I thought the threat to our nation was wellarticulated earlier today by Professor Feldman when you said, if we cannot impeach a president who abuses his office for personal advantage, we no longer live in a democracy, we live in a monarchy or we live under a dictatorship. My view is that a people cannot depend on the fairness of will be absolutely nothing compared to the shredding of our democracy. After the events of ukraine unfolded, the president claimed the reason he requested an investigation into his political opponent and withheld desperately needed military aid for ukraine was supposedly because he was worried about corruption. However, contrary to the president s statements, various witnesses including Vice President pence special advisor Jennifer Williams testified that the president s request was political. Take a listen. Speak of the july 20 for phone call was unusual because in contrast to other presenter because ive observed, it involved discussions would appear to be had
elite and criticized for failing to bring corruption cases. senator cruz yesterday also mischaracterized president trump s july 25th phone call with the leader of ukraine. there s a difference between foreign interference of the kind russia did, which was hacking into the election creating fraudulent bots, actively trying to deceive people, and law enforcement investigation into corrupti corruption. we cooperate with law enforcement, with countries all over the earth, and one of the central issues right at the heart of this discussion is on the face of the transcript with zelensky what president trump is asking for is assistance with the u.s. government with investigating corruption. that is inherently within the authority of the president, the department of justice to do, and that is their responsibility. but the transcript of the july 25th phone call does not indicate that president trump brought up the issue of broad
president zelensky. however, based on the transcripts released on those calls in april and july, president trump never mentioned these points of corruption. he never mentioned the word corruption. does that go to any of these factors with that significance? yes, it goes to the one about procedural irregularities and the things that led up to the decision that you figure this mode ambassador volker testified that the president never made comments to him about corrupti corruption. it goes to the factor about factor about substantive departures. professor karlan come up it goes to the fact and my colleague mr. mcclintock mentioned this earlier, a process out lied to the national defense authorization act two countries receiving military aid
aide was linked to something and he admitted he didn t even know why he was presuming that. this is good for the president because the transcripts that were released today show exactly what the president has been saying all along. if you look at the timeline, and he presumed that they were being tied to the ukraine making a statement about any corrupti corruption. on september 1st in warsaw, he told ukrainian officials what he was thinking and then told tim morrison about it. when he talked to investor taylor about it eight days lat later, he called president trump to ask what was really going on. that was his first conversation with the president about it. in that call the president told him there is no quid pro quo. so the white house is saying that while sloan lund may have thought he knew what was going
drag a lot more of them down with him. the reason i ask you the question is on meet the press we ve done a lot of information about what happened. i fully agree that one doesn t want to make decisions based on half the information and it would be very simple, rick, for the white house or the justice department to not prevent congress from getting the necessary information and, as jennifer says, the whistleblower complaint. but chuck todd was talking to pennsylvania senator republican pat toomey. let s just listen to what his response was. i don t know what the conversation was. i just told you. he said he did bring up corruption and biden. i mean, was that appropriate again, i don t i don t know the context. i don t know what was said. look, it is not appropriate for any candidate for federal office, certainly including a sitting president, to ask for assistance from a foreign country. that s not appropriate. but i don t know that that s what happened here. how long d