with the facts of the ukrainian matter which is before the committee. which is the bulk of the evidence here. and this procedural sparring, which i suggest which i submit is probably of interest to few people, is a way of delaying the hearing and denying the democrats any momentum. yeah. we shouldn t be surprised by this. no. i think that s right. he really used one of the major republican talking points talking about the staffer castor, one of the major republican talking points which is that this is akin to overturning an election and i think he said that several times throughout his statement. he also i think tried to distract really somewhat from this current proceeding by referencing the administration s cooperation in a number of completely unrelated hearings. so he was describing oversight work that congress is doing and how the administration has cooperated with it, but he was talking about investigations
hoping to move quickly on impeachment and have something done by the holiday season. i don t know if this will slow their work. i think elijah coummings wouldnt want it to slow the oversight work. in that vein, you will see democrats to plow ahead as they memorialize him and take note of this moment and who he was. we re going to hear or the committees will hear behind closed doors, gordon sondland, the ambassador to the e.u. if we can show one of the text messages with bill taylor, who was the ambassador to ukraine, as i said on the phone, i think it s crazy to withhold security systems with the help of a political campaign. sondland replies, i believe you re incorrect about president trump s intentions. no quid pro quo of any kind. what are we going to learn more about this intersection and the
it was confirmed by the president s own add missions on camera. it was further confirmed by the transcript of the telephone call and finally confirmed by very elaborate whistle-blower report that details the entire scheme. every day we learn new evidence which corroborates this shocking behavior of the president and rather than confront or answer or be held accountable to that conduct, he s attempting to challenge the process by which congress is doing its oversight work. an impeachment inquiry that responsib congress has a responsible to do. despite their best efforts to distract the american people away from facts, we re going to continue to press for the truth, to gather up evidence and hold this president accountable. congress s oversight role here is being neutered by the white house. is this a constitutional crisis? well, i think the chairman of the six committees of jurisdiction have made it very
and it is not unprecedented which means anything can happen when the system of checks and balances work. i think what you see here in that liability that s important in this context is people who currently work for the president so they have those obligations of office and they may want to make him happy. but the more they believe personal legal liability, the more they have to think about are they opening themselves up to perjury, how do they want to handle themselves, that strengthens the hands of those in congress who are trying to force a process to get more information about what the president himself has admitted, which is he is seeking help from other countries to kneecap his opponents. you mentioned folks in congress trying to do their oversight work. the democrats have added more deadlines to the docket. what makes it different now is you have democrats who say we re not going to seek remedy through the courts, that s not our focus, we are just going to talk of any more ston
she had to show up. there s no absolute immunity but she didn t have to answer every question because of an exertion of the executive privilege. now, i hope that makes sense. it does, i guess my question is has this idea of executive privilege has that grown with executive authority. the last several presidents have used executive privilege. another great question. i think there is probably lines that run together there in parallel, not perfectly but presidents of different administrations over many years have asserted executive privilege. now, what normally happens is they reach some sort of accommodation with congress, rather than having everyone run off to court and litigate this thing, which could have uncertain outcomes, you try and accommodate the congress and give them stuff so they can do their oversight work. it doesn t appear to me that this administration is all that amenable to accommodating congress. if the house, there s a