aen anti-corruption thing. sondland said i presumed that the aid suspension, the $391 million, had become linked to the proposed anti-corruption statement. so the president has tried to portray the ukrainians investigating hunter biden and burisma as an anti-corruption effort and that the president was all about fighting corruption, which of course there had been no demonstration of anywhere else in the trump administration. at some point does it matter when gordon sondland said it was tied to something else and he calls it anti-corruption, does it matter? because in the end it was about donald trump benefitting. well, i mean it goes to intent and motive, i guess. but here s it s so obviously false for a bunch of reasons, one of which is you have you have witnesses saying we told rudy giuliani that these were debunked theories. so you re pursuing corruption
commitment to investigate the 2016 election and the bidens. in other words, there was a quid pro quo and ukraine knew it. sondland made those changes to his testimony yesterday, on the same day that house democrats began releasing closed door testimony to the public. in a three-page declaration, sondland says by the beginning of september 19 and in the absence of any credible explanation for the suspension of aid, i presumed that the aid suspension had become linked to the proposed anti-corruption statement. that explicitly included the 2016 election and hunter biden s company, burisma. he goes on to say, quote, i now recall speaking individually with the zelensky aide that rudy giuliani met with in madrid, mr. yermak, where i said that resumption of u.s. aid would likely not occur until ukraine provided the public anti-corruption statement that we had been discussing for many weeks. again, remember, one of the talking points from the white
because trump is saying we ve abandoned the kurds and we re going withdraw our troops. you think john bolton, if you followed his policy instincts throughout the year would say on to damascus so you do wonder how this going to shake out. i agree with noah. i think syria will be an interesting test case for whether or not donald trump s own instincts and he said this i believe in a speech in ohio last week where he wants to withdraw u.s. forces from syria, i think there was an aid suspension as well over the weekend but his advisers, even the ones he just hand-picked again, john bolton, mike pompeo at state and i m sure jim mattis at defense, none of them want to immediately pull out of syria. in the long run they do but they think doing so now would be adverse to american interest and it will be interesting to see to the extent to which they can push back. in some ways this is a test of whether or not the ones he s