unfolding and his administration s response and all of it has him on pins and needles and tonight republicans and democrats are finalizing their strategy for those hearings tomorrow. just a short time ago republicans holding a mock impeachment hearing. they know the stakes are high and one of the first witnesses will be bill taylor, of course, who describe what he said was a quid pro quo and it was his understanding that, quote, security assistance money would not come until president zelensky proceeded to for sue the burisma investigation. burisma, of course, is the company where hunter biden served on the board and already some republicans are trying to tear taylor down. is he a credible witness? . no. second, third hand, in no hand information. you can t rely on third and fourth-hand information. it s important to just note the facts. taylor s testimony has been
happened. he s going to be able to give testimony way before the july 25th call. he s going to give this whole story about how starting really early before the summer, even, the president and rudy giuliani were trying to put pressure on ukraine to withhold a white house meeting in exchange for these investigations into 2016 and the bidens. what becomes so important to me about taylor is he can have a conversation about the entire range of what happened and the abuse of power. and he was at the time saying this was wrong. so i think he s important as the narrator of the whole story that s about to come next. if he repeats what he said behind closed doors, it will be quite compelling. here is a bit of that testimony from october 22nd. bill taylor said that was my clear understanding. security assistance money would not come until the president of ukraine committed to pursue the investigations meaning of the bidens and of the dnc, basically. and he really laid out why this was a life
and senator johnson, there was discussion of the security assistance. no linkage? there was not discussion of linkage. three meetings face to face with president zelensky, no linkage. yet in your deposition you said this and you said it again the first hour of the majority. my clear understanding was security assistance money would not come until president zelensky committed to pursue the investigation. my clear understanding was they weren t going to get the money until president zelensky dm committed to pursue the investigations. with all due respect, your clear understanding was obviously wrong, because it didn t happen. president zelensky didn t announce he was going to investigate burisma or the bidens. he didn t do a press conference and say i m going to investigate the bidens, we re going to investigate burisma. he didn t tweet about it. and you just told the ranking member he didn t do the cnn interview an announce he was
goldman starts his questioning this morning, what do you think this democratic attorney will try to get at from these witnesses? strategy point number one for the democrats. quid pro quo, what the republicans are now calling conditionality. best termed i think as a corrupt deal. they need to drive this home. these witnesses are strong on that. bill taylor testified previously. that was my clear understanding. security assistance money would not come until the president of ukraine committed to pursue the investigation. of course bill taylor said the same thing at the time this was happening. thaez are his texts. we will see these today. i think it s crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign. and kent is similarly strong on this point. he testified he heard from potus wanting nothing less than president zelensky to go to the microphone and say investigations, biden, and clinton. that is point number one. that is what will be laid out in the first 45 min
taylor and george kent will testify sitting side-by-side. the nationally televised hearings helping house democrats bring their case against trump to life arguing he abused his power by pressuring ukraine to begin investigations for his own political gain. the facts here are so powerful, let people just hear what happened. reporter: taylor, a star witness for house democrats after testifying it was his clear understanding security assistance money would not come until the president of ukraine committed to pursuing the investigation. kent also denouncing the trump administration s efforts calling it injurious to the rule of law. adam schiff and devin nunes will lead the hearings. they ll each have 45 minutes to question witnesses. and both sides will have some help. their staff lawyers likely taking charge and questioning. daniel goldman for the democrats and steve caster will assist the