the u.s., not a shadow one. we made every effort to ensure that the relevant decision makers at the national security council and the state department knew the important details of our efforts. the suggestion that we were engaged in some irregular or rogue diplomacy is absolutely false. as an experienced diplomat yourself, what did you think of that argument? oh, i definitely think that s sondland trying to cover himself and give more credibility to the fact that he effectively was somebody who had put his nose where it didn t belong, and he had put himself out there at the president s request of bringing somebody like rudy giuliani and his goons into a long-standing policymaking process that pre-dated president trump and even pre-dated the obamas in some way because we know from bill taylor s testimony, from the ambassador s testimony that
insulting those who are public servants who sha s who are tryi their duty in not just testifying before congress, but for those of their careers, just going about their jobs as state department or intelligence community or law enforcement officials. and there will be so much rebuilding of moral and of bureaucracy and of culture to do in the wake of this. yeah, and you wrote about this last week. this is not normal, not normal behavior by public servants. not normal disagreements within policy making process. not normal at all. it was a really good read. thanks for coming in. always appreciate getting your expertise on this. thanks, josh. thank you, kate. coming up for us, we are now in the second week, of course, of the house s public impeachment hearings of president trump. and also, let s say, number, i have lost count, of the defenses of the president coming from house republicans. where they now land and what that means. that s next. s a company that s d to even more real peo
hopes of being considered as a secretary of state candidate in a second trump term. fiona hill in more than ten hours of testimony yesterday testified that bolton described rudy giuliani as a, quote, hand grenade who s going to blow everybody up. according to a source close to hill, she expressed flashes of anger during her testimony at the spread of conspiracy theories and told house investigators that the only person who benefits from those efforts is vladimir putin. hill has also said bay this source to have testified that there was, quote, absolutely a quid pro quo for the meeting with trump. meaning that zelensky was expected to open investigations that would damage the bidens before a meeting with trump would be scheduled. the new york times reports on hill s depiction of a deep and acrimonious divide that emerged at the highest levels of the policymaking process. describing a rather unholy alliance between giuliani, sondland, and mulvaney and john bolton and his allies pushing
ambassador gordon sondland and rudy giuliani essentially pulled an end run around the normal white house policymaking process on ukraine and were running a shadow foreign policy that circumvented security official and pacely they had a direct line into trump to do a ukraine policy that differed from the normal process that s used across the government to come up with policy on foreign relations. hill had been there i think from the very beginning, right? she s a russia expert. she left in the summer, is that right? she started wipeding down her role there over the summer. she was no longer in the top russia job on the day that trump had that now infamous call with president zelensky, but she was up right until those final days, so she would have had full information of all the events that would have led up to this phone call. it strikes me your story and
were the ones who directed that the record of that call be quickly stuffed into a highly classified computer network out of sight. greg miller, great reporting and thank you for joining us on such short notice. turning now to nbc news national political reporter, josh letterman, the exclusive report about what a former national security official intends to tell congress next week. josh, what have you learned? earlier today, chris, we learned fiona hill until recently was the top russia and europe official at the white house planned to testify before congress next week. now we re learning about what she plans to say. according to a source that s familiar with her testimony, fiona hill plans to testify that ambassador gordon sondland and rudy giuliani essentially pulled an end run around the normal white house policymaking process on ukraine and were running a shadow foreign policy that circumvented security official