2020 elections. and this is very serious moment in our history, and this was quite frankly unconstitutional. so ben rhodes was on with me a little while ago and he was making the point that republicans traditionally would not have accepted this. not just interference in congressionally approved money which is its own issue but perhaps the more important issue that the $391 million was approved by congress on a bipartisan basis because it was an important thing to do from a national security perspective. our ally, ukraine is in hot water with russia. there s clearly a double standard, and it s clear to me this administration is a lawless administration. and remember senator mitch mcconnell said they were going to do everything they could do to stop president obama s agenda whatever it was. so believe you me this double
quid pro quo. the idea that the money was released because they knew there was an investigation going to be happening. right. and in some ways there was already evidence of this. we know that the democrats had announced an investigation of ukraine matters on september 9th, two days before the aid gets released, but this tells you even more that the president and his team was aware at least in a broad way of what the whistle-blower had concerns about. and so we now know a new element of the time line just gets introduced, usually these things are well-settled by the time utalk about drafting articles of impeachment. so very fast moving situation. let s talk about the articles of impeachment. something you wrote tonight two articles are virtually guaranteed to show up as features of impeachment against the president but that democrats are divided on whether to involve matters related to russia and the mueller investigation into this. tell me a bit about the dispute. right, so the u
security and you hear what are the national interests of the united states and ukraine? and the national interests to push back against russian aggression. and what s so striking in this whole process is separate and apart from all those people there was this distinct channel of people like rudy giuliani and gordon sondland. rudy giuliani who s not even in the u.s. government. he s a personal attorney for president trump. and gordon sondland who s a donor not even representing ukraine. he s there representative to the european union. so clearly trump created a parallel channel that would carry out his efforts to politicize for his own personal and corrupt gain, our foreign policy. and all the rest of the people were mystified and in many cases apparently horrified by this. i we got some of this from some of this testimony. but there may be some who think that s enough to impeach donald trump, but national security experts are actually concerned it s not actually the personal enrich
critical funds. three days later, on august 6th, duffy signs off on another letter for the white house budget office withholding the ukraine funds. then on the 9th, democrats on the appropriations committee in both the house and senate warned that withholding funds could be illegal. then duffy signs another letter withholding those funds. august 19th, democrats on the house and senate budget committees again warn the white house that withholding the aid for ukraine is illegal. on the 29th of august, duffy signs another letter holding back the aid. in mid-september, when the state department moved to release its part of the ukraine funding at the urging of national security adviser john bolton, even then, the white house office of management and budget held onto the money for another two weeks-plus, even though they had been warned multiple times in writing that withholding the money, the congressionally-approved money, is illegal.
with mick mulvaney, and he knows good and well what was taking place. and in fact what they were trying to do is bribe the ukrainian government. i have to tell you, i was in ukraine earlier this year, and i know the risks and the fact they need this security assistance. i serve as vice chair of the subcommittee that funds all of our foreign assistance, and believe you me, this was wrong, mick mulvaney knows it s wrong and it was used to try to bribe the ukrainian government in an attempt to undermine future elections, mind you, the 2020 elections, and this is a very serious, serious moment in our history and this was, quite frankly, unconstitutional. so ben rhodes was on with me a little while ago and he was making the point that republicans traditionally would not have accepted this. not just the interference in congressionally-approved money, which is its own issue, but perhaps the more important issue is that $391 million was approved by congress on a