william taylor. good afternoon. i would like to walk you through a couple points raised by my colleagues on the other side. one is a claim that the july 25 call summary shows no evidence of pressure on the ukrainian government. in fact, they argue the ukrainians do not feel any pressure at any time to comply with any of president trump s request for investigation. in fact, ambassador taylor, and your deposition in october, you stated that due to the hold president trump placed on aid to the ukraine, the ukrainians became quote-unquote desperate. isn t that right? in august, they did not know, as fa far as i m aware. at the end of august, the article came out.
but no matter what they do and how many witnesses they bring in, four facts will not change and they will never change. the call shows no linkage between dollars and the investigation into burisma and the bidens. president trump and president zelensky have both said there was no linkage, no pressure, no pushing. ukrainians didn t know the aide was withheld at the time of the phone call and most importantly as it s been pointed out, the ukrainians didn t take any specific action relative th to e investigation. there is one witness, one witness they won t bring in front of us. they won t bring in front of the american people. that s the guy who started it all, the whistle-blower. no. 435 members of congress, only one gets to know who that person is, only one member of congress has a staff that gets to talk to that person. the rest of us don t. only chairman schiff knows who that was glorious. we don t. we will never get the chance. we will never get the chance to
lawyers that are arguing the case. i wanted to pick up on andy mccarthy s remark, because i completely agree that i ve always thought that the strongest argument that the president can make an republicans make is that this does not rise to the level of an impeachable offense. we are talking about a dramatic overturning of a democratic election in which more than 120 million people voted. do you really want to do that particular when it s 11.5 months until the next election? part of the problem with making at the key argument. he keeps saying no, the call was perfect. i did nothing wrong. he has specifically called out some republicans who have said, well, maybe he did something inappropriate, but it s not it s not impeachable. the present has rejected that and said no, i didn t do anything wrong. hence a little bit hard for republicans who are supporting the president to go against the argument that he is making.
vice president according to your telling says i will talk to the president tonight about that. do you know what the vice president made that call? i don t know, sir. do you know what if anything the vice president had to do with any of this? what more can you tell us about the vice president s role in this? do you know if he ever raised this issue for trigger with anyone in the administration, whether he pushed for the release of the security assistance. i can, sir. i believe to the best of my understanding the vice president was an advocate for the release of the assistance. thank you. yield back. mr. chairman. i have a unanimous consent request. i ask unanimous consent to submit for the record the politico article on ukraine authored by ken vogel, now with the new york times. representative deming s. thank you, mr. chairman, and thank you for being with us
really took the basic facts of the case that taylor laid out. i think they need a couple points. one was that yes, the aide eventually was released. but no, zelensky never did have to promise or conduct an investigation either in 2016 or of biden. on one hand, the republicans read a note that had been given by sondland which was like a word salad up all the people that are talk to the other people, second, third, and fourth hand. some democrats are the reason it is so remote from the president and they were specifically asking, did you ever meet with the president and both said no. democrats pointed out well, the reason we don t have somebody more first-hand is because the president and the administration won t allow them to testify. bottom line, i think there are two points.