ambassador taylor telling congress that multiple senior administration officials informed him that the president personally blocked military aid to ukraine and refused to meet with that country s new president unless ukraine agreed to investigate joe biden and the 2016 u.s. election. that is big. we will lay it all out for you this morning. meantime, cnn has learned that members of the president s inner circle are urging him to accept the fact that they believe impeachment is coming and that it s now time they say to focus on attacking democrats and on the whole impeachment process itself. all of this is two more top u.s. officials are expected to testify this morning on capitol hill. so let s begin there. let s go to manu raju who joins us on the hill. let s talk about bill taylor s testimony. your reporting this morning is that there were audible sighs and gasps as taylor read that opening statement. yeah, and in one specific passage in particular, one in which the for the firs
testimony that democrats believe will fuel the impeachment push. it s notable those two people we ll hear from today, michael duffy and laura cooper are going against what the directive was and they re voluntarily apparently showing up to testify. thanks, manu. the ukraine story is moving quickly. what is clear is that in little more than a month, sworn testimony is now corroborated the core of that whistle-blower s complaint. let s take a moment to take stock. august 12th, a whistle-blower filed a complaint with the intelligence community arguing that president trump abused his power by demanding that ukraine investigate his political rival while withholding military aid. and that the president s personal lawyer was in effect taking over u.s. policy towards ukraine. after that complaint was released, text messages came out revealing conversations between top ukraine diplomat bill taylor and eu ambassador gordon
phone call tomorrow morning not enough for house democrats will get a chance to question the acting director of nash intelligence who stopped the complaint dpr being forwarded to congress. and the whistleblower. nor is it enough for the senate who which took rare bipartisan action on the whistleblower complaint as we mentioned at the top that is not even half of it. let s engine with jayme acosta with the breaking news. what are learning about the possible release of the whistleblower complaint itself? terse, we understand white house white house officials are being looing at this could come sout as soon as tomorrow. my enclosings report that the president weighed in on decide pd on his own he wanted to see the complaint released. we re not sure what form it comes in. whether we will see all of it. bup it s a curious change of events. the white house essentially blinked in all of this. if we see all of it. we re not sure if we will see all of it. but recall last week when the superio
in rationale. dancing around this issue this we can. the question is whether or not this is one of the episodes, anderson we have seen this movie before with, whether the eebts eengts and facts and the what the president said will catch up with him. thanks, very much, jim. we have heard very much from the whistleblower attorney a brief statement which reads we applaud the decision to release the whistleblower complaint as it establish that is ultimate lip the lawful whistleblower process can work. we await the release of the complaint in totality. with that let s go to manu raju at the kpal. manu, do we know how the release of this going to affect the decision to move forward by democrats? we don t know yet, because what the democrats announced today was impeachment inquiry. way they didn t nouns nouns was voting to impeach the president. that would be the next step presumably. if the complaint shows no wrongdoing are oh the transcript that he eventually releases doesn t show the p
pelosi, against beginning impeachment proceedings, may begin to rethink their reluctance. let s go to manu raju who joins us on the hill. we all remember the fireworks three weeks ago. the attorney general did the same thing to the same committee. so more fireworks on tap today? no question about it. expect democrats to express their outrage at what they believe is what they re calling a lawlessstration, not listening to subpoenas, and the white house instructing don mcgahn not to show up because they say he s not to be compelled to testify because he s a senior level white house aide, and expect democrats to lay out their next steps. namely to hold don mcgahn in contempt, along with bill barr and others, and those votes could happen in a matter of days. the fireworks are about to begin, and this is just the beginning of the process as democrats grapple with what to do now that the administration is saying no to all of their demands. now, this is happening, manu, as you have more d