that didn t exist and that there was, again, no wrongdoing by anybody but that such a thing didn t exist. if you put everything aside, there is a valid question as to what rudy giuliani is doing in the middle of all of this. that s exactly right. i think that what rudy giuliani appears to be doing is basically serving as the president s point man for all of his personal agenda items. basically, as ambassador sondland said, it was explicitly told to the three amigos and everybody in the oval office on may 23rd, after everybody returned from the zelensky inaugural to report back to donald trump on ukraine that they need to talk to rudy about next steps in ukraine foreign policy. donald trump would not go into details about why or what rudy exactly wanted, but it was clear to sondland that president trump wanted them to report to rudy and rudy was going to report to
responsible judgment about whether we think that s compatible with the office of the presidency. chairman, do the phone records cast doubt on anything you ve heard from the witnesses or anything the president has said publicly? no, they don t. at least that i can identify at this moment. i think the phone records are remarkably consistent with the coordination of a lot of this scheme. now, we obviously don t have complete phone records and some of the phone records are deeply suggestive of who the parties were talking to, particularly in the white house or the office of management or budget but because of the president s efforts to stonewall the investigation, including not turn over their own records not only to us but sondland who asked for them, we don t have all the answers. but we do know this without any doubt, and that is the president of the united states solicited foreign interference in our
trump as to what rudy needs to convey to everyone else. that s why this quid pro quo as ambassador sondland said was so clear to everybody and he said everyone was in on it. everyone was in on it. congressman from illinois, a member of the intelligence committee, congressman, good to see you. thank you, ali. joining me from the room where chairman schiff just spoke is our own jeff bennett. what did you get out of that? a lot of information has been flowing through that our viewers don t have. i was particularly struck by chairman schiff s answer, he said that the work of the intelligence community continues as it relates to this ukraine question but he said one of the things that he s keying in on is whether or not the ukrainian pressure campaign started earlier than is previously known. that is to say whether or not president trump sought to pressure ukrainian president
and let s listen to that first. we need congress to do their job. the truth is congress should have finished their work on defense appropriations months ago, but you all know that partisan politics and endless investigations have slowed things down a bit. while pence was making that criticism, you had ambassador gordan sondland who was testifying that he was expressing concerns to pence about aid to ukraine and he was being tied to this overarching investigation, this impeachment process in a way that we hadn t heard pence s name before. do you think it s going to have a lasting impact? the vice president declined to make public comments about gordan sondland s testimony and the rest of the testimony that we heard on capitol hill this week, but he did, as you showed, mention the, quote, endless investigations as he called it in that speech to the troops which was a little bit surprising that he brought the