say ambassador bolton told me that i am not part of whatever drug deal that mulvaney and sondland are cooking up. What did you understand it to mean by the drug deal that mulvaney and sondland were cooking up am. I took it to mean investigations for a meeting. Did you go speak to the lawyers . I certainly did. Republicans on the Intelligence Committee tried to tango with fiona hill early on, but at a certain point they got tired of getting owned over and over and just flat out gave up asking her questions, trying unsuccessfully to just limit her chance of talking at all. Thank you for your service, thanks for being here and i yield back. Could i actually Say Something because weve had three. I was going to skl you if youd like to respond. Gentleman, will suspend. Dr. Hill, you may respond. I think what he said was important about the importance of overcoming and certainly partisan, you know, division. And its unfortunate that congressman turner and radcliffe have both left as well because i think all of us who came here under a legal obligation also feltd we had a moral obligation to do so. Fiona hills ultimate moment of the day came while being questioned by the republican counsel she started by explaining why she got so upset with one of the people running point on the president s extortion scheme, ambassador Gordon Sondland. I was upset with him that he wasnt fully telling us about all of the meetings he was having. And he said to me that im briefing the president. Im briefing chief of staff mulvaney. Im briefing secretary pompeo, and ive talked to ambassador bolton. Who else do i have to deal with . It struck me yesterday when you put up on it screen ambassador sondlands emails and who was on these emails, and you said these are the people that need to know he was absolutely right because he was being involved in a domestic political errand. And we were being involved in National SecurityForeign Policy, and those two things had just diverged. A domestic political errand. Its absolutely right, though, of course it cheekily undersells the gravity of that errand. But Gordon Sondland had been tasked to do by Rudy Giuliani was to pull off a political hit job. It did not have anything to do with the National Security of the United States. It had nothing to do with the Foreign Policy of the United States or National Interest or interest incru or any of that. We know that. Sondland was just a bag man for the trump campaign. But using the official powers of the presidency to carry it off. Fiona hills explanation distills all the drama weve seen. The regular channel and the irregular channel, the fact all these experts who come to testify are working on ukraine policy, and theyre all scratching their head thinking what is going on, what is the roadblock, whats the hold up, why is this happening . The mystery surrounding it all, the drug deal happening around the corner. Because National Security policy is not what donald trump was doing, certainly what Gordon Sondland was doing, not what Rudy Giuliani was doing. No, they were not doing Foreign Policy a lot of them. They were not protecting National Security. They were not looking out for the National Interest. They were not representing the people who elected the president to be president. All of us, that is, american citizens. What they were doing is carrying off a political hit job, an errand. They were trumps version of nixons plumbers. This was their version of the watergate break in. Joining me now is congressman denny heck of washington. How would you sum up what you learned in this week of testimony . There was a lot of it. First of all, i think in some regards americans can sleep better tonight because they were treated to witness after witness after witness from the Diplomatic Corp and from federal service that put their love of country before all else, people of integrity and character and courage dare i say given all that went on. And secondly, chris, he did it. Thats it. He did it. The fact of the matter is the evidence overwhelming, and if this were a criminal justice proceeding and its that kind of roughly analogous to that the jury would have brought a unanimous verdict and he did it and the question is what is Congress Going to do about it now. To that point the summation i thought by the chair today, mr. Schiff, was really quite remarkable. I want to just play a little sound because what he says in the end has a kind of direness to the warning and i want to get your reaction to it. Take a listen. I will tell you why i could resist no more, and it came down to this. It came down to actually it came down to timing. It came down to the fact that the day after bob mueller testified, the day after bob mueller testified that donald trump invited russian interference the day after that donald trump is back on the phone asking another nation to involve itself in another u. S. Election. That says to me this president believes he is above the law, beyond accountability. And in my view there is nothing more dangerous than an unethical president who believes they are above the law. And i would just say to people watching here at home and around the world, in the words of my great colleague, we are better than that. Adjourned. Congressman, how how dire do you think the stakes are in terms of the message that is sent both to this president and future president s if it is essentially deemed fine to do what the president did . If he normalizes this, chris, absolutely. We have an opportunity here to hold the president accountable. And if we do not, pretty clearly he would have established the base that any future president can get away with, the kinds of things that he did. And that there will be no way to hold them accountable. Ive always thought this about the rule of law and whether or not the president was above it. Hes not. One of your colleagues today, republican will hurd, hes a retiring member of congress, he was seen as i think sensible by democrats, a moderate. Hes retiring. He has expressed his reservations about the president s conduct. He closed today by saying theres not evidence here to impeach. Were you surprised by that . Whats your reaction . So i think will hurd is an honorable person, and i think hes been an honorable member of congress. And in fact, chris, i cannot exaggerate to you how much i would like to have the debate he set forth. Namely what happened here is wrongdoing, it simply didnt rise to the level of an impeachable offense. Now, i happen to disagree with will on that score. But the fact is that would be a healthy debate. Thats not the argument that all of his colleagues are making. Theyre all saying nothing wrong went on here, nothing whatsoever, i dont even know why were doing this when in fact the evidence is again overwhelming. The debate will would like