Including at the top of the hour. You mentioned his meeting with the leader of venezuela, this is one of several one on ones that the president has today. Msnbc happens to be able to be in the room, interacting with the president. One of our teams producers is there. Ill be in the room for the meeting with the president and the leader of ukraine in just a bit. It is now 10 00 and were going to get to breaking news. As this moment is Trump Administration is releasing what the president describes as the transcript of that phone call that launched the democrats impeachment investigation. What we now know, it was a 30minute call with the president of ukraine two months ago. Weve got a team of reporters covering the story and lets get to julia at the Justice Department. What are we learning so far . We went over the transcript of the call and we also went over why the Justice Department is not going to release the whistleblower complaint. What stood out to me about the transcript is that the president talks about two things
explicitly. One is crowd strike. He seems to think that the origins of the Mueller Probe began in ukraine and he wants the president s help getting to the bottom of that. And then he does talk about Vice President biden and how he used his connections in ukraine to drop a prosecution into his son and repeatedly, hallie, the president talks about the need for Rudy Giuliani and the Attorney General, william barr, to get in touch with the president of ukraine and his prosecutors there to try to get to the bottom of this, to open investigations into crowd strike and into the bidens. And another thing, hallie, they bring up the issue of this investigation and the fact that they should have this communication immediately after the president of ukraine says that he wants to continue to cooperate on Military Funding, on getting Military Supplies from the United States. But, from speaking to senior Justice Department officials, they said that did not rise to the level of a criminal Campaign Finance violation. That it wasnt something of value which is in the statute
that you have to get something of value from a foreign leader in order for that to be a violation. And that reason, we are not continuing this and theyre not going to release the whistleblower complaint. They also say theyre not releasing the complaint because it does not fall within the statute that would allow the intelligence communities on the hill to review it because it didnt involve a member of the Intelligence Community but was rather a diplomatic call. Lots of questions about this call and why it doesnt rise to that level, because it is clear from this the president had clear intentions he wanted this investigation and he was talking about it with the president of ukraine. It is possible, though, that he never followed through on that. We asked whether or not the Attorney General did actually get that response, whether he heard from the president , and they say that Attorney General barr never heard from the president or anyone in the white house about investigating about Talk To Go Ukraine about investigating, biden, his son or any other matter. We have a lot to unpack. To be clear for our viewers, this is new reporting that you and our colleagues at the Justice Department have just received and i want to quote now what this transcript, this essentially fivepage call transcript describes according to your reporting. That the president , im just going to read from our notes here, that the president congratulated president zelensky of ukraine for his election vikt rye. At some point the president said i would like to ask you to do us a favor, though, because our country has been through a lot and ukraine knows a lot about it. The president says to zelensky, i would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with ukraine. The president says they say crowd strike. I guess you have one of your wealthy people, the server they say ukraine has it. It is not clear what the president meant here. And then the president says this, i heard you had a prosecutor who was very good and he was shut down, which is really unfair. The president says theres a lot of talk about bidens son. I want to go to let me finish this. I know House Speaker nancy pelosi is speaking. At some point the president says whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution, so if you could look into it, it sounds horrible to me. That appears to be at the crux of some of the concern that was raised by this whistleblower. Let me go to House Speaker nancy pelosi who just wrapped up speaking talking about impeachment. Let me repeat this because i think its critical. If we can get our team in the control room to pull this up, the president says theres a lot of talk about bidens son, what biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that. So he says whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around dragging that he stopped the prosecution, so if you can look into it, it sounds horrible to me. That is the only mention in this phone call about joe biden. Its about a fivepage call transcript. The president of ukraine reprice that he is appointing a new
prosecutor who will look into the situation. An Intel Community employee apparently heard about this call from white house officials and that is what triggered this complaint to the Inspector General, right . Reporter yeah, thats exactly right. He heard about this call, he wasnt a firsthand witness to the call. But there were other people who were witnesses that were note takers or officials on the call just like you see, hallie, when the president has a call with any foreign leader. They were part of this call. But the Justice Department didnt reach out to them. They say they relied solely on the transcript. I also ask the senior Justice Department officials did you take into consideration the fact that Military Funding was being withheld before this conversation, before words about biden and the investigation just like you read there, they said they did not take that into consideration, that they relied solely on the transcript because it was the best piece of evidence that they had before them. They also ruled out whether or not they ruled out that the Attorney General did not have the final sign off on this opinion not to release the complaint and not to go forward
with any kind of criminal prosecution or investigation. But that he was generally aware of it. Those are a few more details. The other thing about that quote is theres a dot dot dot, and i asked is there something were not getting there and i couldnt get an answer to that, whether or not that was just a pause in the call or if there was something they left out. Typically if they leave it out they would redact it. But theres a lot of questions about what hes implying here. And then there are things that seem pretty explicit to me. Let go to Garrett Haake over on capitol hill. I know we just heard from House Speaker nancy pelosi and i know she said she has not had a chance to see the transcript yet. The way that you are listening to this and reading this, what do you expect the reaction to be from both House Democrats and frankly other republicans where you are . Reporter yeah, i think both parties here are going to get something that they can say that they like in this. The republicans will say you dont have an explicit ask by
