Origins of the impeachment inquiry. Let us go back to 2014, 2015, 2016, the Obama Administration. What is u. S. Policy toward ukraine at this time . Consistenteen fairly antiukraine on reform. That is been fairly consistent under both president obama and president trump. Under the Obama Administration, it was carried i his ambassadors to ukraine who have long played a strong role in ukraine working with politicians there to clean up corruption. What was then Vice President joe bidens role . Obamas point person in ukraine and carried that message for the president. He also oversaw the u. S. U. S. Messaging when it came to the conflict on ukraine and the russian annexation of crimea. And then the war began in Eastern Ukraine in the spring of that year. The first hot war in the region in an extremely long time. And biden really carried the messaging from obama. The United States that was worried about corruption in the ukraine at this time . For thes been an issue u. S. Allies in europe and also for institutions such as the International Monetary fund. The cornerstone of the being pushedeory about joe biden and ukraine was pushing for ukraine to remove thatecutor general he was somehow doing that inappropriately. That he was doing it to shield his son hunter biden who was on the board of a gas company. That does not stack up with what was happening at the time. Joe biden and to bury tory were pushing for the same thing. Was very much in line with the broader picture of what u. S. Allies were pushing for at that time. Eu hails backing of ukraines prosecutor. They hailed the firing of him, why . Walkings seen as slow corruption investigations. The revolution of dignity was all about signing and Association Agreement with the european convention. They wanted to clean up corruption and have a free and fair society. The u. S. Has always sough to support ukraine in that effort. Was thehem investigation. Contrary to the allegation that joe biden was trying to shut that down, it was already under him aslled prosecutor. When joe biden started to call for his removal. And he was not sacked with a single decision. He was removed by the Ukrainian Parliament as well. Biden iss time, hunter serving on the board of this energy company. How did that come about . He was invited to join the board. They were looking to get some american involvement to try to clean up the company and promote transparency measures. Why they picked hunter biden of has a law he degree and has a background in business. Bad optics for the son of thee preside to be son of the Vice President who was carrying the message to signne but there is no that hunter biden was involved in any wrongdoing. How much was he getting paid . 50,000 a month. With what in mind other people make on a board . He was not the only prominent person serving on this board at the time. There are other americans serving on the board. Former colleagues of hunter biden. Joined it they had done Due Diligence through a private Investigations Firm in new york to see what the status was. There was Due Diligence done beforehand. Host in may of 2014, i want to show our viewers White House Press secretary, asked about Hunter Bidens job with this gas company. Hunter biden has now taken a position with the Largest Holding company in ukraine. Is there any concern about at least the appearance of a conflict there . I would refer you to the Vice President s office. I saw the reports hunter biden and other members are obviously private citizens and where they work is not reflect an endorsement by the administration or by the Vice President or president but i would refer you to the Vice President s office. Host that was back in 2014 and that is their response to hunter biden serving on the board. The Vice President then as we know as hes talked about travels to ukraine to put more pressure on the then president to fire shoken. At the time, what is happening with in perception, the optics of him serving on this board while the Vice President is making this push . Guest its not great optics. You have the son of the Vice President on the board of a major Ukrainian Gas Company and you cant overestimate the importance of gas energy in both ukraine economy, ukrainian business and politics. So its certainly not great optics but again theres no evidence thats come to light that hunter biden was involved in any wrong doing and the biesance have been consistent on that. Its not even clear joe biden discussed it with his son. I believe he said i hope youre knowing what youre doing. But as far as the bidens have said is as much as they discussed what was going on. Host you take the look at the New York Times that the Vice President is traveling to ukraine. The headline is joe biden his son in the case against ukrainian olegark and in this piece, he writes you just noted this the new yorker did a profile recently about hunter biden. Will hunter biden jeopardize his Fathers Campaign . And they note in this story hunter biden saying to the reporter, gets let to our viewers involved. Republican, oklahoma, go ahead. Caller good morning. Your guest here is an apologist for the democrats, the biden campaign, and generally shes lacking in facts. There were four visitors who played a game marky particularly democrat senators who were promoting Gas Production, more Gas Production in ukraine and getting kickbacks on that. Markey is one thats opposed to Gas Production in the United States and favors a green deal, and the Obama Administration and Hillary Clinton all back were using ukraine because it was dependent on u. S. Aid in the battle against russia, and they took advantage of that swage situation. And this guest is just simply giving plat