investigations, what i understood us to be talking about as ukrainian corruption. we are talking about burisma and the 2016 elections. isn t it clear that it would be important to mr. giuliani because it was politically useful to the president? the way i saw at is that it would be helpful. it would be a way of being committing to mayor giuliani and also the president that this team in ukraine is serious about fighting corruption reform. at that would be helpful in getting a more positive attitude and the white house meeting scheduled, then that would be useful. and i will be helpful to get that white house meeting? it was a necessary condition as you understood it at that point? when it became clear later that we were not able to agree on an agreement that the ukrainians were comfortable with, it s not worth it.
was pressuring his ukrainian counterpart to deliver political dirt, and that was the only way they were going to get military aid and a white house meeting. the other thing that i think is really going to hurt republicans is people like alexander vindman and also fiona hill pretty sharply pushing back on allegations of ukrainian corruption. i mean, when we look ad hill s testimony yesterday, at the transcript, we saw her say, you know, i m not going to be part of this essentially misinformation campaign that republicans are putting out. and so, i think that s something that if republicans want to have these people come out in the open, that s something that could be really dangerous to them. betsy, do you think we re learning anything new in the public hearings next week, beyond what s been released in transcripts? i think it s quite unlikely, and that s something that democrats have been sort of grappling with as they re planning the way that these impeachment hearings are going t
transcript. they didn t know that i had a transcript done by very, very talented people, word for word, comma for comma, done by people that do it for a living. we had an exact transcript. word for word, comma for comma, exact transcript. nope, nope, nope, not according to the lieutenant colonel alexander vindman. the decorated veteran and diplomat who was on that very call, according to nbc, he told lawmakers the white house account left entire words out, very important words. in one instance, vindman says that president trump said there were tapes of joe biden discussing ukrainian corruption. in another place, vindman said president zelensky mentioned burisma, the energy company that employed hunter biden. a lawmaker who was present for the testimony and another source familiar with it tell nbc that vindman testified he tried to have those specific omissions put back in, but he was not successful.
stopped several other investigations. and joe biden when he was the white house s envoy to ukraine asked them, you know, was condemning that. in other words, he was condemning the prosecutor who had refused to investigate his son s company and many other companies. so the reopening of the investigation may be a gesture to the trump white house. it may be legitimately picking up the pieces. it doesn t necessarily tell us anything. but certainly the ukrainian government does now feel under huge pressure to carry out that investigation and to follow up on some of trump s conspiracy theories about the mueller investigation and manafort and ukraine. you tweeted recently people shouldn t talk about this really as a story of ukrainian corruption. it s really more about corruption in washington. absolutely. look, this is a story about a president abusing his office, abusing his privilege as the
from the president and the call to china to investigate, based on the text messages and everything else, what you have in front of you right now, would you be comfortable now saying, yes, you will vote yes on articles of impeachment? you know, you re asking me if i m supposed to be a juror here, yes, i would be comfortable in going forward. of course we would then from proceedings within the chamber of the congress. hallie, i want to add something to this. i happen to have been in ukraine the exact same days, the exact same days that joe biden was there to discuss pushing back on ukrainian corruption. and i was there on a bipartisan mission and we were directed by the state department to talk to the then-ukrainian government exactly on the point that joe