i am anxious to get your thoughts, carrie, on what you re bracing for right now. and as you re saying that, we anticipate that ambassador sondland will be arriving up on capitol hill momentarily. we ll have cameras all over the place. we ll have live coverage. what i m looking for is, does ambassador sondland tell the whole story? we re talking about this phone call and i think the call you re referring to is the one with david holmes who was a state department aide. holmes testified under oath to the committee last week and so the committee already knows holmes end of that conversation. and so sondland really is in a position where he must be truthful because there s other testimony that hasn t become public yet that the committees are aware of and so he is, i think, in terms of his appearance before congress, incentivized to tell the truth. but he also needs to tell the truth because the information that he has is central. as jeffrey said, of all the people who were closest to the
counselor for political affairs at the u.s. embassy. a really jaw-dropping revelation. when that came to fruition. this was a conversation sondland had in an open setting in a restaurant in ukraine. he did not talk about this at all during his closed door testimony. it only came to light when david holmes, this u.s. official, a foreign service officer at the u.s. embassy in ukraine came forth with this information. i want to read to you how david holmes described that situation in his closed door testimony. he said, quote, i heard president trump ask. so he s going to do the investigation. ambassador sondland replied, he s going to do it adding that president zelensky will, quote, do anything you ask him to. i asked ambassador sondland if it was true that the president did not give an expletive about ukraine. ambassador sondland agreed that the president did not give a about ukraine. i asked why not and ambassador sondland stated that the president only cares about big
exposure. its congress now but there could be a referral to the department of justice by congress on any of these matters and any of these subjects and the individuals that come before them. and that s a very heavy burden to bear on a morning like today. wolf is 100% right. let s get a feel for what s going to be going on in that room. we have democratic congressman denny heck, a member of the house intel committee, of course. he ll be questioning sondland just a short time from now. congressman, thank you. don t worry about the ifb because it s just you and me anyway. a phone hung up in my ear. it happens to me all the time. we were having an interesting conversation. we get caught up in the politics and the substance so easily here, and it matters, of course. but the human beings in the room and what the feel is in there, and we were i was sharing my recollection about the clinton impeachment, how different this is, not just procedurally but personally. what is your personal fe
giuliani at the direction of president trump and gordon sondland makes very clear it absolutely was. and they were trying to fulfill the president s demands in pushing forward on these investigations. so we ll see how what else he has to say about his specific interactions with president trump because in this opening statement, wolf, he does not really detail all those conversations he had with president trump. he does talk about the july 26th conversation that he had with the president. we learned about last week in which the president urged this ukraine investigation to go forward. he said he doesn t remember all the details but wouldn t be surprised given the push between trump and giuliani to move forward on this investigation. the president would have brought it up, too, at that time. manu, i know you re going through this document. we re going through it as well. stand by. we ll get back to you. gloria, you ve been going through this very closely. at one point he says in his
up with vice president mike pence at a september meeting in warsaw between vice president mike pence and president zelensky of ukraine. he describes his interactions with mike pence this way. i mentioned to vice president mike pence before the meetings with ukrainians that i had concerns that the delay in aid had become tied to the issue of investigations. i recall mentioning that before the zelensky meeting. he goes on to say, based on my communications with secretary pompeo, i felt comfortable sharing my concerns with mr. yermak. mr. yermak being the senior official for the ukrainian government. in a brief conversation that happened within a few seconds i told mr. yermak the resumption of u.s. aid would not likely occur until ukraine took action on the public statement we ve been discussing for many weeks. there you have it. two key issues. the aid and the meeting. was it tied to this public declaration of investigations that have been demanded by rudy