he said he told a co-worker who was asking about the situation this, quote, if you re asking me, have we ever gone to the ukrainians and asked them to investigate or prosecute individuals for political reasons? the answer is, i hope we haven t and we shouldn t because that goes against everything that we are trying to promote in post-soviet states for the last 28 years, which is promotion of the rule of law. end quote. back with me now, nbc s garrett haake who has been digging through the latest transcript. garrett, what stands out to you here? ali, i think there are four main things that kent is going to do for democrats as they pursue this impeachment case here. first, he further outlines the role of rudy giuliani in ukraine. he says he was almost unmissable in ukraine in the spring. he was running around giving interviews. he was with his two now indicted associates calling for additional investigations. bad-mouthing ambassador yovanovitch. all of which was the first thing that ra
which is just blown up on them. and they frankly don t know how to handle it. the story changes every day. there s a reference to this in the transcript i want to read to you a series of questions and answers. question heer is a member of congress or a lawyer. we don t have the name. the answer comes from the testimony of george p. kent. on may 14th, rudy giuliani told ukrainian journalists that the ambassador was recalled because she was part of the efforts against the president. were you aware of mr. giuliani s statements at the time? the answer is i do not know that. i saw the statement at the time. but i did see an interview that he gave with the ukrainian publication censor.net that expressed a variant of that opinion. question, what was your reaction to mr. giuliani s statement? to which mr. giuliani mr. kent says mr. giuliani at that point had been carrying on a campaign for several months full of lies and incorrect information about ambassador yovanovitch. so this was a c
government, that would be very unlike some of her states in defense. mark is a former senior intelligence officer with the cia. served more than 26 years with the federal government. up next, democratic presidential candidate tom steyer reportedly offered campaign contributions to a local politician in iowa in exchange for their endorsement. and we ll continue to pore through the transcript of george kent. you re watching msnbc. f george kent you re watching msnbc. with rheumatoid arthritis. because there are options. like an unjection™ . xeljanz xr, a once-daily pill for adults with moderate to severe ra for whom methotrexate did not work well enough. xeljanz xr can reduce pain, swelling and further joint damage, even without methotrexate. xeljanz can lower your ability to fight infections like tb; don t start xeljanz if you have an infection. taking a higher than recommended dose of xeljanz for ra can increase risk of death. serious, sometimes fatal infections, cancers including
as opposed to doing something like supporting judges or courts or processes, he basically makes the argument that when the u.s. tries to fight corruption in other countries, we do it by supporting their court systems. by discouraging political investigations. we don t find specific incidents that we want to have investigated and push for those investigations. and that s exactly what happens in this case. we got teamwork here. i just got my paper copy in my hand here. so i m going to continue to go through it. but what kent does here and what i think is important in the big picture is when he appears in public next wednesday with bill taylor, he ll provide the washington counterbalance to everything taylor can describe that was happening on the ground in ukraine. their two accounts buttress each other and as i m reading this, i also see the first mention of alexander vindman as someone who had raised alarms here. those alarms had apparently gotten to kent as well. i m going to do a litt
he said there s no wrongdoing on that phone call. there is nothing of concern to him which is one of the primary reasons he released the transcript. and yet having the white house regarding that phone call swhal undermines that entire narrative. and i do think this is something that a lot of house democrats are going to seize on as well in the coming days and point to, to say, look, it s not just us on capitol hill who think this is problematic. it s white house officials who are now looking into it themselves. let s talk, gabby, about the senior official in charge of u.s. policy george kent. what kind of light is this shedding on the potential inner workings with the situation with ukraine? well, the interesting thing here is george kent s testimony was consistent with a lot of the other hearings we ve seen so far. the testimony that democratic lawmakers have talked about publicly. and that is that he, along with other career officials at the state department essentially