tudes. Bidens son received 83,000 a month not 50,000 a month. So shes not up to date. Court records show that. So you need to have a guest on that has facts. Host ok. Well, theres been reporting of 50,000 a month as well. Talk about what he just mentioned on ukraine policy and what is it that ukraine needs and wants from the United States . Both during the Obama Administration and during the Trump Administration. Guest i think its interesting that your caller framed ukraine as being part of the u. S. s war against russia when really the situation is quite the opposite. It was ukraine that crimea annesmed in 2014, it was ukraine that was invated by russia, russia and its proxies have fomented war in ukraine for five years now and theres been over 13,000 lives lost. And in ukraines fight against russia. And russia is huge. Russia can swamp ukraine. The size differential is just massive and ukraine is very dependent on u. S. Support for this, support for International Institutions as it both tries to jungle these many things at the same time they have an ongoing hot war, theyre trying to clean up corruption, thrying to improve their politics, and long relied on western support. And the cornerstone has been u. S. Military aid and the sale of antitank javelins and of course thats whats at the heart of the impeachment investigation, whether that was dangled over the ukrainians in exchange for politically useful information. Host give us a ballpark of how much military aid ukraine has received from the United States over the years. Guest millions and millions of dollars. The u. S. The u. S. Has invested so much in trying to support ukraine and cleaning it up. Thats part of what makes this whole situation really kind of sad, is that u. S. Taxpayers money has gone into helping ukraine to reform, helping ukraine to improve when the president s allies tried to kind of go in Opposition Research and dangle potentially dangle military aid over their heads, it undermines years of taxpayer money thats been spent in ukraine. Host as we talk about u. S. Policy toward ukraine both obama and Trump Administrations, and the connections to what the role was of joe biden at the time and hunter biden part of this as well, the Des Moines Register reporting that the former Vice President in iowa yesterday announced his family wont work for Foreign Companies if hes president and tied to that is the headline this morning that hunter biden said he has now stepped down from serving on the board of a chinese company. Max in michigan, independent. Good morning. Hunter biden, his son is not the only one. You have john kerry, his stepson is in there doing the same type of job as hunter biden. Nancy pelosis son is another one. Also mitt romney. So theyre all part of this. Thats what i have to say. Host does commit fort you that joe biden, saying today if he becomes president , family members will not serve on any boards of Foreign Companies . Guest no, it doesnt. I dont believe that. I dont care. What about the other countries hes involved in . Host ok. Guest and the truth that last guy called, it was 86,000 that hes making a year. For what . Hes an ex dope head. Host ok. Terry, indiana, independent. Caller two things. First, i was in the air force jag for over 10 years and it was a clear ethics violation for Vice President biden not to recuse himself from doing any negotiations with the youre crane as Vice President. Ukraine as Vice President. Secondly, it seems the defense is that he threatened to withhold money for a good reason. He said i wont give you the money unless you get rid of this guy. I wonder if anybody can tell us, under the law, i dont think that matters. He didnt have any authority or power to threaten to withhold the money from the ukraine from ukraine. Host lets talk about this. Joe biden at Council Foreign relations in january 2018 talks about his efforts to get ukraine to fire the prosecutor. Heres what he had to say. Im desperately concerned about the backsliding on the part of kiev in terms of corruption. They made i mean, ill give you one concrete example. I was not i. It just happened to be the assignment i got. I got all the good ones. So i got ukraine. And i remember going over, convincing our team, others to convince that we should be providing for loan guarantees. I went over i guess the 12, 13th time to kiev and i was supposed to announce that theres another 1 billion loan guarantee. I had gotten a commitment from porshenchingo and from yatsen that they would take action against the state prosecutor, and they didnt. So they said they were walking out and said, im not going to were not going to give you the billion dollars. They said you have no authority. Youre not the president. The president said. I said call him. I said im telling you youre not getting the 1 billion. Im going to be leaving here, i think it was six hours, im leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired youre not getting the money. Well, son of a , he got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid. At the time. Well, still so they made some genuine substantial changes institutionly and with people. But one of the three institutions, theres now some backsliding. Host is that accurate what the Vice President , the former Vice President said there about his role and what happened in ukraine at the time . Uest so whats interesting is they had a good spetion about this that at the time when joe biden told this story, his aides realized that this was be an anecdote which would be seized on for years as joe biden almost showing off about the u. S. Trying to leverage its loan guarantees over ukraine to seek the removal of this prosecutor general. There was an