President Trump here or an explicit quid pro quo. You have a suggestive, gee, it would be nice if somebody could look into this, you have a nice country, a kind of suggestion from the president. And Speaker Pelosi made a comment to this effect earlier this morning essentially that the what the president has admitted to is enough. They feel like they already have enough information based solely what the president admitted up to this point. Now they have a document which they are not inclined to trust that says the essentially the same thing, that biden did come up in the context of this investigation and coming up right on the front end of the call. So i think both sides are going to go back and feel like theyve got a little bit of a good start. Im curious what senate and House Republicans on the Intel Committees are going to say about this. Theyre going to see the acting dni before the end of the week and get a lot more information
from him. And the transcript, its clearly not a transcript. Garrett, we are just now getting from the white house what they describe these are called in the National Security sphere a memorandum of conversation, a memcon to use the terminology that you would hear. It is about five pages long and its not a word for word transcript but it says President Trump says x and zelensky says y. Im going to ask our team in the control room to pull it up. The white house has just released this. At one point, in addition to what weve talked about, this idea that the president said whatever you can do with the Attorney General will be great to the then new incoming president of ukraine, at one point the president also talks about how he will get Rudy Giuliani, his personal attorney, get in touch with him. The president says i will have mr. Giuliani give you a call and im also going to have Attorney General barr call and we will get to the bottom of it. I am sure you will figure it out. The president goes on to say that he heard the prosecutor was treated very badly so good luck with everything. So the president not shying away at all from discussing the bidens, but raising the prospect of his own personal attorney, Who By The Way, does not and did not have a job inside the administration reaching out and getting in touch with the president of ukraine about this. Kristen welker, this is what House Democrats have been wanting to see, this transcript. Whether or not it validates the argument they had been making remains to be seen as we take a look now at this transcript here. But the white house wanted to get it out there. They wanted to get it in the public sphere as they have in the last couple of minutes, releasing the fivepage transcript here. Reporter there was a robust debate, hallie, about whether or not to release it. They decided to do it. Some Administration Officials concerned because they thought it would be a bit gray and in fact that seems to be the area in which we find ourselves. As you point out, a lot of open questions here, whether House Democrats will ultimately prevail and be able to determine that these are Impeachable Offenses. One thing we know for sure, he discussed a political rival with a foreign leader essentially asking this leader to investigate his rival, joe biden, one day after former special Counsel Robert Mueller testified on capitol hill. That is significant, it is remarkable. I know youre going to have a chance to ask President Trump questions about all of this later today. But it is stunning that he would have this conversation just a day after effectively he was taking a victory lap over the Mueller Probe. So what happens next . Look, the administration, some officials believe that this Impeachment Inquiry will embolden the president politically and theyre going to argue theres nothing to see here in this transcript, hallie, that there was no explicit quid pro quo. Bottom line, though, for President Trump, hes now a president who is going to be linked with the i word. Hes a former Reality Tv Star and thats not something that he wants, politics aside. I want to bring in now ned price, former Special Assistant to president obama who i believe is standing by. I think its important to get your perspective. The president is calling it a transcript. It is not a verbatim of the conversation. When these things happen, ned, we know there are officials who are listening and taking notes and what we have now is their best sort of summery, essentially of what went down on this call. Is that a Fair Assessment . I think thats right. I can only speak to the obama administration, but in the obama administration, these were essentially treated as transcripts. This was the best effort on the part of several individuals, including professionals, Career Professionals in the white house Situation Room listening in essentially transcribing as the call went on. Im going to interrupt you. Senator Mitch Mcconnell is speaking on the floor since the First Time Since the impeachment
inquiry was announced. Threatening impeachment without the facts in hand. So look, mr. President , republicans support the established proper procedures for considering this whistleblower report, and in the mean time while our friends across the Capitol Rush To Judgment and dive deeper into their nearly threeyearold impeachment addiction, well stay focused on the american peoples business. Now, on another matter, earlier this year President Trump led the federal government to recognize our insecure southern border for what it is, a national emergency, a humanitarian and security crisis. Congress had heard plea after plea for more Border Security funding, we had heard from seen year leaders and career Border Patrol officers, we had heard about all the surging illegal crossings and the strain on our
facilities. But washington democrats decided that giving this very real crisis the resources it required might anger the far left, which wants them to oppose nothing necessarily surprising from senator Mitch Mcconnell as he speaks for the first time after the House Speaker announced the Impeachment Inquiry, now formally launching against President Trump. I want to bring in the others, not just ned price, but others who are here to talk through this release of the transcript of that now critical phone call from july 25th. We know it was about a 30minute phone call. We know that the readout essentially of that call is about five pages long and in it President Trump, as he himself as acknowledged, does bring up former Vice President joe biden and that investigation that he wants the president of ukraine to conduct into bidens son and his activities in ukraine. Ned price, thank you for sticking with me as i interrupted you there. Your reaction to what we have seen so far, i think youve had
