Number of significant procedural protections where the president even on the house side, as you know the role of the house is to act as the grand jury and the prosecutor and the actual trial takes place over in the senate, but still, we had significant procedural protections we invited the president and his counsel to attend, we provided the president s counsel the opportunity to cross examine witnesses and object to the admissibility of testimony, and we provided the president s counsel it make presentation of evidence before the full Judiciary Committee including the chance to call witnesses. The president chose not to avail himself of any of those opportunities. It reminds me the president Blockading Witnesses saying you dont have enough people with direct firsthand evidence. First of all, were those rights provided only in Judiciary Committee. Youre not the Principle Committee of impeachment. Youre sort of the final stop. Did the president get those
rights in the Intelligence Commi
the white house meeting and so on. for weeks the ukrainians pushed back on the demand of the president and agents and advised u.s. officials they did not want to be an instrument in washington domestic re-election politics. recall the testimony of dr. fiona hill who said that this was a domestic political errand that the president s team was on in order to extract this commitment from president zelensky to come and give this interview. they had publicly announced, going to publicly announce investigations in an interview that president zelensky had schedule on cnn, but then ukraine canceled the entire after the president s scheme was exposed and military aid released. when the scheme blew up president zelensky felt that he could be free from this obligation to say he was investigating with all due respect the president was telling united
go to inauguration. he spoke to ambassador sondland and ambassador sondland testified it was a quid pro quo. the president hired his personal lawyer, rudy giuliani, to lead this effort. he smeared ambassador yovanovitch and then fired her because she stood in the way. she was an anti-corruption champion, and she stood in the way of the president s scheme. and the president and those acting on his behalf demanded that zelensky president zelensky publicly announce an investigation of his chief political rival. and it should be remembered the american people should know that president zelensky the evidence is filled with examples of trump administration officials who say things like president zelensky is sensitive about ukraine being taken seriously not merely as an instrument in washington, domestic re-election politics. that ambassador taylor has a call with mrtd sondland saying during our call sondland tried
thank you, sir. mr. goldman, i d like to bring us back to the next president, not to this president, not the next president. and stay focused on the july 25 call. the president s abuse of office for his benefit and no one else s. my colleague confirmed the president s request for these investigations was not an objective of u.s. foreign policy, correct 1234. that s right. is there any evidence the national security council wanted an investigation into berisma no. any evidence about the state department wanting them? no no. how about the dod? no evidence of that. did any witness tell you that they wanted ukraine to investigate the bidens of the 2016 election? no. and we certainly know that the ukrainians did not want it either, they made it clear they did not want to be an instrument in washington domestic re-election politics. the only person who was a beneficiary from that
russia. so of course they have to be careful what they say. but contemporaneous documents fromem ukrainian officials themselves show the pressure theyw felt and show they knew what president trump was doing. this was one from bill taylor to ambassador gordon sondland and ambassador kurt volker. one thing kurt and i talked about yesterday was the senior aide of president zelensky, the point that president zelensky is sensitive about ukraine being taken seriously, not merely an instrument in washington domestic re-election politics. they not only felt the pressure, they got the message. they were ultimately not going to get military aid unless they furthered president trump s re-election efforts. that is a corruptle abuse of power. another argument that s made is that trump never said quid pro