Ukraine, who has since resigned. Kent will appear on the first day of public testimony next wednesday along with ambassador bill taylor. Kent is expected to detail the irregular policy process that sought to pressure ukraine to investigate trumps political rivals. Todays transcripts confirming the president s explicit desire for a commitment from ukraine to investigating his political opponents from. That testimony, kent, Ambassador Gordon Sondland had talked to the president and potus wanted nothing less than president zelensky to go to the microphone and say investigations, biden, and clinton. Kent also details the level of alarm among career officials about the Pressure Campaign run by that irregular channel of officials and Rudy Giuliani. He describes an interaction with a colleague in which he warned of the danger in pressuring a Foreign Government to do Donald Trumps political bidding. Kent, on august 15th, the new special assistant to special representative volker, catherine croft, came to my office and asked me have we ever asked the ukrainians to investigate anybody . And i told her, if youre asking me, have we ever gone to the ukrainians and asked them to investigate or prosecute individuals for political reasons . The answer is, i hope we havent and we shouldnt because that goes against everything that we are trying to promote in postsoviet states for the last 28 years, which is the promotion of the rule of law. Todays release of kents testimony revealing more corroboration of some of the most alarming allegations in the whistleblower complaint in offering a preview of some of what we might hear from kent in that televised hearing next week as a next public chapter of the impeachment inquiry gets underway is where we start today with some of our favorite reporters and friends. Associated press White House Reporter jonathan lemire. Former federal prosecutor for both the southern and eastern districts of new york, berger. And political reporter for the New York Times, Nick Confessore. Lets first go though to capitol hill where Garrett Haake is standing by. Garrett, these transcripts, i wish they came out more in the 12 to 2 range, not in the 2 to 4 range. I am going to need a new prescription at the end of this. But whats amazing, what is sort of piercing in this testimony, and i think what distinguishes it even from the others is mr. Kent almost sounds like the conscience of the state department. He articulates in his testimony the historical role that the United States under democratic and republican president s has played in bolstering not just militarily these former soviet states but in helping them stand up a rule of law. Its startling to me to read his reaction and his sort of real explanation that it was our countrys president assaulting the rule of law. Reporter its really interesting. Its clear why democrats are putting him together with bill taylor in that first open hearing on wednesday. These two are obviously ideological allies. Youve got a pair of old cold warrors here now invested in building up these postsoviet states and trying to expand their institutions, teach them about the rule of law and shape their anticorruption efforts that way. And as you read through kents testimony, you see a couple things develop. First you see his alarm at Rudy Giuliani running around behind the scenes in ukraine and giving interviews and sort of trashing the now former ambassador marie yovanovitch. Thats the first thing that gets kents antenna up. And then over the course of the summer he sees other old ukraine hands get elbowed out of the way of kind of that perry, sondland, and kurt volker who are taking over ukraine policy on behalf of the president. He describes this as almost volker getting pulled to the dark side where voeler decides hes going to try to work with giuliani to shape this in a way that kent and taylor are uncomfortable with. And their failures to push back on this. And, in fact, their efforts to keep him from coming to testify and what he says is misinterpreting his role in coming to had testify in the first place. Its a fascinating testimony, a deposition. And it dovetails so clearly with taylors experience on the ground. You can see the story that democrats are trying to tell, i think, by putting these men together at a table on wednesday. Well, i want to dig into the substance with you and everybody here. But i want to key in on something you just said. Theyre i. D. Logical soul mates. The ideological they seem to share is american patriotism. It seems like democrats are trying to checkmate republicans and say you are against these two . These two dont have a right left policy perspective. Ive read every word of both of those transcripts quickly i will confess. But there is no right left sort of scent or odor in anything they say. Their ideology is what john mccain used to be, what a Lindsey Graham seven versions ago used to believe, what democrats and republicans have believed since the end of the cold war, that the United States of america stands for the countries trying to stand up against russia. I mean, what the democrats appear to be trying to do is to put the least ideological, the least political, the most american voices up to look at the republicans and say whats your problem of these two. I think thats right. And taylor describes it probably more explicitly than kent does. This idea that standing up these postsoviet republics to be the firewall between the west and russia is not something there was any daylight between administrations democrat and republican. Here you see a u. S. Policy thats been consistent for 20 odd years and then a Trump Administration policy or perhaps not even the whole Administration Policy but this small irregular sub group of people working closely with the president who are pursuing this other policy all together. And kents the one who puts it into perspective saying this is not what we have been trying to do here for all this time. And, you know, he and