a chance to see some of the highlights from the transcript. Just skimming through this, i have to say this is much worse than i thought it would be. Why do you say that . I say that for a few specific reasons. One, the whole game here is the mention of Vice President biden and his son. It was really a binary, either he did or he didnt. And we had good reason to suspect President Trump did, because he essentially said that in his public comments. But to see it in this Call Memorandum is really striking and i think it brings into sharp relief the fact that President Trump as we suspected was putting his own political prerogatives and priorities ahead of those of the country. Its actually worse, because he raises another investigation, that into crowdstrike. We had no idea that President Trump would also raise the origins of the Mueller Probe again in his continuous effort to target legitimate Law Enforcement efforts that produced this vo lumous report
on his wrongdoing. Once again, this is nothing but for his own benefit. There are two other points i would make. The repeated mentions of Rudy Giuliani and bill barr really jumped out at me. This makes very clear that Rudy Giuliani was not freelancing, he was not being Crazy Uncle Rudy and ukraine and carrying his own water, doing his own business. It seems he was doing this for the president of the United States, if not at the direct behest of the United States. And i think most surprisingly in this context is bill barrs appearance in this transcript. The fact that the Attorney General, the president would direct the ukrainian counterpart to set up a call with the Attorney General of the United States to speak about investigations that have personal and political import to President Trump himself, thats pretty startling. That is shocking, in fact. And let me read some of that. Again, we are working to get some of the graphics up on screen from the summery. But you have the president of
ukraine, after President Trump brings up this idea, he says i would like you to do us a favor, though, continues to talk about this investigation. The president of ukraine says i plan to surround myself with great people, and in addition to that investigation i guarantee that as the president of ukraine that all the investigations will be done openly and candidly. That i can assure you. President trump then responds good, because i heard you had a prosecutor, the president says, who was very good and he was shut down and thats really unfair, according to the summery of the call. The president then goes on to say a lot of people are talking about that, the way they shut your very good prosecutor down and you had some bad people involved. He then refers to his personal attorney, mr. Giuliani is a highly respected man, he was the mayor of New York City and i would like him to call you, i will ask him to call you, along with the Attorney General. The president says rudy very much knows whats happening and he is a very capable guy, if you could speak to him, that would be great. And ned, to your point as we see the president now at that venezuela multilateral meeting at the United Nations general assembly, the president invoking not just his personal attorney but the Attorney General as well. Administrator mark green, thank you all for these here. Thank you very much. I want to extend my profound appreciation to every representative with us from across the western hemisphere. Each of you is part of a Historic Coalition of 55 countries that recognize the legitimate Constitutional Government of venezuela. We are special grateful to be joined by representatives of the people of argentina, brazil, columbia, chile, ecuador and per rue for their relationship and assistance in the unprecedented economic and humanitarian disaster, which has been going
on for a long time and were helping a lot. We are helping a lot. Let me also recognize two leaders from the government of venezuelas legitimate interim government, president ial commissioner for foreign affairs, julio borges. Please stand up. Thank you very much. Thank you. [ applause ] and venezuelas ambassador to the United States so we dipped in for a moment to see if the president would address any of this at the top of his meeting with the venezuela leader. You can see the president calling out the aides who are alongside him, including Secretary Of State mike pompeo, wilbur ross and others. This is happening live just a few blocks from where were sitting. The president meeting at a hotel in mid Town Manhattan with these leaders. It is likely that at the conclusion of the president s Remarks Reporters will ask him
questions related to everything that we have been talking about right now, including the release just about 17 minutes ago of what the white house describes as a transcript, but may be best described as a summery of a phone call between President Trump and the new president of ukraine in which President Trump raises the bidens and that investigation that has triggered now a phone call that has triggered the democrats Impeachment Inquiry formally as House Speaker nancy pelosi announced last night. We have not just the president , but nancy pelosi in the hallways speaking about this. We are listening in to see if Kevin Mccarthy mentions this. We also in a matter of hours will see President Trump in another meeting with the president of ukraine, the very man hes having this Phone Conversation with on july 25th, that is at the center of all of this. Let me see if we can pull up our many guests and analysts who are joining us, including ned price,
evelyn fark is, kristen welker. Ned, i think ill go back to you because we were interrupted in our conversation before. You mentioned that you are particularly concerned about the idea that President Trump raised his personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani in this phone call with a foreign leader, seeking to find out more about a political opponent. Talk through that. Seeking to find out more about a political opponent, because President Trump pulled a lester holt moment once again and gave up the game saying there would be nothing wrong with talking about the purported, alleged and actually false corruption that he thinks the bidens were involved in. He asked his ukrainian counterpart to work with Rudy Giuliani, his personal attorney on an issue involving crowdstrike and it seems this be an apparently effort to
undermine what is about as hard a fact as you can imagine, that the russians were behind the hack and leek of the dnc emails. To think that the president of the United States is pushing a conspiracy theory, that only fringe actors, by the way, to include his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, really believe at this point should give us all great pause about the mental state of the individual sitting in the oval office. But even worse to some degree, President Trump is involving much of his administration into this. The mention of bill barr as a prominent actor in this, and its unclear exactly what bill barr was supposed to discuss, whether it was the biden matter, whether it was the crowdstrike matter or whether it was all of the above. But for the Attorney General of the United States to be carrying the president s water and for the president to be making that clear to his foreign counterpart is striking. And finally i would note that when President Trump lays all of this out, the response from the
