and someonotetaker he is a notetaker. the receipts, so to speak. as part of your reporting you have new material as far as what taylor testified regarding quid pro quo. reporter: yes. so the democrats are trying to pin down these folks going up to the hill on if there was a quid pro quo based on what they saw. so bill taylor was asked specifically if there was a quid pro quo, because the person who asked the question said, listen, what you are saying here is that the deal was that zelensky would announce these investigations related to biden in 2016 and in return he would be getting a meeting at the white house and the lift on the security assistance to ukraine and taylor said, yes that is exactly what i m laying out here. the person followed up, isn t that the definition of quid pro quo? but bill taylor was not willing to go there. he said to lawmakers, i don t
not yet been made by the committees but certainly, jake, many democrats up there on capitol hill will think he would make an ideal first witness as this iengent as the inquiry enters the next phase. sunlen serfaty, thank you so much. let s chew over this. democrats believe that .is unavailable witness and jackie speier on the house intelligence committee said, quote, he s rock solid. detailed note taker, unimpeachable and 50 years to his country and doesn t get much more top gun than that. but mary katharine, we might think it is unassailable but the white house and the president has been assailing him. president trump called him a never trumper and said they are human scum. they will attempt to assail him. the democrats have the advantage at the moment of the fact that both taylor and vindman as far as i could tell, a., seem to have solid background and
again, this time for an open hearing. he has not gotten a formal request from the committees for this. tomorrow they are going to vote on some of the rules for what this will actually look like, but he s willing to. that is key here, because she the person who told lawmakers he was told by the u.s. ambassador to the eu gordon sondland, that everything with regard to ukraine was dependent on zelensky publicly stating he would investigate 2016 and the bidens. therefore, laying out the most compelling argument that there was a quid pro quo at play. the thing here is that bill taylor is not at all a political character. he served under both the trump administration, former democratic administrations, republican administrations, and he is viewed by democrats as rock solid. that s because she a notetaker
little bit hey wire since then in terms of people who are defending the president. i wanted to ask you, though, we felt watching from outside the other side of that closed door that taylor must have documentation to bolster these assertions that we read in his opening statement. was he able to provide documentation to the intelligence committee? does the state department have that and you have to fight the state department to get it? were you able to get corroborating information from him? yeah, that s a great point. in fact, so, it turns out it turns out that he s not just a 50-year veteran of both the military and the foreign service. he s not just a former infantry officer who is with 101st airborne division in vietnam, who served in a bunch of hot spots over the world for decades. turns out this guy is a copious note taker. and it turns out that he, responding to a lawful subpoena, came and testified. put a lot of things in quotes. and has turned over his documents to his e
terms of people that are defending the president. i wanted to ask you, though, we felt watching from outside, on the other side of that closed door, that taylor must have documentation to bolster these assertions that we read in his opening statement. was he able to provide documentation to the intelligence committee? does the state department have that and you have to fight the state department to get it? were you able to get corroborating information from him? that s a great point. in fact so it turns out it turns out that he s not just a 50-year veteran of both the military and the foreign service. he s not just a former infantry officer who served in hot spots over the world for decades, it turns out he s a copious note taker. it turns out that he responding to a lawful subpoena came and testified and has turned over his documents to his employer, the state department. they need to release those. if they aren t afraid of the facts, let them release the