happened between the diplomats bill taylor and sond land who we mentioned earlier. are we saying security assistance in a meeting are conditioned on investigations. sondland says call me. we ve gone over it a bunch and later says they should no longer text. what does this say to you legally? so, it says to me that these folks, some have criminal exposure, the ones involved in the scheme to trade something for value in exchange for ukrainian security funds. face it, congress doesn t willy-nilly appropriate funds to foreign countries just out of the goodness of their hearts. they do it because it s in the interest of the united states to do it. yet, the president holds that money hostage and when president zelensky says we re about ready to buy more javelin missiles from you and the president says i have a favor, though, it
president s desire to get this investigation going or the withholding of funds for ukraine. so this does seem to be quite a play by the president. in addition to that, before he sought to put the blame on to rick perry, we heard him last week put the blame on rob portman, the senator from ohio, republican, who had been pushing the president to release the funds for ukraine. there were a lot of eyebrows raised over that. what do you make of the response from secretary perry saying he supported and encouraged the president to speak to the president of ukraine, jonathan? what does that say to you? i m sure that it s true. much like it was true that senator portman wanted the president to release the funds to ukraine, just like many other senators wanted the president to release funds to ukraine. what none of them said the president should use the power of his office to get an investigation into the president s top rival for 2020.