Ukrainian President is not surprising. He says ill look into all of this. And that underscores the key point. We didnt need an explicit quid pro quo. I want to bring in congressman from michigan, House Democratic caucus who is joining us from the capitol. I appreciate you joining us. Lets start with your reaction to what you have seen so far from the summery of the call that the white house has just released. Ive only been able to see a little bit of it. This is not good for the white house. Again, this is clear evidence that the president put americas National Security, our National Security interests behind his own personal political interest, his own narcissim, and particularly the fact that he refers to Rudy Giuliani, not a government employee, one of his fixers, his tv lawyer, but more importantly, the Attorney General of the United States as a person that the president of
ukraine should engage with to advance the president s witch hunt, to use his term, against the bidens. This is bizarre behavior by the president and i dont know what the report from the whistleblower will say. This is certainly not adequate just to see this readout of the call. But even just looking at it, any american should be absolutely shocked to see what this refers to. I was watching leader mcconnell on the floor. Thats an embarrassment, to see the republican leader of the senate try to minimize this. He is essentially acting as a lap dog for the Provideesident EUnited States. This is a time for people to take stock of what our president is about and the president is putting at risk the National Security of this country in order to advance his bizarre goal of discrediting a political
opponent. So do you believe that this bolsters your argument for impeachment . Without any question at all. The fact that we have from the white house itself something that they i assume believe they were not going to be able to prevent from being released anyway, an acknowledgment of what the president has already acknowledged, that he raised this issue with the Ukrainian President. That fact alone is impeachable as far as i am concerned. But to go further, and suggest that they work directly with Rudy Giuliani and, for gods sake, the Attorney General of the United States of america, goes beyond anything that i ever imagined, even in the last two years as weve watched this president run just roughshod over the rule of law and trample over the constitution. This is scarier and more bizarre than i imagined i would ever see. You were honing in on the presence, at least in the summery of the president s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani. It appears Rudy Giuliani had a better sense of what is in the summery than members of congress as he was on another network this morning and was suggesting that he was read or given some sort of summery of this summery. I imagine well, ill ask you, do you find that appropriate . No, i dont. First of all, i dont find it appropriate that the president would activate anybody inside or outside the white house to pursue his Political Goals by engaging a foreign leader. But the fact that he turns to rudy, his new fixer, somebody who is not within the government of the United States, and tasks him to work with a Foreign Government to try to take down a political opponent, is just beyond comprehension. So many republicans that i see running around this building now ringing their hands and saying you better be careful, youre not sure youre doing the right thing. I ask them to take a look in the mirror at themselves and ask them whether or not they actually want to do the
political and moral gymnastics that it takes to try to normalize this behavior. This is something that everyone should be rejecting. Let me ask you this. As you and i are having this conversation now, theres a lot happening. On the one side of our screen, you see President Trump and Secretary Of State mike pompeo sitting in a meeting right now with the leader of venezuela and others. Congressman, you also have on the other side of the Capitol House leader Kevin Mccarthy making remarks, and he is suggesting that speaker nancy pelosi, her ability to be speaker should be in question based on the moves that she has made over these last 24 hours. Your response . Well, i think if the speaker swears an oath to the constitution and then works to actually up hold the constitution, that more than qualifies her for the office. I question what mr. Mccarthy might be speaking of. But i also question whether or not my republican colleagues are actually living up to their oath. I suppose they have now sworn their loyalty to donald trump. We get it. Theyre either petrified or they worship him. They took an oath to the constitution, but they might take a moment to read it and follow what it asks us to do. Theyre not doing that and the speaker is. Youve mentioned now several pieces that are in this call summery that i want to make sure that people have a grasp on. Im going to ask my control room to pull them up. President trump, according to this call, referenced his personal attorney. He said mr. Giuliani is a highly respected man, he was the mayor of New York City, a great mayor and i would like him to call you. I will ask him to call you along with the Attorney General. Rudy very much knows whats happening and he is a very capable guy. If you could speak to him, that would be great. The Ukrainian President then responds saying yes, it is very important for me and everything that you just mentioned earlier, for me as a president it is very important and er open for any
future cooperation. He then says i will personally tell you that one of my assistants spoke with mr. Giuliani just recently and we are hoping very much that mr. Giuliani will be able to travel to ukraine and we will meet once he comes to ukraine. We should note that the ukrainian told another outlet that he didnt pressure from President Trump in in instance. Do you buy that . First of all, theres no need for a quid pro quo. But if you read those comments its very clear that the Ukrainian President feels the pressure from the president of the United States, the call is ostensibly about u. S. Aid to support ukraines effort to deal with the russians. To see evidence of a conversation where theyre conspiring to get mr. Giuliani, not an american official or official of the american government, to sit down with ukrainian officials and work out how theyre going to go after a political opponent of the
