announcing the investigations that the president wanted. and, in particular, on september 9th of this year, you texted ambassador sondland and volker and the tech message should be on the screen in front of you. and if you could read what you wrote. as i said on the phone, i think it s crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign. what did you mean when you said you thought it was crazy? i meant that the important because of the importance of security assistance, that we had just described and had a conversation with the chairman, because that was so important that security was so important for ukraine as well as our own national interests, to withhold that assistance for no good reason other than help with a
foreign policy all the time. is the thing a legitimate foreign pales ask pursuing corruption or was this a personal thing? if there is any wiggle room there, that s where the republicans they didn t it s personal. the president said these are bad people, they wanted to take me down, talking to the ukrainian officials, direct quotes in these transcripts. you are saying this nation a lot of sense, this is in some way very, very personal for this president. as yosh just mentioned, sondland confirmed his december denial of a quid pro quo in a tech message came directly from the president, himself, describing that conversation with the president sondland says, i asked him one open-eneded question. what do you want from ukraine? he said, i want nothing, i want no quid pro quo, i want zelensky to do the right thing. sand lond added i don t know if it was the truth or wasn t the truth. that s what he told me. he was only obeying orders. like every bad mafia line.
and critical thinking. the key paragraph of the buzzfeed story was this, quote, now the story sources have told buzzfeed news that cohen also told the special counsel that after the election, the president personally instructed him to lie. pretty stunning if true an impeachable offense, to be sure. attorney general nominee bill barr said as much in his testimony this week. but could that ever be proven? not if it s just trump s word versus cohen s word, on that score, buds feed had a bigger blockbuster. the special counsel learned about trump s directive for cohen to lie through interviews with multiple witnesses from the trump organization and internal company e-mails, tech message, and a cache of other documents. cohen then acknowledged those instructions during his
about all the details about tech message and some that have moved on, i think there definitely will be an after-action review. the good thing about this is the men and women in the fbi and the united states intelligence community look at these types of investigations really, really seriously. and i think they will look at it very hard and see what they can do better next time. frank, rudy giuliani was on fox news tonight. i m paraphrasing. he was careful to make the point, this case in the southern district of new york. he said they ve given us assurances it s not about us. i was curious to hear that remark. where do you put this case in the southern district of new york and the panoply of things that could existentialally threaten president trump s presidency. i don t believe the case in the southern district of new york is separate.
it was done, it was $130,000. i will tell you what it is, if it is true, it s a slush funds. i believe it would be unethical for michael cohen to be administering the extra marital affairs slush fund, not telling donald trump on a consistent basis how they were paid and being paid for. earlier today, there was a report, nbc saying federal investigators have wire stand the phone lines of michael cohen. they issued a correction saying they had a phone log for phones associated with michael con. you were on nbc. you said it wasn t just wiretaps, also, they were reading mr. cohen s tech messages. do you know for a fact that they were reading mr. cohen s text messages? i know that separate and apart independently from the reporting. i want to be clear. nbc says they were not wiretapping the phones. do you still believe they were? there is a difference. when you conduct electronic monitoring of commune categories, you have to give authorization to do e-mail. a separate authorizatio