awareness at the time that this could be something which could potentially haunt a future biden campaign, and clearly it has that this anecdote has been resurrected. But the delivery of his message is one thing but what he says was very much in line with what the european union, International Institutions and others within the u. S. Government were seeking at the time, which was just the realization that i mean, the prosecutor general has a huge role in ukraine, its their equivalent ofert attorney general, and if you havent if you have a prosecutor general who is not pursuing corruption investigations its a bit of an issue for a country seeking to clean up its act. Host what happens after this point with u. S. And ukraine relations . Uest under trump, u. S. Policy by and large towards ukraine has been very similar under obama. I mean, theres been a lot of attention towards trumps comments about russia and his relationship with putin. But by and large the broader apparatus of the u. S. Government, of congress, has been very strong bipartisan support for ukraine. Very strong support in the state department. And if anything, its been a little bit support for ukraine s been stronger because under trump, the Trump Administration has sold these antitank missiles to ukraine, which was also a bit of a red line for the Obama Administration. They were hes tent of giving these powerful weapons to the ukrainions. They werent sure they were yet equipped to handle them and in the event they got captured by the russians, the russians could figure out how to develop their own version of these weapons. But under the Trump Administration they agreed to first one set and then a couple weeks ago, now theyre going to sell more. So under both obama and trump policy for ukraine has been pretty strong. Host what is their view of crimea . Guest the administration as a whole in the state department certainly very strong that crimea is ukrainian and that sanctions should be lifted there needs to be progress on returning crimea to ukraine. Trump, however, has not had a lot to say about this particular issue. Host who does that benefit . Guest unquestionably russia. The russians portray the annexation of crimea as a huge victory. It was seen as a return of this land they had lost and it was extremely popular in russia amongst russian population. Putin had a huge surge in the polls after it. Do not large, they recognize crimea being part of russia. But any steps that would normalize crimea as being russia would be a huge boon for the crem kremlin. Host fast forward to march of 2019. Where is how is ukraine playing a role or who in ukraine is playing a role in this theory that the Vice President was trying to get the prosecutor fired to benefit his son . Guest one of the Big Questions for me about this whole thing is when did it really begin . I spoke with Rudy Giuliani on friday and he said it began when he was approached by an investigater in new york who kind of came up with this pack of documents and said i have this information about the bidens in ukraine, i think this could be interesting to you. And giuliani said he met with this source found him to be credible and thats where this began. We know in january and february of this year Rudy Giuliani met with the prosecutor general who has since left office but he was then prosecutor general, and that appears to be when he began kind of gathering this information both about the bidens but also this idea which has been widely debunked that the origins of the election interference in 2016 was in ukraine and not with russia. But the first public manifestation of this came towards the end of march of this year, in april, when there was a series of interviews in the washington, d. C. Newspaper the hill. It appears to be one long video interview with the prosecutor general which was then chopped up and then turned into several articles. It was really kind of an octopus of an attack. There was as many different lines. It was the kind of first very public iteration of this theory that joe biden had acted ininappropriately in ukraine to see him removed to protect his son. It also advanced the theory that it was ukraine the source of the election hack. For reasons not clear, it began the attack on the then u. S. Ambassador to ukraine claiming the prosecution claimed that she handed him a do not prosecute list. An argument that she since walked back and she has vehemently denied. So its really kind of bizarre, multipronged, theory which was advanced. And then it was picked up by trump tweeted out some of the articles and it was picked up by conservative commentators in the u. S. And it kind of spun out from there. It was a couple months later that the u. S. Ambassador to ukraine was recalled two months ahead of schedule. Host the story may 7, 2019 u. S. Ambassador to ukraine recalled in quote political hit job, says a lawmaker. Guest i see the ambassador as being the kind of can airy in the coal mine. Her removal was the first sign that something was up. It wasnt clear, my colleague and i were watching this and we could see this one interview, this one series of interviews had tied all these and put these theories out. And we just couldnt figure out how they fit together, who was behind them. It was the political aspect, it was emerging that there was a narrative which could single handedly that ukraine was the source of all the fixing all of the president s problems. You could both undermine the narrative that it was russia interfering and also find out to head out one of his opponents. It wasnt clear how the ambassador fit in and who wanted her to removed and why. We learned there was this behind the Scenes Campaign by two of