quos of any kind. the president is trying to evaluate whether ukraine is truly going to adopt the transparency. we stop the back and forth by text. they also push some of trump and rudy giuliani s conspiracy theer r theories of ukraine in the 2016 election which they say was due to hillary clinton, but a lot of damning techs messages here. brianna? thank you for walking us through all of that. there is a lot to talk over with former u.s. attorney greg browa broward, and cnn analyst gloria borger. there is so much to go over with these text messages that so beautifully walked us through
they understood it was this for that. preet bharara wrote overnight, all week i ve been saying you never see direct written evidence of a quid pro quo. i stand corrected. it s all out there in the open. it is. and there are two separate quid pro quos if that s the plural in latin here. there s number one which might be the military aid which you read bill taylor saying, are we really saying the investigations are hinging on this aid? and the other thing that really developed overnight, bianna, which is the idea that zelensky is not going to get a meeting with president trump which is so important to the ukrainians unless he plays ball. and this is p-203. this is a text from kurt volker. heard from the white house. assuming president z. he will investigate, we will nail down date for visit to washington. good luck. see you tomorrow. kurt. assuming president d. convinces
thing. only the republic is counting on that. bill taylor, the career diplomat in kiev in ukraine. the acting ambassador after the other ambassador was brought back to washington. do you think there is an explicit quid pro quo, congressman, in the text messages that volker shared? well, bill taylor compressed concern there was a quid pro quo. the president said i have a favor to ask though. i would call that a quid prothough. and that was president zelensky. so in the history of quid pro quos, no one has said i have a quid pro quo for you. i think the president came pretty close. that is not even the standard. i think you see in the presidential confession that he was leveraging u.s. help for ukrainians in exchange for them helping him in his election. what are you hearing privately from republicans who have seen the same evidence you have? i talked to one republican today who did express concern. just wanted to make sure the
he points to this exchange that is one of the text messages on september 9th from bill taylor, the acting u.s. ambassador in ukraine to gordon sondland, the u.s. ambassador to the european union. this is bill taylor. as i said on the phone, i think it is crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign. sondland text back, bill, i believe you are incorrect about president trump s intentions, the president has been crystal clear, no quid pro quos of any kind. and we should know there was a great deal of time that lapsed between those two things. first of all, the conversation that they were having on text was a very casual kind of conversation. then suddenly bill taylor said, as i said on the phone, this is crazy, you can t have this kind of thing going on. and then suddenly the tone of sondland later changes into what is effectively a disclaimer, like something on a medicine
as to what he should be saying? the statement was supposed to lay out how ukraine would pursue corruption investigations. that statement was never released opinion william tailyl tells volker the president cancelled his trip to ukraine. the next day he texted sondland. are we saying white house meetings are conditioned on investigations. he responds, call me. he brings up the point. as i said on the phone i think it s crazy to with hold security assistance for help with a political campaign. sondland text back hours later defending the president. i believe you re in correct about president trump s intentions. the president has been crystal clear. no quid pro quos of any kind. tonight conflicting accounts of whether the president tied