microphone announcing this but that is not the what the president wanted. if they were, they would have done it through the official channels. they wanted an investigation announced publicly because of the bonanza that would bring for the president s campaign. and i think that is why it is a very big deal that and i think we should remember this, that they wanted a public announcement of an investigation. they didn t care how it turned out or if the ukrainians actually did it. what they wanted was the public announcement. because that, getting that into the mainstream and the media and the coverage of the 2020 campaign, is what the president needed. and that is an important point because sondland kept saying it was all for the statement. they wanted a statement from the ukrainian leadership about the investigation and evan is 100% right, i don t think if there was an investigation. and that is what gordon sondland said. nobody followed up with what they wanted the investigation p
careful not to remember. his memory became vague because those are phone calls and conversations that are more likely to be transcribed somewhere. i want to play this clip. i want to play many clip. kaitlan, listen closely to this exchange that the ambassador had with sean patrick maloney. listen to this. when he asked you about investigations which we all agree now means the bidens, we just did this about 30 seconds ago, it is pretty simple question, isn t it? i guess i m having trouble why you can t just say- when he asked about investigations, i assumed he meant i know whatta assumed. but would would benefit from an investigation of the bidens? they are two different questions. i m just asking you one. who would benefit from an investigation of the biden? i assume president trump. there we have it. see. [ applause ] didn t hurt a bit, did it?
and with that i now recognize the ranking member. thank you. as we republicans have argued at these hearings, the american people are getting a skewed impression of these events. that is because the democrats assume full authority to call witnesses and they promptly rejected any new witnesses the republicans requested. so i would like to take a moment to discuss a few of the people whose testimony has been deemed unacceptable for the american people to hear. the whistle-blower. the whistle-blower is the key figure who started this entire impeachment charade but submitting a complaint against president trump that relied on secondhand and thirdhand information and media reports. this began a bizarre series of events, although the complaint had no intelligence component whatsoever. the intelligence community inspector general accepted it and even changed the guidance on the complaint forms to eliminate the requirement for firsthand
essentially reading from sondland s testimony about their phone call. and one thing to point out about the phone call, they had the phone call after the whistle-blower complaint was filed and after concerns were being raised inside of the administration about the president s july 25th phone call with the leader of ukraine. now separately from this, wolf, we should report that we understand there was a sense of panic inside of the white house, inside of the trump campaign and in some sections of the republican party up on capitol hill earlier this morning as gordon sondland was beginning to deliver his testimony. we are told that some of these aides and associates were blindsided, quote, blindsided by what gordon sondland had to say and some were, quote, freaking out according to the sources and one of the sources from this afternoon said that it seemed as if gordon sondland was throwing top administration officials under the bus, describing his testimony as really bizarre. so, wolf, it
did the president ever tell preconditions for anything? no. so the president never told you about any preconditions for the aid to be released? no. the president never told you about any preconditions for a white house meeting? personally, no. what do you think? so that is something that you re seeing republicans talk about today. is the conversations that he had with the president and exactly what it was that the president said. because they re saying that essentially if the president didn t say this is what i want you to tell them, these are the preconditions for them to get this aid, this meeting, this phone call, then they say it does prove the president that it exonerates him but ignoring what he s talking about, this pressure campaign that he said was clear to the ukrainians that he brought up with people like the vice president and he claims which pence has denied. and it is almost impossible for the white house to take that position when they are themselves pr