of our security interests, and an oval office meeting to show the world that the united states continues to stand with ukraine against russian aggression. president trump should have been focused on the interest of the american people on that call. instead, he prioritized his private political interests. president trump asked president zelensky for a favor. he wanted ukraine to announce two bogus investigations, one into former vice president biden, then his leading opponent in the 2020 election, and another to advance conspiracy theory that ukraine, not russia, attacked our elections in 2016. neither request was premised on any legitimate national security or foreign policy interests. one was intended to help president trump conceal the truth about the 2016 election. the other was intended to help him gain an advantage in the 2020 election. after the call, president trump
appropriated by congress because of our security interests, and an oval office meeting to show the world that the united states continues to stand with ukraine against russian aggression. president trump should have been focused on the interests of the american people on that call. instead, he prioritized his private political interests. president trump asked president zelensky for a favor. he wanted ukraine to announce two bogus investigations, one into former vice president biden, then his leading opponent in the 2020 election, and another to advance a conspiracy theory that ukraine, not russia, attacked our elections in 2016. neither request was premised on any legitimate national security or foreign policy interests. one was intended to help president trump conceal the truth about the 2016 election. the other was intended to help him gain an advantage in the
at the department of state, for talking to someone at the intelligence community, that is essentially smearing and maligning him for doing what he s e supposed to do and actually vindman i thought was quite explicit on that front. he said to representative jordan, i was doing my job. they also underlined another point that i don t think is exculpatory for the president. certainly not in the way they intended. we heard republicans underlune the fact that vindman has never met president trump and that is striking because this is the key person who s supposed to coordinate ukraine policy for the administration. y you krien policy is something that president trump has shown great interest in. i think that just underscores the fact that president trump is not in this for national security. he s not in this out of foreign policy interests. he s in this for his own interests and finally, if i could just say this is a dark moment for our country.
mysteriously and dangerously and even permanently were injured in attacks from unknown sources several years ago. and we are ambassador chris stevens, sean patrick smith, ty woods and glen dority. people rightly called heroes for their ultimate sacrifice to this nation s foreign policy interests in libya eight years ago. we honor these individuals. they represent each one of you here and every american. these courageous individuals were attacked because they symbolized america. what you need to know, what americans need to know, is that while thankfully most of us answer the call to duty in far less dramatic ways, every foreign service officer runs the same risks and very often so do our families. they serve, too, as individuals, as a community, we answer the call to duty to
hold it for no apparent reason i could see was undercutting the u.s. policy. that s a critical point. this aid was being withheld contrary to our best foreign policy interests. now, taylor, one of the great things about taylor as a witness is he has backed up. he has the receipts. he testified over and over that he took detailed handwritten notes as this was all happening. that s so important in assessing a witness. also remember, taylor sent these texts at the time this was all going down. he texted. are we now saying that security assistance are conditioned on investigations. conditioned. we talk about quid pro quo. conditioned is a keyword there. he also texted a week about that. as i said on the phone, i think it s crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign. so he is very strongly backed up. yesterday this was the most important piece of testimony we saw from taylor. that was my clear understanding. security assistance money would not come until the pr