rudy jewel nis allies. Giulianis allies. Host today theyre going to hear from fiona hill. Who is she . Guest funea hill was head, a brit fiona hill is widely respectd in washington. I havent heard anybody say a bad word about her yet. Shes seen as very coolheaded. She was very much a russia hawk. She wrote very well about putin a few years ago. So its going to be interesting to hear what she has to say. Theres been a couple of stories about previewing what might be in her testimony. She looked to say that giuliani and his allies had f had sought to circumstance navigate the usual processes in going about his work in ukraine. Host well go to zack, democratic caller. Caller thank you for taking my call. I want to commend you for such a fine job of homework that youve done. I watch rachel maddow. I love when people have their facts and times down on paper show how systematic and how this has become. From baracks birth certificate we all knew d when there were several departments who had to sign off on that deal. When it comes to joe biden, several countries wanted him to remove this particular prosecutor because he wasnt prosecuting the raugses. Its russians. Its just another shiny thing this guy throws out to waste our time on. Meanwhile, as an ex military rson, im appalled that my guys have to stay at one of his failing hotels or my Vice President has to travel hundreds of miles to a meeting when he could be closer. Host ok. Sydney as well, caller apparently the us but he has not watch the tapes where she says shes already spent 5 million to overthrow ukraine. She said we were going to put and shehe government said if you dont like what i said, you can go blank yourself. And you are also blending in on russia starting a mess, but we started. And the last guy asked this question, he said she did use some colorful language. Thank you. Host was good to victoria on that. She was the secretary of state and oversaw the u. S. Response when the war was beginning. Of course, there was that famous phone call when they were trying to reach a deal with the andpean union on what to do she famously said things i wont repeat at this time in the morning about the europeans. She was experienced, shes a longtime Career State Department throughshe was going the appropriate channels unlike Rudy Giuliani you has no role with the state department, doesnt have any diplomatic credentials and is working privately for the president. This Current Situation underscores how the usual dogmatic processes have been sidestepped. Host lets talk about Rudy Giuliani because you have New York Times headlines in the early part of this year, Rudy Giuliani plans to push for inquiries that could help the president. A few days later, Rudy Giuliani canceled his trip to ukraine, blaming democrats. What is his role, and is it protocol for state department to access somebody outside of the agency of private citizens for what he says they wanted him to do what he was doing . Giuliani was not working for the state department, hes the president s personal lawyer. But what will be a core aspect of the impeachment investigation is to what extent did people in the state department know what was going on and to what extent are they involved . So far, theres no evidence of any wrongdoing by anybody at state. A lot of career diplomats have been shocked by would really read giuliani was doing. But its also clear that mike pompeo was on that call which is at the heart of the complaint. One thing which investigators are going to be looking at is who, what, when . We got our first glimpse of that oft week with the testimony the former u. S. Special envoy for ukraine. He testified from most 10 hours. He released a series of Text Messages which shows behind the scenes on how he had helped Rudy Giuliani set up a meeting over the summer with one of the aid es of the ukrainian president and these Text Messages which seem to show that they were the ukrainian tolic would commit publicly investigation it would help them to get the white house. That is something which is going to be dug down deeper on. Who knew what when, and what were their intentions . You had a direct envoy of the president say one thing, then you have the official diplomatic process of the state department and National Security council saying another. At the time, this is may of 2019 when originally on a says he is traveling to ukraine, then he says im not going to. You have adam schiff who is the house intelligence chair weeding todaytweeting out giuliani admitted seeking political help from a foreign power again. Meddlingse, we are not in an election, were meddling in an investigation. Somebody could say its improper. Ism schiff says now it immoral, unethical, unpatriotic, and standard procedure. Senator murphy sending a letter to the chair saying that he has concerns with Rudy Giulianis role. His reports indicate that promises have been made regarding u. S. Policy as a quid pro quo in exchange for information. Other private representatives of the president lead to any official Foreign Policy positions such as recalling of the u. S. Ambassadors to ukraine. Remarkable is that so much of it played out in public. By the time the complaint came out, and since the summer, since the stories first came out trying to figure what was going on, by the time the was a blower complaint came out, the whistleblower complaint came out, we already knew the outline of what had gone on. We even had a short ukrainian readout published which said the u. S. President expressed the hopes that ukraine would pursue whichtion investigations was stymied u. S. Ukrainian relations since we already knew this had been flagged and that causing a lot of people off