welcome back. this is cnn s special coverage of the public impeachment hearings into president trump. and there s a new revelation that s drawing the president to the closer of the center of the alleged ukraine scheme. i thought he was the center. william taylor testified that one day after ukraine s call with the president, taylor s aide overheard a phone call between president trump and jordan sondland. during that call, the president asked about the investigations into the bidens in the 2016 election. that aide, david holmes, will testify behind closed doors tomorrow. we heard the president give a denial that he didn t know anything about that call. i m sure he will be pressed on
you had two parallel streams. one controls all of the money, that s the head of omb. he said we ve cutting off aid. and then there s the other guy saying, you know what you ve got to do to get the money. you have to go to a nearest microphone and say i m investigating joe biden. that seems to be such a deviation from the traditional process that was put in place. we re defining deviance downward. it exists for 70 years, and for a reason. the nsa where you worked was to coordinate all u.s. aspects of our foreign policy, correct? correct. you re discovering there s a hijacking going on. last month president trump referred to ambassador sondland as a really goodman and great american. since he changed his testimony and is now implicating trump in a quid pro quo or a bribery, the president isn t so sure about sondland. watch him now. jordan sondland said the beginning of december he presumed there was a quid pro quo.
they re launching a desperate bid to save the president by sacrificing three of trump s top deputies. that s according to the washington post which reports today republicans are sewing doubts about whether sondland, gully on any and mulvaney were actually representing the president or freelancing. they were rogue. the gop is effectively offering up the three to be fall guys. javid, is this credible? the chief of staff was head of omb, the president s special envoy, our ambassador to the european union and the president s lawyer who s doing all kinds of work over there for him. the dirty work. the wet work. doing all of that work over there and it isn t coming from him. it seems implausible and one thing this ukraine investigation seemed to show is how much of a deviation has occurred from the traditional national security council and decision-making process to what may have happened with rudy giuliani and
mick mulvaney and ambassador sondland. you had two parallel streams. one controls all of the money, that s the head of omb. we re cutting off aid. the other guy saying, you know what you ve got to do to get the money. you have to go to a nearest microphone and said, i m investigating joe biden. that seems to be such a deviation. we re defining this downward. it exists for 70 years, and for a reason. the nsa where you worked was to coordinate all u.s. aspects of our foreign policy, correct? correct. you re discovering there s a hijacking going on. last month president trump referred to ambassador sondland as a really goodman and great american. since he changed his testimony and is now implicating trump in a quid pro quo or a bribery, the president isn t so sure about sondland. watch him now.
jordan sondland said the beginning of december he presumed there was a quid pro quo. then there was a telephone call on september the 9th. had he ever talked to you prior to that telephone call? let me just tell you, i hardly know the gentleman. he has done that before. i heard that before. i don t know the guy. anyway, of course, this is the first time the president has used the i hardly knew him defense to minimize his ties to people who may pose a threat to him. james comey, i hardly know the man. i m not going to say, i want you to know. i never mitt him. i don t know putin. i don t know matt whitaker. he worked for jeff sessions. manafort has nothing to do with our campaign. that s why they have a ricoh charge. who loves to pull this, set it up like this? they have everybody doing what they want them to do but they can deny all the relationships. one thing we ve also seen through trump s presidency is that when he tries to use this