president , its just breathtaking. The idea that anybody in this building is somehow able to rationalize this or to somehow look the other way or try to minimize it is just breathtaking. Weve heard the rationale from some members of frankly the House Of Representatives on the other side of the aisle who say this isnt about the president , this should be about joe biden and hunter biden and that whole situation there. That appears to be the rationale from some inside the gop. Thats why i say its gymnastics. First of all, what Vice President biden was asserting in that moment was the policy of the United States government, the policy of our western allies, also articulated by the International Monetary fund that there needed to be reforms in ukraine. There is never and still is never a shred of evidence that there was any criminal wrongdoing or investigation of mr. Bidens son. But the president creates these confections in order to justify his own misdeeds, to try to
create some bizarre equivalency. And anybody who continues to repeat that as if its a real story, which ive seen my republican colleagues do, theyre just buying into the president s long history of rationalizing his own behavior by creating complete falsehoods, having them repeated and then using them as if they are fact. I expect donald trump to do that. That has been his history long before he became president of the United States. I do not expect and cannot accept Mitch Mcconnell, Kevin Mccarthy or any of these republicans buying into this bizarre confection that he has created in order to justify his own misdeeds. Based on the conversation that you and i are having, congressman, and then ill let you go, it seems to me that you are more committed than ever to move forward with this Impeachment Inquiry . Am i understanding you correctly here . Without a doubt. I was there already, but this takes it to a completely different level. This is the president engaging a foreign power to advance his own interests, conspiring with a foreign power to try to do political damage to an opponent and using the Attorney General of the United States in order to achieve that goal. Thats an Impeachable Offense and we ought to pursue that. Congressman dan kildy from michigan. I appreciate you being with us. Do you have any insight into what nancy pelosi told you all at the caucus meeting this morning . Is she also as committed as you are to this . I dont think theres much doubt. She, herself has acknowledged that this recent set of events has taken the conversation to a different level. I appreciate i. Thank you. It is now 10 31, which means for about 31 minutes we had had our hands on what the white house has released, a summery of the Phone Conversation 30 minutes long between President Trump and the president of ukraine back on july 25th. A phone call that has apparently trig ld the whistleblower
complaint that the white house initially did not want members of congress to see. And the phone call that has put into motion this Impeachment Inquiry process that we have been covering now for the last 12 to 18 hours. I want to reset and make sure that everybody is up to speed on what this conversation was about, what democrats find concerning and what republicans are likely to be defending today. Weve already heard defense of the president from his allies so far. Were going to pull up a series of graphics that we have made so which he can share with you the summery of the call. The president says to the leader of ukraine after some initial sort of small talk about congratulations on your election win, he says theres a lot of talk about bidens son, what biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that, so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution, so if you can look into it, it sounds horrible to me. At a different pint in the conversation the president says
i would like to ask you to do us a favor, though, because our country has been through a lot and ukraine knows a lot about it. He says i would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with ukraine. They say crowdstrike, dot dot dot. I guess you have one of your wealthy people, dot dot dot, the server, they say ukraine has it. That whole nonsense, the president continues, ended with a very more performance by a man named robert mueller, an incompetent performance. The president says whatever you can do, its very important that you do it if thats possible. The president says the United States has been very, very good to ukraine. I wouldnt say that its res. The president brings up his attorney who does not have a role inside the administration, Rudy GiulianiRudy Giuliani. He says he was a great mayor and i would like him to call you. I will ask him to call you along with the Attorney General. Rudy very much knows whats happening and he is a very capable guy. If you could speak to him, that would be great. The Ukrainian President , zelensky, Who By The WayPresident Trump will sit down with, says yes, it is very important for me and he responds everything that you just mentioned earlier. For me as a president it is very important and we are open for any future cooperation. Theres an e lip cease and president zelensky continues i will personally tell you that one of my assistants spoke with mr. Giuliani just recently and we are hoping very much that mr. Giuliani will be able to travel to ukraine and we will meet once he comes to ukraine. I want to bring in now a number of people to be able to break this down, not just our reporters, but also our Analyst Experts in the field of National Security, ned price, jeremy bash. Jeremy bash, i would like to start with you. I want to talk about your reaction to what i just read, pieces of the summery and then i want to talk through the actual logistics and mechanics of this
whistleblower complaint. Your reaction overall first. First, if you read every single word of this released detailed verbatim, near verbatim notes of the conversation, three things jump off the page. Number one is what the president was presenting to the leader of ukraine was basically help me with my political issues. Help me with respect to mueller, but more importantly, help me with respect to biden. And its not just because biden was the former Vice President. Obviously trump is anticipating 2020 and biden potentially being the democratic nominee. Theres almost nothing else the president wants to talk about other than biden. Number two is the discussion between the defense help and the support for trump politically is right next to each other. Basically the president of ukraine says we are ready to continue to cooperate for the next steps to buy more javelins. Thats a defense system, a shoulderfired antitank weapon that the ukrainians were seeking
to buy from the United States. In the next sentence the president says i would like you to do us a favor, though. Basically he says i will allow you to buy the javelins if you do us some favors. And he lays out what the favors are. So i think the quid pro quo was there on the page. And the third thing is theres a lot more that needs to be investigated, because in the transcript zelensky said, mr. President , you told me already how bad the u. S. Ambassador was, weve talked about this before. This was not their first conversation. We need to see the content of other conversations and we need to understand the content of the conversations between trump and giuliani. Jeremy, theres also a piece of this as we bring in everybody here into the conversation, that this Intelligence Community employee, somebody who works there, heard about this call from white house officials, according to this employees complaint to the Inspector General, and suggested that perhaps this call, this discussion that were talking about was essentially a violation of Campaign Finance