in washington who is readout. Host let me show that readout to our viewers. The readout from july 25 after this phone call president has. President congratulated the president of ukraine on. Olding democratic elections what is happening in ukraine at this time . Guest if youve been following what was published in march, corruption talk among certain circles has been coopted to mean political Opposition Research. So if youve been following that thats why this call stood out. Its not abnormal for a u. S. President to encourage ukraine for similar allies to help clean up corruption, but the very context in which this call came caused a lot of people to go huh, thats interesting. It was around this time we learned there had been a hold placed on military aid to ukraine. It just wasnt clear whether they fit together or whether they were unrelated. We didnt know whether trump was pushing ukraine on anticorruption because thats what the u. S. Has done for decades with ukraine. We didnt know whether military aid had been stalled for political reasons or whether it was just part of a general cut back on for a. There were all these data points out there but it was the whistleblower complaint that made it clear there was a connection here. Host kevin in texas is a republican. Caller you all are putting a lot out there. Call,uickly, on the phone it seemed like silence get one,president zelinski, he did not like the ambassador favor ofhe was also in an open and candid investigation. And keep in mind, according to some of these other transcripts coming out, that he didnt know at that time that there was a hold. Theres no evidence that he even knew there was a hold. But thats what i wanted to talk that he wasntim hard enough on corruption and was pulleda, once he out, it was all about the owner, and i cant pronounce his name, but he was supposedly getting into contracts with the government. Shokin was investigating and the complaint was he wasnt investigating hard. By theyour way, defended by a former attorney general assistant for andObama Administration, now its free and clear and they gave it back to them. I dont understand, can you explain that . Guest sure. At the time that biden began to to be removed, the investigation had already been stalled for a long time. I believe it was being investigated whether the owner had inappropriately gained in the Previous Administration prior to the revolution in ukraine. A was being investigated whether he had inappropriately received these contracts. Spoken to anticorruption campaigners in ukraine who tell me that the investigation was stalled, it was not going anywhere at the time when joe biden began to call the removal of shokin. There were several significant corruption investigations which were being pursued and just were not going anywhere. The administration of the previous president in ukraine who came to power after the revolution, he really did make, ukraine made some huge leaps in the past five years. Seen as mixed, particularly when it comes to highlevel, bigticket corruption investigations, and that was what he was accused of stalling on. About ins also talk the transcript of the phone calls that the right house release, the president mentioned crowd strike. What is crowd strike, who is it owned by, and what is the theory being pushed out by conservatives at this time . Is one ofwd strike two theories which portrays ukraine as being the argent of the election interference and not russia. The theory is that after the dnc was hacked, crowd strike was part of that investigation, and they didnt turn over the physical servers to the fbi, but they made carbon copies of what was on the servers and handed that over to the fbi. Conspiracy. Has bubbled for a long time. One of the cofounders of crowd strike is allegedly from ukraine, and the conspiracy their egos that these servers were not handed over to the fbi and they have some kind of with which them ukraine released the emails, that it wasnt russia. This theory has been widely debunked and multiple u. S. Intelligence agencies, senate s have allce committee concluded that it was a russia that sought to interfere in the elections, that it wasnt ukraine. By u. S. Een debunked Intelligence Committee establishments. , arizona, independent. Caller thank you so much. The last point that you just made is the most important, because if this information had been disseminated about what the original origins were of who hacked the dnc and all that, it would have sent the message that trump was right all along and the russians really did not hack our elections, and i really do believe that the pressure that trump was intending to put on ukraines president was to send out their narrative. Is thatost thankful for this whole debacle was exposed and i thank goodness for the whistle blower laws so that the American People can see exactly what took twice. I appreciate your guests today, she is being attacked. I grew up around the beltway and i had family members that worked in the intelligence community. I understand that people outside of the beltway dont understand things like of course i can see this being nepotism, the senators children getting jobs. All of that has gone on for years. Yale,dens son is from hes not stupid. But the fact that he has some bigtime job somewhere is no big surprise. People outside the beltway just dont understand how washington works and youve got jared and ivanka in the white house with a security clearance. To hope American People make a decision on whether some things like asking a foreign entity to get involved in our elections is really something americans want for their future elections. Thank you so much. Areow our lawmakers they aware