my hands are everything to me. but i was diagnosed with dupuytren s contracture. and it got to the point where things i took for granted got tougher to do. thought surgery was my only option. turns out i was wrong. so when a hand specialist told me about nonsurgical treatments, it was a total game changer. like you, my hands have a lot more to do. learn more at factsonhand.com today. top u.s. diplomat in ukraine bill tarp testimony today could be one of the most important moments in the impeachment inquiry. testified he was hold trump would with hold aid until he investigated the bideens. with me now. james clapper. taylor testified he went to the
that is a criticism of the proceedings. but it s still very important things going on. i am looking to the testimony of bill taylor who you mentioned the acting ukrainian ambassador because he is at the center of those very explosive text messages that we saw where he said it was crazy to with hold aid to the ukraine for political purpose. he clearly is at the center of this discussion that he was having with gordon sondland at the time. gordon sondland was talking to the president. there are going to be some filling in of a lot of questions by ambassador taylor during these depositions. joyce is right, all of this is important. it seems as if the house is leaving no stone unturned in this investigation. and with impeachment hearings scheduled to potentially happen before the end of the year, this seems to be moving fairly quickly. which we will get to just
i m going to see you back here at 3:00 p.m. eastern. i ll be back here tomorrow at 9:00 a.m. right now, katy tur back in ncc. good afternoon. i m katy tur. the it s 11:00 a.m. out west and 2:00 p.m. in washington where new nbc news reporting connects the president himself with back door efforts to get ukraine to investigate his political rivals and then coffver it up. it is day 15 of the impeachment inquiry and here s what we know. nbc reports that ambassador gordon sondland spoke to the president in that mysterious five hour window between these two text messages. after diplomat bill taylor said it was crazy the with hold aid for help with a political campaign and before sondland responded, no quid pro quos. nbc news also reports there are more texts we have yet to see. sondland was supposed to appear today on the hill, but early this morning, the state department said no. on twitter, the president
he wanted to figure this out. pelosi said tell your people to follow the law, three sources tell nbc news. you know, what i think is interesting is that the president thought that ron did nothing wrong. he s talking about pardoning him because all he did was sell the former president s senate seat for a political game he was playing. here s the president tonight down-playing his unfreezing military aid to ukraine to get what he wanted. it seems to be pretty parallel. and remember this happened a day after mueller testified and said i m exonerated, no culugds and then he gets on the phone and officially is inviting foreign interference in the election. it s not clear the president understands why this is a problem, and that seems to be his posture here that i with hold aid for all kinds of reasons we ve withheld aid and it seems he s not making that connection and i think some of his aids worry about this that what we re doing here is
potentially a corruption of the office and abuse of authority as president. just because you can with hold aid in some circumstances doesn t mean you can do it when you re trying to investigate your political rival. one thing that frustrates me about this congress it s been getting into the weeds. and you ought to be able to see like pornography, if you can see it, you can see it. if you don t see it as corruption, this misuse of power by a president, if you don t have more hearings on it, make more document demands but all it time i m hoping we re hearing they re going to move quickly on this, act quickly based on the information this week and but my worry is they ll hire a bunch of lawyers again, hire a bunch of staff, do a lot more whatever, whatever and put it off. and by the time this thing cools down, nothing happens, not even a vote up or down moch your