the president. we talked about this before. they are trying everything back to the president. tying everything back to the president. right. trying to make the case also to follow-up, that this just isn t the phone call. and that part that you read of this executive summary talked about a dramatic crescendo that was a month-long campaign. driven by president trump. in which his own senior officials partoned. so to those people who would say, well, trump is just being trump, and this is who he is and it was that phone call, which he calls perfect. they re saying, stop. they re saying essentially it s a conspiracy. exactly. driven by the president. that s right. somewhat widespread. certainly many people who were involved in it. who knew. and who participated in this, including not only the people who work for him but his personal attorney rudy giuliani. uh-huh. a line in a struck me here, very first page.
reporter: yes. a focus where democrats say this goes beyond that july 25th phone call. that phone call, of course, president trump talked with president zelensky. president zelensky urged to open up a political investigation into his opponents. the president said all about a perfect call. democrats say it wasn t a perfect call and much broader beyond one phone call and specifically say, they say the telephone call was neither the start nor the end of the president trying to bend for his own gain a month-long effort in which senior officials including the vice president, secretary of state, the acting chief of staff, the secretary of state of energy and others were either knowledgeable of or acti participating in an active to
abstract personal benefits sought by a president. what this likely refers to is the testimony from gordon sondland, the ambassador to the european union who said everybody was in the loop as part of the push to get ukraine s president to have a meeting with president trump in exchange for investigations into the president s political rivals. that s something that gordon sondland testified was a quik quik. -o -o a quid pro quo and security investigations tied to those as well. the vice president after a meeting a meeting between vice president pence in warsaw gordon sondland had a meeting pulled him aside saying the security assistance was likely tied to investigations. pence denied they had any knowledge of a quid pro quo and
two broad categories. presidential misconduct and obstruction of congress. the general nature how democrats looked at the investigation as it happened so far and you can expect that s how the articles of impeachment will ultimately be addressed. one dealing with democrats view of abuse of his office and the way the president dealt with ukraine saying in this report that the july 25th phone call between president trump and president zelensky with trump urged zelensky to open up investigation into the bidens saying that s not only thing. they re laying out a broad timeline of efforts, a long scheme, in their words, of the president using the power of his office to pressure ukraine to move forward on these investigations, withholding security assistance, withholding a vital meeting which the ukrainian officials sought. all part of the misconduct aspect of the democratic report here. probably we ll see when articles of impeachment are ultimately drafted, they ll lay out abuse of power, pr
the republican committees and i opened with this talking about lindsey graham and others cleansing the office are and all that that matters somehow those same republicans don t see it that way now. for me, there is no advice i could give any of them other than find your soul and understand exactly what gloria said, what i ve been saying that this is bigger than you. this is bigger than this moment. this is about who we re going to be. does congress have a role? if congress doesn t have a coequal role in oversight investigation, we have a problem. we don t have the a republic anymore. we have something else moving closer to an athor terrorism type-oterrorism authoritarianism type of rule. get in a quick break. major breaking news here on cnn today. this report out from the house intelligence committee in conjunction with the house foreign affairs and oversight committees detailing the case for impeachment against prrt. president trump.