that Ukraine Military aid is seen held up, and how are they reacting to that . Guest people ive spoken to on capitol hill said this is the first time they were really aware that the eighth possibly been held up for political reasons with the complaint. That, there was an awareness, politico broke the story that eight had been held up. Like i said before, no one was really sure whether this was part of a general hold on foreign aid that was going on. Course, congressional not yetators have concluded whether it was politically motivated. Be its certainly going to the core aspect of the investigation. Theres that one aspect in the memo of the call which was released that the ukrainian president mentions these antitank missiles and trump pivots and says let me ask you a favor. And thats going to be one of the core parts of that memo, is whether that was evidence of an underlying quid pro quo. Host did the president of ukraine know, was he aware that military aid was being held up . Guest he was not. About a week before the call to place. Host florida, democratic caller. Caller good morning. I actually have two points to ine, to me, the big scandal this, i dont know the ins and outs of what happened with ukraine, but the big scandal is receiveder biden 50,000 for being on a board because his father is the Vice President , and there are, like the previous caller said, theres just this generational systemic corruption. Did he deserve to be on that board . I for a Different Things about him, i heard he got kicked out of the navy. Im concerned, it seems like all of them get into yale or harvard and they get degrees. George bush had a law degree, too. But was he supersmart to have a degree . We dont know. Theres systemic corruption on both sides and i think a good segment would be to ask the viewers what do you think of the children of all of these politicians getting on this year after year, generation after generation. A bipartisan response that we dont want this systemic corruption, and that is why people elected donald trump. Jarede the fact that theinvanka have been in white house, theyve made like 82 million construct has been in the white house. Host i will just add to that, the headlines from this morning. Joe biden in iowa says his for foreign Work Companies if hes president. And his son hunter stepping down from chinese boards. Is there a bipartisan call to write legislation that would prohibit family members from serving on corporate boards . Guest i think what a lot of the calls we had into the show have is that there is no evidence to underpin these conspiracy theories to attack by biden. Done, they have tapped into concern amongst American Voters about who is on boards, who is getting ahead because their dad is in the senate, or who is being paid a pretty penny because of the role of their father. Is going to be the longterm impact of this. Even if you dont believe in the conspiracy theory, for a lot of notle this is unfortunately going to help the crisis in confidence that we have in this country. Host tom, independent. Caller when people start to throw around the phrase conspiracy. Arethink people that listening to cspan and the general public need to understand that your investigation or your concerns, you are over the target. Corruptionassive issue and problem. People have conspired to use ukraines political positions to maneuver money, our tax dollars, through the world bank and through the International Monetary fund for their own social money, and that has been exposed here. Spint the media is in full action to turn everything over to the shiny object the left so we are not looking at exactly what the Vice President did. Countriesced another for a monetary payback. Host what evidence of that is there, top . Caller you guys just played it on cspan. Its all over the place. He said it right there. He is caught redhanded. Now everybody is in full been mowede. Biden has even said hes not going to have any politicians on boards. As amy pointed out earlier, its that you policy at the time that what needs to happen in ukraine and wide. Guest they needed to remove them because he was stalling corruption investigations. I do think theres any evidence that what biden said that he was committing a crime. All the world have worked with the United States and need help with anticorruption reform. It is the u. S. Policy to encourage them in the right direction. Before,very, as we said perhaps may haunt him throughout the campaign, but the actual message is consistent with years of u. S. Policy under both the aquatic and republican administrations. Again, the United States and other countries wanted the prosecutor fired because he was not doing enough to investigate companies. Guest exactly. Biden hadnt had this issue with his son, maybe he wouldnt have done anything. Host lisa, arkansas, republican. Caller good morning. The first two minutes of your guests speech, she used the new word for inappropriate behavior. That it looks inappropriate that biden was doing things. If he is quitting the chinese border, is he still on the ukrainian board . ,nd why is it ok for a democrat president , Vice President , or associate to be able to make ofands of a country because policy that when a republican does the same thing, its corruption . Biden stills hunter on the board . No, he stepped down earlier this year. Question, the key distinction of what he is alleged to have done versus what trump has done is what i was doing was very much in line with u. S. Policy. Cool for other members of the Obama Administration had passed the same message on to ukraine. What trump is alleged to have sought in ukraine was Material Information which could be politically