house. even got two democrats to vote against authorizing the investigation. i m looking at what might potentially move moderate republicans or democrats either way. and the key thing here, i think is still the why and sondland may be able to shed light on the why. what was in the president s head. what was in sondland s head. now that sondland knows a lot more because he s watched and read testimony, does he think that what happened was wrong? does he think that what the president did was wrong or right? and what are the challenges here is we still haven t seen a white house narrative. still haven t seen a republican narrative about what they say is going on. i think that may have to change pretty soon. jeffrey, his lawyer is well regarded here in washington with a lot of experience in dealing with these kinds of matters and i m sure he s giving him some very strong advice. good advice in general is to tell the truth. that s just sort of my
kind of anxious to get in there and get this done. this is what we re witnessing here right now, which is not just an entrance. this is the continuation and probably the major pivot point of a huge political situation. right. and as we watch gordon sondland behind the mag right now going through security in the building where the hearing will take place, he represents a real problem for the white house because he has direct knowledge of what the president thought. what was in his mind with regard to ukraine, with regard to the potential investigation. so he becomes tricky. he s also changed his testimony. how do republicans treat him today? it s going to be a big part of it. look, he could have both sides coming at him. because the republicans, from what we ve seen them do with testimony, what do we see? lock step, nothing was done wrong, and anything that seems out of the ordinary was out of the ordinary and the president had nothing to do with it. that is stuff for sondland to
investigation. even though there s some language to that efects. he wanted the announcement of an investigation. if you care about corruption, you can have that happen if you have the investigation go on. it can happen quietly. what he wanted over and over again and counsel for the democrats, dan goldman, has been very good on this. in eliciting from witnesses what was important to the president of the united states was the announcement. and that is the thing that casts aspersions and dirt on his political rival joe biden. chris, we re bracing for potentially an explosive opening statement from gordon sondland. the eu ambassador, mr. sondland, if you can hear me, wolf. i hear you now. he has to make it okay for himself. people take care of themselves in these situations. and for him to do that, he has to say, i wasn t doing anything that everybody wasn t on board with. i was like the new york times says this morning, i told
counselor for political affairs at the u.s. embassy. a really jaw-dropping revelation. when that came to fruition. this was a conversation sondland had in an open setting in a restaurant in ukraine. he did not talk about this at all during his closed door testimony. it only came to light when david holmes, this u.s. official, a foreign service officer at the u.s. embassy in ukraine came forth with this information. i want to read to you how david holmes described that situation in his closed door testimony. he said, quote, i heard president trump ask. so he s going to do the investigation. ambassador sondland replied, he s going to do it adding that president zelensky will, quote, do anything you ask him to. i asked ambassador sondland if it was true that the president did not give an expletive about ukraine. ambassador sondland agreed that the president did not give a about ukraine. i asked why not and ambassador sondland stated that the president only cares about big
giuliani at the direction of president trump and gordon sondland makes very clear it absolutely was. and they were trying to fulfill the president s demands in pushing forward on these investigations. so we ll see how what else he has to say about his specific interactions with president trump because in this opening statement, wolf, he does not really detail all those conversations he had with president trump. he does talk about the july 26th conversation that he had with the president. we learned about last week in which the president urged this ukraine investigation to go forward. he said he doesn t remember all the details but wouldn t be surprised given the push between trump and giuliani to move forward on this investigation. the president would have brought it up, too, at that time. manu, i know you re going through this document. we re going through it as well. stand by. we ll get back to you. gloria, you ve been going through this very closely. at one point he says in his