law, soliciting in effect a Foreign Campaign contribution. The crux of this is the department of justice said no, that doesnt hold water or meet the standard for passing this complaint to congress, because it doesnt concern an Intelligence Activity or the conduct of somebody in the Intelligence Community and additionally the president was potentially asking for in this conversation did not amount to a thing of value. So that seems to be the rationale from the Trump Administration behind this based on your team at the Justice Departments reporting. Does that hold water to you . I think the Inspector General felt differently. He felt that it was urgent, it was credible and it did need to be provided to congress, and of course thats now what is going to happen. Look, i think at the end of the day, we know what did administration is going to try to do. Theyre going to try to out the whistleblower, destroy them, sort of do everything youre not supposed to do against a whistleblower, but for the courage and i think professionalism of this individual, we would not know that the president was using his
office to obtain political benefits and potentially linking u. S. Defense aid to help the president during his president ial election. Evelyn, i know you want to jump in here. I really want to jump in here, because, first of all, the president clearly sought to get the Ukrainian President involved in u. S. Domestic political affairs. He asked for assistance. This is your bread and butter. You know ukraine just about as well as anybody in the country here. This is a topic that is of your expertise. Yes. And the Ukrainian President had no choice and as jeremy pointed out, this seems to be a continuation of a conversation. Im also getting agitated because the issue of the previous ambassador to ukraine has also come up. Thats a separate soap opera, but something where our president , i believe, has behaved improperly, as has the highest leadership at the State Department in terms of dealing with a situation not backing your own ambassador in ukraine. But the president of the united
states asked for this assistance, the president of ukraine said, yeah, sure, well give you this help. How sincere he was or not, you know, we mains to be told by him. But the reality is that he, in essence, said yes. Now, this transcript was a secret. Heres the Intelligence Problem. I mean, yes, theres the Campaign Finance issue, but the Intelligence Problem is that the Ukrainian President now has something on our president , because he has in essence been solicited, and whether he accepted or not, he knows this. And so he can use this against us, the United States of america, not just donald trump personally. And thats black mail. If he wants to use it against us, he can use it as blackmail. Thats why the Intelligence Community should be involved, because if i as a citizen did the same thing donald trump did, you Better Believe they probably would have revoked my Security Clearance by now. Stand by and im going to ask everybody to stand by. I want to bring in somebody with
the republican perspective on this, somebody i know is a friend and ally of the president s. Congressman matt gates who is joining us from capitol hill. I know you have had a busy morning as well. Have you had a chance to review and read these transcripts that were talking about . Yeah, ive had the chance to review the transcripts and chat with the president about them. Were you at the white house . Yeah, we went over to the white house. Who is we . You and democrats, just republicans . I didnt check anybodys Voter Registration card, but i can tell you that you know who democrats and republicans are. Im just trying to find out did the it was a group of legislators. The bottom line is that in this transcript there is no quid pro quo, there is no improper leverage and the overall tone of this transcript is that it is mutual. You have president zelensky and trump both complimenting one another for trying to root out corruption in their respective countries and i think its important that squa lin ski wins his election on an Anticorruption Campaign so its only natural that that would be
something that would be discussed. Frankly if the democrats think theyre going to impeach on this, i think it will be fatal for them. Theres a lot to unpack. I want to be clear about this. When the president invited you and your colleagues over to the white house this morning, were there any democrats also invited or was it just a group of republicans . Ill leave that to the white house. All i know is i went over there and i had a chance to read the transcripts contemporaneous with reporters being briefed and its transmission to the public and i am thrilled with the fact that president zelensky says in the transcript that hes going to open an open investigation. I would like us to have some open and candid investigations here in our country to determine the corrupt origins of the russian investigation. When the president references crowdstrike hes talking about potential ukrainian involvement in efforts to undermine u. S. Democracy. How do you know . Its in the transcript. The president references
its not clear from the transcript. The words are in the transcript. Theres a reference to crowdstrike. I want to pull that up. So you talk about how this is a mutual call and you clearly have had a chance to process this. Congressman, i want to make sure im clear on this. Fact check me here. It seems to me that you might have had an opportunity prior to other members of congress because you are close with the president to get an earlier look at this transcript than others did. Was that a meeting to get everybody on the same page with Talking Points as far as the president s team and people that are close to him . Hallie, its a fivepage document. It doesnt take very long for everybody to read it. Let me bring you back to the question as you well know because you work at the white house, there are reporters who get briefed on these things contemporaneous with their release. I think that Key Committee chairman and others in congress, im a member of the judiciary committee, so i had a chance to look at it contemporaneous with
it being released. Were any of those house Committee Chairman there. There were no Democratic Committee kparm thechairman the. I can say that. What was his message to the republicans apparently who were in this room getting a look at this and getting briefed . Did he seem comfortable releasing it . The president has no worries whatsoever that this is going to result in any sort of impeachment. In fact, the president pointed out to us that throughout the transcript he is serving as an advocate for the ukraine. You have the president of the United States and the president of ukraine functionally throwing shade at mckroen and merkel for not doing enough for the ukraine. So they began with the notion that theyre on the same team trying to work for the advancement of democracy and the protection of the ukraine. It is entirely appropriate. Senator Chuck Schumer is speaking now, the democratic side of this. If youre able to, i know your