taylor are trying to find out whats going on here and what role is sondland and the president and all the rest of these folks playing i think is something that well get more deep into as we get into the open hearings. The but these are the first two to sound the alarm. One from ukraine, one from washington, both very concerned about what they are seeing. You know, and jonathan lemire, another sort of plot line that keeps reupping itself is pompeos either impotence or what would appear to be the only other explanation, been coerced by trump and rudy as part of the conspiracy to extort dirt on the bidens. For which path hes on . Right. At the very least pompeo did nothing to right, the impotence defense. No objection whatsoever. I do think that you make a really good point, garrett did too about these two testimonies being paired this week. Its not just republican and democrat. Its what america is supposed to be about in terms of its Foreign Policy. I keep going back to taylors opening testimony which was released a few weeks ago where he spoke about how this would undo all the progress that has been made in ukraine which should be a bulwark against russian aggression. They should be an ally who can depend on us. He looked over that bridge. He was in the ukraine and he looked over and saw those russianbacked militia forces over there and sort of put a real human face on this and said this is the toll here. Its not just about politics. Lives could be lost if this military aid is not delivered. I think what the democrats are doing here is sort of outlining it at the stakes. In terms of pompeo, he looks, if nothing else, he looks impotent. Hes cowtowed to trump. Hes yet another guardrail that has fallen away in allowing the president and in this case Rudy Giuliani and this other cast of characters to run rough shot over aern Foreign Policy and frankly american interests. I keep thinking about where this is heading and when you get to the specific charges that the democrats will be trying to prove. Itll be abuse of power. These are obviously effective and unimpeachable witnesses on that question. But i wonder what the specific sort of crime would be or article would be around the details about what they did to ambassador yovanovitch. I mean, some of the most searing testimony is around pompeos refusal to defend or protect her from a Smear Campaign. I know youve got some great reporting today about the origins of the smear, some of the smears in this ugly, ugly chapter, trumps presidency. But let me read some of this from the transcript that just came out. Kent says the request from the embassy endorsed by the European Bureau that there should be a highlevel endorsement of ambassador yovanovitch. And then what happened there. Kent responds there was no highlevel department endorsement of ambassador yovanovitch. The questioner, what did the state department do . You described a series of complete falses in your words. Kent responds, yes. Questioner, fabrications, a fake list thats going to the heart of the ability of the ambassador to serve correctly. Kent responds, correct. Questioner, and so is it fair to say that this was a Big League Crisis for the ambassador . Kent responds this particularly after there were tweets by members of the president ial family, was clearly a crisis for ambassador yovanovitch and a crisis that was threatening to consume the relationship. So our recommendation to our superiors was that there should be a clear statement of support for ambassador yovanovitch. Obviously the rest is history. And on cane there still hasnt been one. In her transcript we learned that on monday i think that she still feels threatened. And i understand why she does. I mean, this was just harassment at its most basic. I mean, its difficult to try to put it into a purely legal context because, exactly as you said, the question is is it an abuse of power, at least from what we know so far it seems like there is a very definitive answer of, yes, this is an abuse of power. If you had to sort of find the equivalent legal statute for crime that may apply to it, in some ways it almost sounds like extortion. Like you need to take certain positions, you need to do certain actions of, you know, praising donald trump publicly, maybe tweet something out or youre going to lose your job. Thats not how we convince career Public Servants to do their jobs the right way is if you dont praise the leader youre going to get fired. We typically demand that based on their actions, not their tweets. And, i mean, jonathan, youve been there. He spent a lot of time in north korea. Hes got a real affection for putin. What you are describing is precisely the kind of conduct and relationships he covets from those autocrats. No question. The president has felt more comfortable with authoritarian leaders like Vladimir Putin and at times kim jongun who hes met with now i believe three separate times. And this was a tweet from donald trump jr. That was the moment this referred to in the transcript where he suggested the ambassador was a bad actor and was a deep state plant to try to undermine what President Trump is trying to do. And again its just yet another example of how irregular this all is, that this is not how american Foreign Policy is supposed to be conducted. Its not supposed to be conducted by tweets of not just the president but the president s son. Its not supposed to be conducted by the personal lawyer of the president who is the former mayor of new york city who has no Foreign Policy credentials whats so far. What they are doing as to quote john bolton, its a drug deal. Thats what he assessed it to be, and thats how it comes across here. No matter it has rattled so deeply all these career officials. Let me go to a place we dont go very often because its confusing. But what also becomes clear here, an irregular the best thing and the worst thing about diplomats is that they use words like irregular. Irregular means corrupt. This was the corrupt