ukraine including the president s july 25th phone call with the president of ukraine. two current state department officials, christopher anderson, and catherine croft, testified in under oath depositions to the impeachment inquiry today. christopher anderson served as the ukraine expert advising former special envoy to ukraine kirk volker. christopher anderson was followed in that job by catherine croft. mr. anderson told house impeachment investigators that rudy giuliani prevented the trump administration from strengthsing cooperation with ukraine. christopher anderson described a meeting he had with john bolton on the topic of having senior white house officials engage more with ukraine. john bolton identified an obstacle to better engagement with ukraine. he cautioned that mr. giuliani was a key voice with the president on ukraine which could be an obstacle to increased white house engagement. according to athren croft s opening statement she first
did like overall trump s hard line policy on isolationism. but he himself referred to this as a drug deal. i think as a factual matter, as a legal matter, the case is really overwhelming at this point. i think any in-line prosecutor could get an indictment on a bribery charge. the question is, when they take this to the public process, can they persuade that middle third? that s always the question with impeachment. julian, ross, sam, thank you so much to all of you for the discussion. fox news anchor and some republicans are questioning the patriotism of the army lieutenant colonel testifying in the impeachment inquiry today. one calling the purple heart recipient s appointment to the national security council by the trump white house a double agent. plus, since facebook will allow false political ads, one man says he will run for office for the sole purpose of spreading lies to prove the facebook policy is wrong. he s going to join me live.
from using feedback to innovate. to introducing products faster. to managing website inventory. and network bandwidth. giving you a nice big edge over your competition. that s the power of edge-to-edge intelligence. acting chief of staff mick mulvaney contradicted president trump suggesting there was a quid pro quo. that the release of aid was held up to push ukraine to make an investigation into democrats. and that s not the only momentum in the impeachment inquiry today. gordon sondland started his testimony in front of house investigators leading the impeachment inquiry saying this. i m not here to push an agenda.
welcome to the lead. i m jake tapper. we start with the politics lead and the strategy of the white house and allies of spinning, dismissing and outright lying to the american people on full display today as the impeachment investigation expands. democrats slap brand-new subpoenas on the trump administration. today the three house committees leading the charge on impeachment, intelligence, oversight and foreign affairs subpoenaed both the president s defense secretary and his budget chief, not only demanding documents about his interactions with ukraine and his with holding of hundreds of million dollars in military aid for ukraine and also information on the rudy giuliani and the ways in which giuliani pressured ukrainian officials to investigate joe and hunter biden on behalf of president trump. kaitlan collins kicks off our coverage from the white house. reporter: as house democrats ramped up peach tod the impeachment inquiry today, president trump tried to turn the fire storm
there s so much to take advantage of. can t wait till i m 65. a few more chairs, please. unitedhealthcare medicare advantage plans, including the only plans with the aarp name. free dental care and eye exams, and free designer eyewear. go ahead, take advantage. a lot of moving parts in the impeachment inquiry today. we ll let you know the full testimony, at least the statement of kurt volker, the special envoy to ukraine. we re going through it to pick out the highlights. we ll bring it to you as soon as we can, volker testifying yesterday for the impeachment inquiry. some new reaction today from the republicans, from senator mitt romney. he said, the president s phone calls where he asked ukraine and china, the presidents of those countries, for help. wrong and appalling. when the only american citizen