time is precious, but to stand by and i would like your response to that. I would be happy to. A wellearned reputation for dishonesty, altered facts and incomplete disclosure in public releases. We need to see the complete, unredacted whistleblower complaint without further delay. The whistleblower must be allowed to testify without fear of intimidation and then we must pursue the many relevant avenues of inquiry that i just described. Yesterday afternoon the entire senate, all 47 democrats and 53 republicans, agreed to my resolution calling for the whistleblower complaint to be transmitted immediately to congress, a reflection of the seriousness with which these events are viewed on both sides of the aisle. This was unexpected. In the past when weve asked to
look into President Trump, our republican colleagues have st e stonewall, but to their credit they realize the seriousness of this and unanimously supported our resolution. I hope and pray we can look at the facts, not the politics and come to conclusions. Because without doubt, the white house and the president s congressional allies will rush to call this effort a partisan witch hunt, no matter how serious the allegations, or how evenhanded the inquiry. I would remind everyone that just yesterday every Senate Republican agreed that the white houses decision to block the whistleblower complaint from congress was wrong. There was unanimous bipartisan agreement in the senate on that point, not a single senator
objected. But let me be clear, nonetheless, because i know accusations of partisanship are already being written. This inquiry was not taken up for partisan reasons and it does not prejudge an outcome. Our framers in their wisdom assigned to one Chamber Of Commerce the right to accuse, and to the other the right to judge. The House Of Representatives will investigate and determine whether sufficient evidence exists to accuse the president of an Impeachable Offense or Impeachable Offenses. If it comes to that, the senate will be the scene of the trial, senators the jurors. We must take our responsibility with the utmost gravity. Our framers, not trusting our liberty to one branch of government alone, afraid of the everpresent danger of tyranny
of an overreaching executive, provided a remedy to congress should the attempt to subvert or violate the constitution of the United States. We are not yet at the stage where any judgments can be made one way or the other. But i remind my colleagues today that if the day should come when we are called upon to carry out our constitutional duty, history will judge whether we did so faithfully or not. History will judge if each of us acted as a solemn juror of democracy who placed fidelity to the constitution and our system of government above the narrow considerations of partisan politics. Now, on another issue not directly related, but you have been listening to senator Chuck Schumer on the senate floor. We brought you mcconnell a little earlier and schumer and
we have heard in the last 40 minutes or so from house. One of the members of congress is joining us. Congress matt gates has been standing by. Congressman, i want to be clear. So you are making the argument that you believe this is not politically damaging to President Trump. Let me read you a section of these notes that i know you have had a chance to look at earlier this morning in your visit to the white house. The president of ukraine, president zelensky, as you know, is thanking the president and saying i would like to thank you for your great support in the area of defense. He says we are ready to continue to cooperate for the next steps, specifically were almost ready to buy more javelins from the United States for defense purposes. According to the summery of the call, the next thing that the president says in response to the Ukrainian President bringing up defense aid, is i would like to ask you to do us a favor, though. And the president goes on to bring up this investigation. How is that in your view anything other than an implicit ask from the president , given
the topic that the ukrainian leader had just been discussing . Because you ignore the context that is just before that statement, where zelensky and trump are both talking about the fact that europe isnt doing enough so theyre trying to leverage greater cooperation. It just would be crazy to me if democrats impeach President Trump for withholding aid that was ultimately given. You said you would give me the opportunity to respond to schumers statements. In one sentence he said that he would not prejudge the investigation into the president and then a few sentence later he essentially called trump a tyrant congressman, the president is speaking. Ive got to get to the president who is live. Thank you, congressman. Thank you. The president himself just came out with a statement saying there was absolutely no pressure put on him. What i do want to see is i want to see other countries helping ukraine also, not just us. As usual, the United States helps and nobody else is there. So i want to see other countries help. Just so you understand, its the single greatest witch hunt in american history, probably prob history, but in american history. Its a disgraceful thing. The letter was a great letter, meaning the letter revealing the call. That was done at the insistence of myself and other people that read it. It was a friendly letter. There was no pressure. The way you had that built up, that call, it was going to be the call from hell. It turned out to be a nothing call, other than a lot of people said i never knew you could be so nice. So part of the problem you have is you have the fake news, a lot of corrupt reporting. You have very fine reporters and journalist, but you have a lot of corrupt reporters, a lot of corrupt journalists. I would rate you right in there, by the way. [ inaudible ]. Excuse me. So were having, if you noticed,
the stock market went up when they saw the nonsense. All of a sudden the stock market went down substantially yesterday when they saw a charge. After they read the charge, the stock market went up very substantially. We have created the greatest economy in the history of our country, the greatest economy in the world. Had my opponent won, china would right now be the number one economy by far. Right now china is way behind us, and theyll never catch us if we have smart leadership. Way behind. Weve tricked up trillions of dollars and theyve lost trillions of dollars and they want to make a deal very badly. It could happen. It could happen. It could happen sooner than you think. Our military is rebuilt. Our military has never been stronger. When i came in, it was depleted. Our vets are happy. So many great things are happening, and the democrats feel theyre going to lose. We had the highest poll number, ras muse en, 53. They said you can at ten to it. A lot of people say you can add more than ten to it. A lot of people dont want to talk about it but they want to vote for trump. I just say this, we have the strongest country weve ever had. Weve had the best economy weve ever had. We have the best Unemployment Numbers weve ever had. We have the best Employment Numbers weve ever had. We have almost 160 Million People working, far more than weve ever had working in our country before. Thank you very much, everybody. Thank you very much. President trump there meeting with the leader of venezuela as part of his many meetings today at the United Nations general assembly. I wanted to see if the president answered any more questions. Then you heard his comments on what weve been talking about,
