you know, this is not the way the process works. now we re at the point where all of the evidence has been collected, and the president gets to present, you know, their case. and i suspect if they have a good case and the facts were with him, then they would want to do this, but they the truth is, for everybody who s read up on this, you know, the facts aren t in dispute. almost nobody s disputing the facts. yeah. we re down to one thing now, and that is, did what the president do, which was try to trade arms for dirt with the president of ukraine did what he did, is that an impeachable defense? that s the single question out today and that s what i think nadler will spend a lot of time discussing. as you started saying weeks ago, arms for dirt. arms for dirt. that was your coined phrase there. nice and simple. yeah. victoria, say the president decides to call his own witnesses. who do you think would ultimately make the case for impeachment? maybe not intentionally, bu
but making very clear how pivotally important for national security even the meeting with donald trump and zelensky was to send a signal to moscow that the u.s. was standing beside the ukraine. and that, i think, is such an important setup to the notion of abuse of power for personal gain against the interest of the united states. that s what sets the foundation for impeachable. and that s high this comiwhy th is so important for gordon sondland, because he is the person from what we heard about the deposition friday afternoon that had direct conversations with donald trump. so starting to erode the plausible deniability that the president wasn t directly involved. and his memory is evolving, certainly. a lot of people talking about arms for dirt, quid pro quo. yeah. as mia said, when you strip it all away, what this is about
return for a public statement of a fake investigation into the elections. i mean, bribery s pretty easy. i m going to give you this money and you change what you re doing as a leader of your country in exchange. that s what donald trump s doing here. he s bribing them with a military what s interesting is congress has already passed this. he still is holding it up because he doesn t believe the constitution holds any checks and balances for him. so you can call it bribery, arms for dirt, political dirt, you can call tay lot of things. but quid pro quo really does sort of undersell it, doesn t. there are a few names here, congressman from ohio, representative buzz lukens, william jefferson, a former illinois governor, all in jail for bribery. for briber. i it s a crime, it s that
crime fraud scheme, and we have a scheme to defraud the united states, arms for dirt, so there is no privilege. you have to comply with the subpoena or here s what s going to happen, the house committees and the house itself, they are going to use the failure to comply with the subpoenas as an article of impeachment. they did that in part with bill clinton, and they obviously did it with richard nixon, so they re actually giving, putting fuel in the fire of the house impeachment process. gene rossi, always good to get your take, i appreciate your insight and expertise. thanks. thanks. president trump is at the alabama, lsu kick off where students were warned against disruptive behavior. we ll go live there next. en we g for a roommate, he wanted someone super quiet. yeah, and he wanted someone to help out with chores. so, we got jean-pierre. but one thing we could both agree on was getting geico
bribery scheme. you have a quid pro quo and a corrupt motive. and it s arms for dirt. and i want to draw an analogy to something before we get to the next question. imagine it s the spring of 1944 and president franklin roosevelt calls winston churchill and says winston, we re not going to send you aid for the d-day invasion unless you dig up dirt on my opponent tom duey in the republican party. if that ever happened, fdr would have been impeached and then the next day indicted. it s an egregious use of power. some of the president s defenders have hinted that ambassador gordon sondland is working with democrats on the impeachment committees, that he s somehow in cahoots with them. listen to senator lindsey graham. why did sondland change his