President for a long time now. In fact, when they took over the house, one of their members filed articles of impeachment that very day and really since Inauguration Day many wanted to impeach him. This is really all about in my view, its all about politics. Its all about hurting the president , hurting his reputation. They dislike him intensely. As i mentioned the other day they really loathe this president , and theyre trying to hurt his chances in the next election. It may well do just the opposite. One of my real concerns, and af lot of them about this whole thing. I mentioned this earlier today, im very concerned about is that The Democrats are really lowering the bar for impeaching a president in the future. Its becoming too routine. Its becoming the new normal. For 200 years in our nation wed had one impeachment, one in 200 years, Andrew Johnson and now in less than 50 years were in our third one this time around. And i really am concerned that from now on in all likelihood when
we know about mr. sondland s e-mails pompeo and brechbuhl and perry, but we haven t seen them. they re sitting at the state department. dod and omb also have records, records about president trump s hold on military aid to ukraine, about the justification for the hold, about hiding the hold from congress and trying to justify the hold after the fact, and about why the hold was lifted but we haven t seen them. they re at dod and omb. why haven t we seen them? because the president directed all of his agencies not to produce them. this trial should not reward the president s really unprecedented obstruction by allowing him to control what evidence you see and what will remain hidden. you should ask for these documents on behalf of the american people, and you should ask for these documents to get
equals four, the president says they are just guessing. that is simply not true. the evidence is direct. the evidence is compelling and confirmed by many witnesses corroborated by text messages, e-mails, and phone records. but if you want more evidence, if you want another firsthand account for why the aid was withheld for the undisputed quid pro quo for that white house meeting, let s just hear from mick mulvaney over and over again, ambassador sondland described to multiple witnesses how mr. mulvaney was directly involved in the president s scheme. here s some of that testimony. and so when i came in, gordon sondland was basically saying, well, look, we have a deal here that there will be a meeting.
investigation into the democrats was part of the reason that he ordered to withhold funding to ukraine? the look back to what happened in 2016 certainly was part of the thing that he was worried about in corruption with that nation, and that is absolutely appropriate. but to be clear, what you just described is a quid pro quo. it is funding will not flow unless the investigation into the democratic server happened as well? we do we do that all the time with foreign policy. we were holding up money at the same time for, what was it, the northern triangle countries. we were holding up aid to the northern triangle countries so that they would change their policies on immigration. by the way, and this speaks to an important i m sorry? this speaks to an important point because i heard this yesterday and i can never remember the gentleman, mckin y mckinney, is that his name? he testified yesterday, if you go and you believe the news reports because we ve not seen any transcripts of
investigations. according to dr. hill, when ambassador bolton learned this, he told her to go back to the nsc s legal adviser, john eisenberg and tell him, quote, i am not a part of whatever drug deal sondland and mulvaney are cooking up on this, end quote. we already have corroboration of dr. hill s testimony from other witnesses like lieutenant colonel vindman, and we have new corroboration from ukraine, too. alexander dan a oleksandr danylyuk confirmed in an interview that the road map for u.s., ukraine relations should have been the subjects but the investigations were raised, end quote. danylyuk also explained why this was so problematic. he raised concerns that being, quote, dragged into this internal process would be really bad for the country, and also, if there s something that violates u.s. law, that s up to the u.s. to handle, end quote. danylyuk elaborated that there were serious things to discuss at the meeting, but if instead