the release of what you could call a memo or summary with the 30minute phone call with the leader of ukraine. Kristen welker is outside trump tower. This is the first time weve heard from the president after House Speaker nancy pelosi said shed move forward with this formal Impeachment Inquiry. Hallie, what we got in that initial reaction from President Trump was a snapshot of the d y defiance we can expect to see from him moving forward. You heard him refer to this as a witch hunt. He then pivoted to the economy. His strength, one of his key arguments for reelection and talked about job growth and why essentially he thinks this is a distraction. This is what President Trump is best at. He is a counter puncher. Hes described himself in that way. The question is how big of a fight is this . Is this the fight, in fact, of
his political life. Now, in terms of the politics of all of this, hallie, taking a step back, here he is at the u. N. Holding these critical diplomatic talks and having to answer questions about this phone call, this transcript, notes of this phone call i should say, that have now been released. Instead of focusing on the diplomacy hes trying to engage in. It mirrors what we saw just a year ago when he was answering tough questions about the russia investigation. A number of people within trump world say this could ultimately help President Trump politically. We know the campaign is touting that theyve already raised over a Million Dollars off of this in fundraising. They are going to try to capitalize on this and theyre going to try to paint democrats as ineffective and becoming obsessed with impeachment and not able to legislate. Those are the Talking Points. What is the reality, and what is the impact going to be, frankly, as the investigations get under way in all these various committees. Theyre already on going. But what we anticipate is theyre going to escalate. Thats going to be a split screen every day on the campaign trail, hallie. How is that going to impact President Trump and his reelection . So far from this president , defiance and, of course, were all going to be watching for that bilateral meeting later today when hes meeting with the president of ukraine. Of course, you will be there pressing both leaders on what specifically their reaction is to this. Representing the rest of our colleagues in the White House Press corps. Heard a lot of our colleagues shouting questions at the president. He didnt want to engage. Said his peace and was ready to move on. I want to bring in normer deputy National Security adviser in the obamabiden administration, tony blinken. Hes a Senior Advisor to the biden campaign. Thank you for being on the show for what is an extraordinarily busy morning. Youve had a chance, i assume, to review this memo, the summary
of the phone call. Is it as concerning as you feared it would be . Hallie, its more concerning. Why . This is worse than we feared. A few things. First, we have confirmation that the president of the United States, using the full power of his Office Sought from a leader of a foreign country to dig up discredited dirt on his leading political rival, in this case joe biden. But beyond that, he sought to bring in other members of his administration, the Attorney General. The State Department may have been involved in facilitating mr. Giulianis engagement with the ukrainians. This is corrupting his entire administration in the pursuit of his own personal political gain. As you pointed out, the ukrainians desperately need assistance from the United States. When the president and the Ukrainian President are talking about the relative lack of assistance from other countries, that only underscores how important the United States is to ukraine. So implicit in this, if not explicit, is the president saying, gee, it would be a shame if something happened to that assistance you need that you get mostly from the United States. I think theres a pretty clear quid pro quo. Even if there isnt, soliciting from the leader of a foreign country an effort to bring up discredited dirt on your leading rival is something weve never seen before. Do you believe this will put the former Vice President over the line as far as formerly calling for impeachment. He said if the white house doesnt comply with congress, then that would be the right move. Is there any question left in his mind . Whats clear is we need a full investigation. We have, as you rightly pointed out, what the white house put out if they put this out, we wonder what theyre not willing to put out. What they put out was a summary of the conversation between the president and zelensky. There are other conversations he
had. Beyond that, the whistleblower, his or her report, his or her testimony is vitally important because we understand from press reports that there are other incidents that gave rise to deep concern, urgent concern by the whistleblower. We need to know that. We need to know what role, if any, the State Department played which pains me as a former employee of the State Department. There is a lot here to be found out. So we need a full investigation. We need to get all the facts and follow the facts. We just had a republican congressman on the show. I dont know if you had a chance to listen in, congressman mat gates, an ally of the president. Someone i bumped into, meeting with the president. One of the things he mentioned was that the real story, im paraphrasing here, is about former Vice President joe biden, hunter biden, the fact that he was tied to this ukrainian gas company, et cetera. Theres been, and lets been very clear here, no evidence of any wrongdoing by the former Vice President , and this widely viewed as corrupt prosecutor of ukraine shelled that inquiry into the Company Prior to the Vice President coming out and speaking out against the corruption in ukraine. All that said, tony, if you go back in time, do you think the former vp would like another crack at how he handled that . Hallie, every major Media Institution discredited these allegations. No evidence at all. Very clear theres nothing thats shown the former Vice President has done any wrongdoing here. This is playing right into the president s playbook. He throws up discredited dirt. He tries to force the media to talk about it, report on it. And instead of focusing on the real issue here, which is the egregious abuse of power by the president himself, thats the story, thats the only story,