beneficial to him personally going into the 2020 what couldnd that is potentially be seen as soliciting aid from a foreign power in an election. Host albert in chicago, democratic caller. Caller good morning, everybody. Listen, im glad that that color tom brought up what he did about bidens video because i wanted to go back to that video as well. Every time that video is shown there are two critical points that biden makes that get totally overlooked. The first he says is that he has given the assignment to go over to deal with ukrainians. Obama is the only one who has authority. Is second point he makes when the ukrainians question his authority to withhold money, he says call the white house. Meaning that the president gave him the authority to deal with ukraine as he did, including if he had to withhold the money. That point gets totally overlooked and it also shows that biden was not acting on his own authority, on his own accord, or of his own interest to go over there. He was sent there by president obama. Are you still there . I think we lost them. Guest you raise a really good point that biden was working on behalf of the Obama Administration. He had been appointed by obama to leon ukraine. So there was no way for him to go rogue and call for the removal without the wider administration raising eyebrows about that you make a bigger point that he was working closely with obama on this and on behalf of obama, not a biden only initiative. Host james in washington, d. C. , independent. Caller good morning, finally got through. Im independent now, but i just wanted to clarify i voted blue in 2016, but now im registered independent. Mostly because it just feels like the way we talk about how she lost as if she was supposed to win, the Mainstream Media and ito favor democrats dont really trusted that much anymore. My question, though, does anyone it was reallyf like they put from out here to i feel likels, and republicans took the bait, like this is the guy that triggers them the most, and its kind of upsetting to me because when they say it was russia that influence the election, it was pretty clear that democrats influenced the primary pretty if we act as if other countries cant interfere in our elections, wouldnt that mean that we would have to change some of our Foreign Policy strategies, because we tend to be heavyhanded in other democracies, you know . That was my question. I mean, the question around the 2016 election, i think the reason why it is still brought up three years later that a foreign power intervened, a historic adversary of the United States intervened. I dont think it is percent to do with Hillary Clinton as a more the think it is foreign interference and the fact that we are still trying to get to the bottom of that. There are still Unanswered Questions to what happened in 2016. Just two weeks ago, the senate Intelligence Committee put their report on what happened. There are very much still under investigation, thats why it is still a topic of conversation for a lot of people. At least, here in washington. Also, the fears that he could happen again in the next election. We had the midterms passed off without any interference last year, but in u. S. Intelligence agencies, they are looking to 2020 and what is going to go on there. Not is why it is specifically because of Hillary Clinton. One request that has been made by the ukraine president to the white house through his lines of communication, he also mentioned that the General Assembly recently is that white house visit. Why does he want a white house visit and what of the administration been saying about him visiting the white house . Guest a white house visit to the president of ukraine would be symbolic, a huge demonstration of u. S. Support as ukraine deals with a war with russia in the countrys east. It would also be a huge win for a newly elected president. He is a political novice, has predecessor was a former foreign minister who was quite comfortable on the world stage. I think that president zones give still needs president zelinski still needs to prove himself to be on the world stage. Host will he get one soon . Guest the ukrainians did announce that a couple months ago and certainly it will be a discussion for a long time but no date has been set. After everything has gone on i think it will be interesting to see if it does happen and what is discussed. Host what are you watching for next . Guest im watching for the origins of this, where this all came from. Who approach to . Giuliani says he was approached with information. Im interested in who approached them, what was their agenda . Who were they paid by, where did the money come from . Did giuliani begin this on his own . What were they after . Is hugelyat interesting because that is a potential avenue for foreign interference in u. S. Politics, thats my big question right now. Host [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2019] cspans washington journal live every day with news and policy issues that impact you. Coming up tuesday morning, the cato institutes patrick edington talks about his experiences as a whistleblower. Then former new york congressman steve israel discusses the latest on the House Democrats impeachment inquiry. And how it could impact congressional races in 2020. And the editor of the american conservative on president trumps recent decisions on syria. Watch cspans washington journal tuesday. Make sure to watch on wednesday llowing the congressional democrat debate. Queen elizabeth ii delivered remarks during the state opening of british parliament. Her remarks, commonly referred to as the queens speech, outlines the priorities for the new parliamentary session