Hill inside the room where we will see House Speaker nancy pelosi later on this hour in just about 40 minutes or so. Peter, i want to start with you. For the first time we are hearing from secretary of state mike pompeo who is overseas about his role, his involvement in that call thats at the heart now of this whistleblower complaint and impeachment inquiry. Hallie, youre exactly right. This is the first time that we are hearing mike pompeo address the reports, confirmed by nbc news that he was on that july phone call between President Trump and ukraines president , president zelensky there. As you noted, pompeo is traveling today in italy and he did not elaborate on the call, though he was pressed on it beyond that. He didnt say anything else about whether it raised any red flags for him. But heres what he did say and notably on the back end of this sound bite youll see he addressed the u. S. Policy toward ukraine more broadly. Take a listen. I was on the phone call. Its what our team
Upcoming visit and outlining vision for the reboot of u. S. Ukraine relationship. Include can, among other things, burisma and election meddling in investigation. It is the company that put joe bidens son hunter on the board. And deep reservations from a senior u. S. Diplomat as he refers to hundreds of millions of dollars in crucial u. S. Military aid to ukraine, being withheld at the time of these demands. Quote, are we now saying that Security Assistance and white house meeting are conditioned on investigations . The response to that text . Call me. As in, lets quickly get this off the record. This is all is happening as the president openly admits to enlisting other countries to investigate his political rivals. As my reporting shows, not for the first time. In fact, he raised the bidens on a phone call with china in june in a source that the white house may argue that they do not have to provide any documents on all of this to congress until the vote formally vote, the house forma
The president of the United States 13 months before an election. But defense is something the president says the gop is not doing well enough. As he makes an explosive comparison this morning between impeachment and lynching. Its far beneath the office of the president of the United States. Our team of reporters and analysts are here with brand new reporting and insight. I want to start with m mss Garrett Haake on capitol hill. Hans nichols is at the white house. Robert costa from the National Post and National Political reporter is also joining us. Garrett, let me start with you. Bill taylor is now in the building and behind closed doors. We have not seen an Opening Statement from him yet, am i correct . Reporter yeah, hallie, thats correct. And this is someone that democrats in particular have wanted to talk to really since this inquiry got started. Bill taylor was a retired diplomat, brought in off the bench, if you will, to replace the ambassador to ukraine who was pushed aside by
Momentous phase yet in the impeachment inquiry. Four officials will testify today. Thats the warmup. Five more are set to appear later this week. Democrats accusing the president bribery. The republicans are hoping to show that trump was exercising his sweeping authority. A week of packed testimony will test trump, who has been blasting witnesses publicly since last week. Phil mattingly has more from capitol hill. I hope youre wellrested. Wellfed, maybe have snacks ready. Week two is going to be a slog. It will be a lot. It will be nine witnesses over the course of three days, starting with four over the course of two separate hearings. The first hearing, is two white house officials. One that works in the marble security office, and the other is alex crane. Both of them testified in their closeddoor depositions, they had concerns about trumps july 25th call with se len ske szele. Particularly the kind of outside shadow that was run by rudy giuliani. These are two witnesses. Curt volke
Yesterday when senate colonel Alexander Vindman talked about the transcript soft july 25th call between President Trump and president zelensky, the call at the center of the whistleblowers complaint, the call that the president has not annual called perfect over and over again, the president assured was precisely exactly and completely transcribed and released to the public. This is an exact wordforword transcript of the conversation. Right . Taken by very talented strenographers, people that took it down exactly. There was an compact transcription of the conversations. But colonel vindman revealed to investigators not only was the transcript not exact. He references were missing, references to the bidens and the name of the company President Trump wanted investigated if you crane burisma and colonel vindman says his efforts to correct the transcript after the fact were blocked. Adding to the fallout from this democratic senator chuck seumer is now asking the secretary of the army for