president zelensky needed to show u.s. support at the highest levels in order to demonstrate to russian president putin that he had u.s. backing as well as to advance his ambitious anti-corruption reform agenda at home. president zelensky s team immediately began pressing to set a date for that visit. president zelensky and senior members of his team made clear that they wanted president zelensky s first overseas trip to be to washington to send a strong signal of american support and requested a call with president trump as soon as possible. we at the embassy also believe that a meeting was critical to the success of president zelensky s administration and its reform agenda, and we worked hard to get it arranged. when president zelensky s team did not receive the confirmed date for a white house visit, they made alternative plans for president zelensky s first overseas trip to be to brussels instead, in part to attend an american independence day event ambassador sondland hosted june
immediately after speaking to the president, trump did not give an expletive about ukraine. he cares about big stuff that benefits him like the biden investigation that giuliani was pushing. david holmes is here with us today. he is a foreign service officer currently serving as the political counselor at the u.s. embassy in kyiv. also with us is dr. fiona hill whose job as the national security counsel senior director for european and russian affairs encompassed the coordination of u.s. policy toward ukraine. dr. hill left the nsc in july after more than two years in that position. dr. hill and mr. holmes each provide unique perspective on issues relating to ukraine. dr. hill from washington, d.c., and mr. holmes from on the ground in kyiv. in early 2019, dr. hill became concerned by an increasing prominence of rudy giuliani, the president s personal lawyer, who was, as she has testified, asserting quite frequently on
i want to come to john solomon, he s been at the center of all of this great reporting for three years. it is great to see you. your takeaways on the impeachment. i think there s three things to evaluate, on his theatrics, to his process, three substance. then we do this in reverse order. on substance, the democrats have yet to bring a single witness who has identified impeachable crime or even has first-hand knowledge of a quid pro quo. but the republicans have drawn significant evidence substantial evidence of concern that the state department witnesses and these people were obama, biden workers and they had about the inference of the ukraine ambassador back in 2016 brittany and i think the republicans have scored on substance prion process, the two did a great job describing the unfair setting. i have not been washington and seen the orders were not recognized with the accuser knocking to call their own
interlinked only scandals in the course the american policy. the most important part, there is irrefutable evidence. that ukrainian officials tried to interfere in the election. ambassador marie yovanovitch testified in her counterpart wrote that. they ruled that they tried to wrongly influence and three they ukrainian embassy in washington said on the record this past spring, yes the democratic operative came to us and tried to get us to give dirt on donald trump to influence a 2016 election. those are three things that cannot be reputed. maria: you mentioned owen a, when you look at my timeline, of michael flynn, and august of 2019 flynn needs donald trump a month later, september 2015 he is awarded an office of assessment contract $245,000 and
they did nothing and they still got the aid. and congressman turner, you were there. there are there is not a fair process and i don t even want to make it about process but about substance. we have a president that took us an oath to faithfully execute the laws. everybody said they cared about election interference. we know a ukrainian court decision, yeah, they pointed out ukraine did interfere in the 2016 elections on behalf of hillary clinton. politico, january 11, 2017 said dnc operative went to ukrainian embassy in washington and yeah, they were colluding with ukraine to dig up dirt on then candidate donald trump and associates for the purpose of influencing 2016 election. i noticed none of that came out today, why? ambassador taylor and mr. kent testified they had no knowledge of those things although they considered that to be a relative issue with respect to interfering in the united states elections. apparently only the things they