to have would be a good debate for america. What were having is not one. Were you fiona hill today was a fairly striking witness in many ways. She kept warning about the insidiousness of a variety of sort of false narratives about, you know, ukraine meddling in the elections and the Conspiracy Theory of course that made it all the way to the president s lips in the phone call with zelensky which essentially comes down to the dnc teaming with ukraine to hack its own servers and leak its own emails in order to frame russia for it. What do you make of her saying that and your republican colleagues continue to truck in precisely what she had identified . Theyd been oblivious to the facts seemingly from the very beginning, but shes absolutely right in pinpointing what the multiple levels of danger really are here. First of all, if this argument is allowed to be propagated it weakens ukraine because it calls into question our support for a country that would do this to us. Russia delights in that because what makes ukraine weaker makes russia stronger. They would like Nothing Better than to be able to march into ukraine and make it a client state. And of course weve compromised the ukraines National Security by making this argument, and we compromise our own National Security by making this argument. And oh, by the way in the process weve undermined the very predicate of democracy which is rule of law. Congressman denny heck who was in those hearings all week thanks so much. And joining me now two people who have been following these hearings closely. Youve done some reporting on fiona hill. A lot of people were were surprised when she left the Brookings Institution to join the Trump Administration. He talked about it today, and i thought really interesting terms. Basically she went back in because she actually thinks she thinks a u. S. Russia bilateral relationship is important. We cant be at constant odds. And she wanted to do what she could do set it straight. Julia . Oh, im sorry, i thought you were playing a clip. I think theres also a sense that the russians had meddled in our elections and she felt like she could bring her expertise to bear and you know set it right. And i dont know if you recall early on in the Trump Administration when there was really a dearth of people who were willing to go in, the people who did go in kind of felt like they were going to be the adults in the room, the kind of sober hand on the wheel with this erratic driver who was leader of the free world. They thought they could mitigate the damage and keep things from getting worse. And kurt volker was one of those people. Jim mattis was one of those people. Fiona hill was one of those people. And now those people are witnesses in the impeachment inquiry. Max, precisely the kind of narrative she talked about has been the through line for not just devin nunes and other people on the committee but obviously Rudy Giuliani whos tweeting right now about how the u. S. Embassy wont grant visas to some former prosecutors who want to come and tell us how corrupt i guess the bidens are. It does seem this sort of counter narrative that has been constructed has essentially colonized the minds of one of the two major parties. Yeah, look, chris, i think we have to put this in some context. I mean, part of what rudy was doing as trumps personal lawyer who was hired as part of the russia investigation was to try to develop a counter narrative, a response trump could use to defend himself from allegations he colluded with russia that they thought were coming because of the mueller investigation. And then they saw this opportunity to connect it to biden in the 2020 election. And this has always been about trumps ability or willingness to use u. S. Foreign policy to advance his own personal political interests. And so it has never stopped. And its been clear throughout 2019. And so the idea that the grown ups as julia mentioned, that kurt volker and ambassador sondland didnt know that this was connected, that burisma meant biden is utterly farcical. It was in the New York Times may 1. Rudy was pushing biden. They knew what this was all about and fiona hill testified to that today. Julia, do you think this will continue to be sort of a propped up theory . I mean, hill did her best today to kind of slay it. But youre already watching and Lindsey Graham sent a letter to mike pompeo and we want all your communications with biden and the hunter biden and the former ukrainian president and et cetera, et cetera. Youre seeing this in the kind of right wing media and this parallels that two parts of the population live in parallel informational universes, only one of which is true, and we have that happening here when this scandal started brewing and continuing through the hearings. People on the right were saying oh, they never got over the russia hoax. They kept talking about the steele dossier. Like those conspiracy theories never went away. You had devin nunes basically and his counsel going through hi, witness, have you heard of Conspiracy Theory 72b, and those were all from the mueller era. Its been baked in and cemented i would say. And i looked at fox right as fiona hill wrapped up her testimony. At their website its like they watched a different hearing. They were talking about how she was against the sale of javelins at the beginning, it was about hunter biden. Its like they didnt watch the hearing at all. One of the through lines has been ugly attacks on the witnesses about dual loyalties, and youve written about Lieutenant Colonel alexander vinldman. Today i saw conservatives questioning why so many people in american intelligence and Foreign Service are foreignborn. Theres something pretty dark there that i think has been unearthed over the course of the last few weeks. Oh, incredibly dark. And i think what it reflects is they have no alternative arguments besides the Conspiracy Theory that we just sort of outlined trying to blame ukraine for russian interference, which is a russian intelligence talking point. So they have no argument. And so the other thing you can do is try to attack the witnesses and try to demean the witnesses and try to say they have these dual loyalties. A lot of it has antisemitic undertones. A lot of it is to gin up the right wing base. Its demeaning to the people who served the country and taken an oath. And people who have served this country honorably and especially with Lieutenant Colonel vindman whos fought, been shot at, been wounded in battle. And to attack that guys patriotism is simply beyond the pail. But what were seeing is theres no bottom to this Republican Party. And, you know, the democrats are about to move forward on impeachment, and really i think what were seeing is its the Republican Party on trial here to see where they stand