channel where Rudy Giuliani was smearing and shaking down the ukrainians for dirt on the bidens. The i mean, thats it. Thats the whole story. But what kent details is that the whole cover story that they wanted a statement on corruption is im already in trouble for swearing. My son has a dollar jar for me, was bologna. They were putting their finger on the scale for the old ousted corrupt figures in the ukrainian government. They were getting rid of the people in american diplomatic core, and they were pressuring the new leaders of ukraine who were against corruption. They wanted the corruption, and they wanted to corrupt the u. S. ukrainian relationship to smear the bidens. What happened in the ukraine from u. S. Officials is how gangster states work. Yes. Imagine the surprise of the president of the ukraine that hes trying to clean up his country and transform it from a gangster state and into a free country. Here comes the president s son and his private lawyer who, by the way is working on deals for himself, and essentially actually extorting him to get the u. S. Aid in exchange he has to basically invent a story. And that is the key takeaway. So important. He says he wanted three words in there. Investigation, biden, and clinton. It was almost like a mad lib. It didnt matter what they were going to say. What they wanted and the sole thing they wanted was an announcement, a public announcement that there was something being investigated. It didnt even seem to matter to them if it proceeded from there. What they wanted was a kujil they could take back home to the u. S. And wave on the campaign trail. That is not how american Foreign Policy is supposed to operate. You know, garrett, theres so much rich detail in here about mr. Kents discomfort with these irregular policy channels. And you can almost hear the republicans say, well, donald trump can have whomever he wants involved in foren policy. But you cant say that the United States government has the right or the power to extort a foreign leader. Im curious what sort of arbitrary lines are they drawing around the specific conduct they are going to excuse away and defend . Reporter i think this is the way that republicans will try to defend this. First they are going to try to discredit gordon sondland. Both taylor and kent rely a lot on sondland. Neither one of them spoke directly to the president. And republicans will say this is all coming secondhand from sondland who has changed his testimony once already. He cant be trusted. See . Democrats arent even calling him to come speak. So they will try to blur the line on that. And buried in this transcript youve got republicans asking kent a lot of questions about burisma, which he says is a company that was, you know, not especially well regarded. They will try to blur the line here and make the case that the president was pursuing some kind of anticorruption effort here. But you get into the weeds on what that means. This is not institutionbuilding as a way to fight corruption. This is not building up the courts or encouraging ukrainians to follow a standard set of practices. This is very, very narrowly targeted effort by the president s allies here. And i think thats where youll see the split. But republicans are going to try to hammer very closely on that line. Republicans i have talked to on the hill have tried to focus everything back on the call. Make this about the call, the call, the call. And i think thats part of the reason you are seeing ambassador yovanovitch come get called next friday. She is separate from the phone call. She is separate from the core allegations against the president here. But by bringing her in, you expand the timeline. You say this was this long corrupt effort here that started in the spring. This wasnt a oneoff phone call. There is this whole thing here. She is the prequel to the main story. But she will be i think a very important point as democrats try to keep a broad lens on this and republicans just try to focus on the narrowest possible definition of what the president did or didnt do. And it would seem that in either scenario, garrett, the president has a lot of exposure. Today they had a witness who was sitting on the call on behalf of the Vice President. And my understanding of the Vice President s current state of nonanswers is that he didnt know that trump had asked for, had conditioned aid on a favor on that call, which i find hard to believe having traveled internationally with the president. Those are long flights. There is plenty of time to read your brief and do your homework. And do we know anything about todays deposition from pences National Security adviser who gave a deposition or maybe shes still there today . She has left. We know she was on that phone call. I think the third witness now whos come in. Folks are just starting to break up from this meeting. It was not a especially well attended as far as these depositions go. So we are still chasing down a lot of the details. But the point is interesting here because pence has been just a degree removed from all of this all along. One of the things we know from the changes to Gordon Sondlands testimony was that it was on the edges of this meeting between pence and zelensky that sondland pulled this ukrainian official aside and said, look, this is the actual deal here. So at least other people in pences traveling party knew the real score here. Its strange to think that pence didnt when someone in his own staff was on that call. And as you point out, its a very long flight to poland, in this case, and then its on the sidelines of that meeting that the message is delivered to ukrainians. Its also, jonathan lemire, where the lie was told. The lie sondland told that it came back to prevent a false statement to congress was in his conduct in the wake of the pence meeting. So if any sort of winking and nodding took place, we know they are not good at that. The stone trial is underway. Manaforts in jail. They dont often pull t