let s find out. let s put john bolton under oath. let s find out who is telling the truth. a trial is supposed to be a quest for the truth. let s not fear what we will learn. as mr. cipollone said, let s make sure all the facts come out. mr. chief justice, senators, counsel for the president, last tuesday at the onset of this trial, we voted for mr. mcconnell s to be held in the
you ve learned. reporter: sure, thanks for having me. mike schmidt and i are reporting that john bolton, his new man script for this book that he s trying to publish that the white house is trying to stop, at least for now, he describes a discussion in early may in the oval office that included mick mulvaney, the white house chief of staff, pat cipollone, the white house counsel, rudy giuliani, the president s personal lawyer, and john bolton and that giuliani was talking about these various investigations that they wanted, as we understand it, into some of the president s democratic rivals, including hillary clinton and joe biden, that the president directed john bolton to call the incoming president of ukraine, president zelensky, and make sure that rudy giuliani got a meeting with him in the coming days as giuliani was planning a trip to ukraine. the times reported on that trip that giuliani was reporting almost in realtime back in may
we ve heard about ambassador bolton s handwritten notes and book manuscript, and lieutenant colonel vindman s presidential policy memorandum. we know of reports about a number of emails in early august trying to create after the fact justifications for the hold, but we haven t seen any of them. they re at the white house being hidden by the president. i think it s a cover-up. documents at the state department, records about the recall of ambassador yovanovitch, about mr. giuliani s efforts for the president, about concerns raised about the hold, about the ukrainian reaction to the hold, and when exactly they learned about it, about negotiations with the ukrainians for an oval office meeting. we know of ambassador taylor s first person cable and notes and mr. kent s memos to file.
just say there is more coming out. this is the point i ve been making all along. there is a range of republicans in the republican office who really has a problem with the way donald trump conducts business, and i believe you ll hear from them. you ll hear more statements. this is not the last republican who is going to say because they re going to go out after they vote and they have to defend this vote. very few are announcing beforehand. they re going to get up here in the next how many hours is it, 17 hours, 16 hours if they take the whole time? they re going to have to defend their vote and you re not going to hear many say this was a perfect call. you ll hear some say this was a sham, but you ll hear a lot of folks saying, i m really concerned about what the president did, but. here s what s going to energize democrats. marco rubio gave a carefully crafted statement, more than most republicans did. he s going to vote against
relevant to this impeachment trial in the custody of the white house, omb, dod, and the state department and the president has hidden them from us. i m not going to go through each category again in details, but here are some observations. this is, of course, an impeachment case against the president of the united states, nothing could be more important, and the most important documents, documents that go directly to who knew what when are being held by the executive branch. many of these records are at the white house. the white house has records about the phone calls with president zelensky, about scheduling an oval office meeting with president zelensky, about the president s decision to hold security assistance, about communications among his top aides, about concerns raised by public officials with legal counsel.