verses himself before the committee when he testifies on thursday. talking to the president, conferring with him and then responding the text message, it would explain the five hour gap between messages and it also will tell you something i think about the way this is going that ambassador sonland might feel the need to just put his cards on the table and be honest with lawmakers and to not carry the president s water any further than he already has. you re seeing him, seeing fiona hill. we saw the ambassador last week. the white house has tried to prevent a lot of these people from coming forward. the president tried to intimidate other whistle blowers. it s not working. there are people coming forward. some of them are having to be subpoenaed. they are defying the white house and the state department, in their efforts to silence these individuals and they are making the calculation at this point that they need to come forward and be truthful and cooperate with this impeachment inquir
the day. make no mistake, the president is in a precarious position leaving us wondering could he be in the middle of a perfect storm? joining me covering capitol hill, geoff bennett covering the state department. nbc news national reporter josh letterman. also with me l.a. times white house reporter eli stokels and white house correspondent and msnbc political analyst yamiche alcindor. jeff, let s start with you. do we know any of what hill is telling lawmakers right now behind closed doors? reporter: our reporting is heading into today s deposition hill was prepared to tell investigators rudy giuliani and gordon sonland, the ambassador to the eu, ran an outside influence scheme that was aimed at digging up or manufacturing damaging information about the bidens and also smearing maria van vich.
and josh, i know you ve been doing a lot of reporting on hill and what s happening at the state department. why would she if i m correct on this, and tell me if i m not. i ve read reporting she was uncomfortable with the idea of donald trump making that phone call to president zielinski on july 25th. why was that? well, that s something that lawmakers are going to be asking her about today. we know that fiona hill had a lot of appreciation for doing things by the book. one of the top experts on russian president vladimir putin. and so she had deep concerns about the fact that this was not going through the normal process. that rudy giuliani and gordon sonland, the ambassador to the eu were basically running their own show on ukraine and potentially involving other issues into that such as whether the ukrainians would agree to dig up dirt on biden s political opponents. flesh out, what was the