of staff, there isn t anyone who has more face time with a president than his own national security adviser. we did some research on friday in the history of this country sort of short but sorted impeachments there has never been a national security adviser who has testified either in a closed door deposition or in a public hearing if that s the phase we are entering, before. it s another example of what an extraordinary moment this is for the american presidency that we are in uncharted territory. they are trying to limit this. they are trying to do what they can in terms of damage control. they ve had some success to this point. but to bob s point a moment ago, this is a new phase here. this is the speaker i think has largely been lauded for how they proceeded with this so far. they have certainly received the testimony that has been reported, the opening statements that we ve all read, some very damaging information about the president and his conduct. and not one word of that d
he has built a career as a highly regarded figure on the right it. would be very difficult to paint john bolton s testimony as any part of any sort of deep state plot to remove donald trump. and people are making choices. white house counsel pat cipollone with his letter has been trying to prevent testimony and to urge trump administration officials to not head to capitol hill. yet ambassador after ambassador, official after official are deciding to testify on their own. it s their decision to comply with congress despite what the white house is saying. and bolton can make his own decision in the coming weeks and months about how he wants to be remembered and what he wants to say. mike schmidt, your reporting today with your colleague nick fanos makes the point that if republicans are going to be swung over especially on the senate side to support donald trump s conviction and removal, they re going to need testimony from people like john bolton.
what we are seeing the democrats now is lay out that they will soon be turning to public hearings. if we see people like bill taylor come up and testify and gordon sondland come up and testify and they give publicly the kind of explosive testimony they have given privately. and you re right, gordon sondland s attorney made it very clear over the weekend that he was not going to be the fall guy for donald trump. if they give that testimony publicly, maybe that s the thing that moves public opinion and that s what has an impact on the senate. jonathan lemire, it s an interesting point, and i ve got this embarrassment of riches. all of you guys cover this and know this better than anyone. let s tick through the evidence and the confessions. the evidence that we have has been provided by donald trump in the transcript. the confessions include on-air confessions from the president s personal lawyer rudy giuliani on not even on fox news, on cnn, saying damn right i asked them to investigat
inside the white house who presumably can add more light. if he shows up over a dozen times in bill taylor s testimony, if he actually does show up and testify on thursday, that s another witness who presumably can provide specific information about what the president himself did. mike schmidt, on gordon sondland, he s not john bolton, he s not mick mulvaney. he wasn t in the oval office every day. but his own testimony includes the recounting and i think from documents we have seen from kurt volker s subpoena and appearance and from ambassador taylor s appearance on capitol hill, suggests that gordon sondland was in touch with donald trump and put these questions to him directly about what he wanted in exchange for a presidential meeting with the new leader of ukraine. what is the significance of this reporting? that illustrates the point here about the people closest to the president. we are talking about gordon sondland because he was in direct contact with the president. he was
that to congress. and that s the point about the other folks that the house would like to talk to and that they are closing in on. it would be harder for the house to get to them. but it is that testimony that really moves the ball forward, that really sort of allows the democrats to make a larger argument that would put pressure on the senate republicans. and, look, it s going to be very, very difficult for them, and all they really have right now in terms of stuff directly to the president is stuff from volker and sondland and a little bit from others. but a lot of the other stuff is sort of second-hand stuff, sort of atmospherics about what was going on inside the nsc or the state department. and i know that donald trump doesn t really care what happens inside the nsc, but he does care about the pr war, betsy. there is a lot of reporting that he s increasing the frustration. the washington post reports this. adding trump dictated much of a