that perhaps president zelensky wasn t going to be the reformer that he campaigned on? uh, that was a supposition that i made because of the meeting with the president on may 23rd, i thought that could be what s behind it. in fact the aid was lifted shortly after he was able to convene a parliament? i believe he let me get the dates straight. i believe, yes, he was able to convene the parliament around the first of september and i believe the aid was released on the 11th of september. when he was able to convene the parliament, he was able to push through a number of anticorruption initiatives? that began with the parliament seated that day, it was a 24-hour session, and it continued for some time. and that was an encouraging sign? it started off in a very encouraging way, yes. and other than these things going on in the background, with the pause in the aid, the u.s. relations with ukraine, you testified, are you stated it
no question about that. that s why we held up the money. that s it, that s why we held up the money. we held up the money to ukraine so the president could get this other thing he wanted from ukraine for his own political purposes. that led to these blunt headlines all over the country today. the new york times, mulvaney says and then denies that trump denied aid as quid pro quo. mulvaney tries to walk back comments. mulvaney says holdup of ukraine aid was tied to trump s demand for dnc server. whether mick mulvaney was told today to go out and say that so he could be blamed for this thing or whether he freelanced it in the moment, the response wasn t good. the wall street journal reporting today, quote, white house officials expected mr. mulvaney to repeat the administration s message that the house inquiry was unfair to mr. trump and that there was no quid pro quo. one republican lawmaker telling the washington post, quote, totally inexplicable. he literally said the thing th
held back ukraine aid as quid pro quo. washington post, after saying trump held back aid to pressure ukraine, mulvaney tries to walk back comments. mulvaney says holdup of ukraine aid was tied to trump s demand for dnc server. whether mick mulvaney was told today to go out and say that so he could be blamed for this thing or whether he freelanced it in the moment, the response wasn t good. the wall street journal reporting today, quote, white house officials expected mr. mulvaney to repeat the administration s message that the house inquiry was unfair to mr. trump and that there was no quid pro quo. one republican lawmaker telling the washington post, quote, totally inexplicable. he literally said the thing the president and everybody else said did not happen. soon enough mr. mulvaney had taken back his comments and insisted he never said them in the first place. quote, there was never any condition on the flow of the aid related to the matter of the dnc server. yeah, why would w
ukraine because ukraine invented the fact that russia attacked our 2016 election and hacked the democratic party and all the rest of it. something hidden in ukraine can disprove that russia actually committed that attack. the basic idea of this part of what president trump was trying to get from russia is that he wants russia to no longer be blamed for interfering in the 2016 election, for attacking the dnc servers, for hacking the clinton campaigns and the democratic party s emails, for releasing them, for running the social media operation that they did to benefit trump. president trump wants the u.s. government s position on this to be that russia definitely didn t do any of that. that s from gordon sondland s opening statement. we don t know what happened in his deposition today after he made those opening remarks, but in his printed opening statement, he says the president did it. this scheme that the president and rudy giuliani were enacting using the three amigos, gordon sondlan
whole thing through giuliani instead. he says, quote, as i stated earlier, i may be from president trump at the may 23rd white house meeting that he wanted us to talk with mr. giuliani concerning our efforts to arrange a white house meeting for the ukrainian president, president zelensky. taking direction from the president, as i must. i spoke with mr. giuliani for that limited purpose. in these conversations, mr. giuliani emphasized that president trump wanted a public statement from president zelensky committing ukraine to look into anti-corruption issues. mr. giuliani specifically mentioned the 2016 election, including the dnc server and burisma, as two investigatory topics of importance for the president. as you can tell, this is written in the most forgive me the most cya language possible. this is from the one witness in the impeachment proceedings so far who was considered by republicans to be their best hope to be the sort of most