with donald trump and holding up military aid until investigations were announced into burisma and the bidens in 2016. yeah. it was really interesting to listen to fiona hill yesterday talk about that, how she reading the previous testimony hearing the previous testimony came to understand that it wasn t, as you say, a rogue op. it wasn t sort of an outside channel. this was what was going on, this was ordered by the president obviously he had some involvement in it. the problem of course for the investigators is they don t have many people putting words in his mouth in meetings that would help them build their case. but they say two plus two equals four. you can clearly see what s going on here for the witnesses that they did have. and i think that s a powerful conclusion to realize that it s not in fact a one-man operation on the outside. this was in fact something that a variety of people were at least aware of and had apparently no objection to. gordon sondland one thing he said
from russia on politically motivated investigations into 2016 and into the bidens. and he told us so. yeah. so on a factual basis, where would you rank sort of the voracity of the case the democrats made? if i was a reporter, and i am, i d be super confident in taking out of the phrase alleged and just saying this is what actually happened. we now know what really happened. we know what the trade was. i would say if this was like a jig saw puzzle, instead of the one where like you try and figure out where the pieces fit together, we sort of started with like the border already built and we were kind of filling in the middle. now we have the whole thing. it s actually very clear. we have learned some important new things obviously from these hearings. but they re mostly about precise issues of timing which are always helpful in figuring out something. kind of who knew what when, the president s involvement, mulvaney s involvement, and the ukrainians knowledge of what
people who were in the loop at least according to testimony. people who had major roles to play one way or the other. and we have not heard from any of them. mulvaney was said to be a facilitator of this ukraine pressure scheme. is that correct? remember he told us in the briefing room that there was quid pro quo of security aid. and john bolton was against it according to fiona hill and other witnesses. he thought it was a metaphorical drug deal. he thought that rudy giuliani was a hand grenade waiting to blow up. who wouldn t want to hear more about what they said? the republicans said correctly in some cases, that some of these witnesses were second hand. bill taylor never talked to the president of the united states. alexander vindman never talked to the president of the united states. guess who did talk to the president? so let me just dig in a little bit because you have done a lot of reporting on john bolton. if john bolton, and i don t know that he s not, but if he were
served under three president who right out the gate called out the president for pushing conspiracy theories and explaining the dual tracks of the policy coming out of the white house garnered the attention of the nation. the nation that dr. hill herself spoke highly of recognizing that it was america that provided her with opportunities she would not have had anywhere else. i grew up poor with a very distinctive working class accent. in england in the 1980s and 1990s this would have impeded my professional advancement. this background has never set me back in america. we are very lucky to be joined by her attorney. you were by her side, but you ve known her for 30 years. we met at harvard in the early 1990s. she left england where she came from a working-class background. her father s family worked in the coal mines. her mother s family worked in the sewers of northern edge lanlan
converts they say, for religions right? she has the zeal for like the original american traditions. that is lost now, right, because i think that particularly on the republican side but a little bit on both with this partisan gamesmanship that s been happening for the last week or two that sort of dismisses some of these underlying core american ideals where, you know, the congressmen, they get to live in this fantasy world where the facts benefit them. but when the facts don t benefit them, then they play this game for donald trump and fiona hill undermined that so clearly because she actually defended donald trump on a few things. and i thought that was what made her testimony so powerful. and just the fact, just really quick, that donald trump jr. and the president himself retweeted these attacks on vindman and on fiona hill implying that they are not loyal to our country.