Congressman Elijah Cummings of now. Baltimore. God truly blessed america with the life and legacy of Elijah Cummings. Our distinguished colleague truly has gone home, home to his fathers house. Those gathered here today have lost a dear friend, and our country has lost a giant. Perhaps this place and this country would be better served with a few more unexpected friendships. I know ive been blessed by one. An important moment there and an important message, especially as we begin the hour with the partisan divides that will, without a doubt, soon return. The impeachment fight. President trump today taking to twitter to praise the roughly two dozen republicans who barged into that interview uninvited yesterday. The president said too much of the impeachment inquiry is happening behind closed doors and away from the scrutiny of the public eye. It is a process argument that ignores the damning substance of that private testimony. The president , though, praising the disruptors as tough, s
President zelensky in early september. I want to get straight to cnn Congressional Correspondent manu raju on capitol hill, and manu, i know you have some news to tell us about. Go for it. Reporter yeah, thats right. The democrats in the house are now signalling theyre on a fast track on their impeachment probe. There are a number of new steps theyve taken that show President Trump could be impeached by the end of the year, in just a matter of weeks. Youve seen these steps taken in a few different ways. One, the move to public hearings next week. Two, house intelligence chairman adam schiff made clear in a letter to his republican counterparts today that they were not going to bring back all the witnesses in closed door depositions to come for public hearings, and also two actions that could delay potentially prolonged court battles. One, they withdrew a subpoena for a top official, a National Security council official who used to work there, charles kupperman, because they were concer
Reached out to the secretary of the interior in late january or early february to talk about Vice President biden and the 2016 election. Thats certainly long before the phone call and before president zelenskys election. At that time around february, avicov expressed concerns to yavonovitch that getting into u. S. Politics would be a dangerous place for ukraine to be. Here is the testimony. Question what were his concerns as expressed to you . Yavonovitch he thought this was so he thought it was very dangerous that ukraine since its independence has had bipartisan support from both democrats and republicans all these years, and to start kind of getting into u. S. Politics and u. S. Domestic politics was a dangerous place for ukraine to be. Question why did he think he would be getting into u. S. Domestic politics by speaking with mr. Giuliani . And Marie Yavonovitch said, well, because he told me that, but because of what you had mentioned before, the issue of the blackled ledger, mr.
Jitters. Joe biden goes to iowa. It comes as he holds a Strong National polling position but struggles in some of the early states. Are you trying to win the primary by talking about the general . The reason im running is because of the general. Im not running against anything having to do with the character even of the candidates are running. What im doing to trying to make the case that trump is a gigantic impediment to this country moving forward. We begin this hour and this week on capitol hill where democrats and republicans alike now preparing for the impeachment inquiry to go public in realtime with two days of public hearings later this week. Wednesday the witnesses are bill taylor, the top u. S. Diplomat in ukraine, as well as george kent, the Senior State Department official. Friday is the former u. S. Ambassador to ukraine, Marie Yavonovitch. We have their transcripts to the private depositions. All of them worried that the president was putting political vendettas ahead of
this started days ago when iris kelly pressed pompeo on why he hadn t spoken out in defense of his employees, including former ambassador of ukraine, marie yavonovitch. she later accused him of lying about the topic covered in her entinterview. kylie atwood joins us in the state department. kylie, mike pompeo is berating npr for the statehood? here s what happened. the reporter who has been covering the department for nearly 20 years was kicked off an upcoming secretary of state trip. she was planning on going on that trip. it involved a stop in ukraine. but she was notified over the weekend by the state department that she would no longer be traveling. and i think it s important to note that she wasn t just going to report for npr, she was the