inappropriate and unethical, but almost certainly illegal, as well. as you know, mulvaney disputed that the president asked ukraine to investigate the bidens at his news conference in the white house earlier in the day. what do you make of that distinction he offered? well, i just don t understand that, because, again, the white house reid the so-called transcript, in which the president very clearly asks for that. so, again, we sort of need to, you know, touch the walls around us to make sure that we re in a real world here. but it s all part, of course, wolf, of a much larger effort. i think led by rudy giuliani. you know, a fairly unhinged associate of the president who working with people like parnas and fruman, who have now both been arrested, was not doing a shadow foreign policy. people keep talking about a shadow foreign policy. that was nobody s foreign policy. rudy giuliani was leading an effort and you saw the opening statement by the ambassador today, about how everybod
still testifying behind closed doors up here on capitol hill. sondland told the committees today that he was directed by trump to work with his personal lawyer, rudy giuliani, when it comes to ukraine, comes to potentially setting up this white house meeting. and in his opening statement, he said, quote, mr. giuliani emphasized that the president wanted a public statement from president zelensky, committing ukraine to look into anti-corruption issues. mr. giuliani specifically mentioned the 2016 election, including the dnc server, and bree burisma as two anti-corruption investigatory topics of importance to the president. so sondland here very clearly trying to distance himself from what rudy giuliani and president trump was doing. and he said during that testimony, it wasn t until much, much later that he knew that giuliani, part of his agenda was to put pressure on the ukrainian president to investigate joe biden s son. and sondland said he did not know until very recently that
democrats server, the 2016 election, he said, i have news for everybody. get over it. he s saying get over it. and here s the thing, i like dana s theory of the of the half-rudy. that could be it or it could be the rudy special, which would be a different theory, which is, send everybody from the administration, the white house, the lawyers, the state department out, telling different stories. the president himself, telling different theories of the case, to see which one catches on with the public or catches on with fox news. and then they ll run with it. what i think mick mulvaney was out there trying to do today was get this out there of, quid pro quo, no big deal. but the thing is this. they want people to think, unless there s a guy in a trench coat on third street and elm street in downtown kiev ukraine, that it s not a quid pro quo. but that s not what it is. if you say, what was the line, jeffrey? we asked them that s why we held back the money. if you say that s wh
anyway. but let s just put that aside. separating that from what you just said, the very, very large flaw in that strategy is what you just read. the president himself said it in a transcript released by the white house, talked about biden. so, there s no way around that. and remember, at that time, when he is asking for this favor, he uses the word favor in a different part of the conversation. they re holding up this money that ukraine desperately needs. so when the president of the united states says, it would be great if you looked into biden, at the same time, he s holding back hundreds of millions of dollars nah you need for protection from vladimir putin, that is not just like a random request. that is a quid pro quo. i mean, i m sorry, there s no other way to describe it. and it s also money that congress voted to appropriate to ukraine. it s not from the president s personal slush fund. there were no provisions in the
worse. the idea that vital military assistance would be withheld for such a patently political reason, for the reason of serving the president s re-election campaign is a phenomenal breach of the president s duty to defend our national security. reporter: now, there has been, so far, very, very little republican reaction up here on capitol hill, but for the few who have spoken out, it has been significant, most notably, alaska senator, republican senator, lisa murkowski, who today told cnn that, yes, absolutely, this is a concern. she says, you don t hold up foreign aid, that we had previously appropriated for a political initiative, period. wolf? at the same time, sunlen, another key witness testified up on capitol hill about the ukraine scandal. and i suspect it s still going on. that s right. gordon sondland, who was the former trump megadonor turned u.s. ambassador to the eu, he is