is no, no, no. it s not that, it s this and all you hear is attacks on the process, so i think, again, the depositions are creating this record that will go public very soon that paints a damning picture of the president. and the president and the white house, they re looking to seize on anything they can to bolster what the president has said. as we know president trump has insisted for weeks there was nothing wrong with that phone call with zellen skensky. the call was ablusolutely perfect. a made not a good call, a perfect call. did you know it was going to be the subject of the scrutiny because the way you express yourself, this is like a perfect call. so the white house is seizing on what morrison said today, nia, that, you know, that morrison did not believe there was anything problematic legally about that call.
right now tim morrison one of bolton s allies and on trump s national security council is currently behind doors on capitol hill. the second person who listened in on the phone call between president trump and president stlons s zelensky to sit in the congressional hot seat. new details about morrison s testimony and manu raju what have you learned? reporter: we ve learned behind closed doors tim morrison testified he was told to steer clear of rudy giuliani. rudy giuliani, of course, was pursuing a parallel ukraine policy, something to carry out the president s directives and something to push for investigations to help the president politically, including into former vice president joe biden and his son and according to what morrison told house investigators, we are told he said that he was urged by a separate white house official at the time, fiona hill to stay away from rudy giuliani. he said that he did just that. he also according to a source i
have testimony taking place with mr. morrison there. so, garrett, we ve learned a little something. but it s interesting, some of the republicans in there have come out and they believe mr. morrison has been helpful to the president. yeah, that s true. chuck, it feels like that was about six weeks ago there s been so much going on capitol hill today. morrison s testimony, as you pointed out in the open, was largely confirmtory for what bill taylor has said about the arm or the aid for investigations part of this. but what morrison also told the committees was that he listened to that phone call and he didn t hear anything that he thought was illegal. now, of course, that s not the bar for impeachment but it is something that republicans can hang their hats on here a little bit. and morrison also described based on the reporting of my colleague leanne caldwell, who s done such a good job with this story, not really following the burisma connection as it was happening in real time. he
and important it was clear to people at the time that s what president trump was talking about. i don t think this really changes a ton. it just also clarifies that vindman, being someone who was actually on the call is a different kind of witness in this investigation. he changes the game because he heard first hand, not only what president trump said, but he also understands what zelensky said in the original language. and so has actually a lot more context behind the meeting of what was said on that call. to your point, it will be interesting to see, how much we learn with tim morrison who is scheduled to testify on thursday. vindman said this was part of his job, he went through the transcript, he went through the voice recognition software to fix the issues. he gave that to morrison. what morrison has to say, that s interesting to see. the other thing, joe, the initial words from the white house when asked about the
sources telling cnn that he will say he didn t see a problem in the call between the president and zelensky, but we heard from manu that there will be some nuance as to what morrison has to say. in terms of nuance, doug, it s not really about, as we know going into this, looking at the testimony, it s not how somebody felt about it, it s the facts of the situation. yeah. look, absolutely. this is where the white house finds itself in real trouble is whatever the president says seems to be contradicted not only by testimony but by witness after witness, and it s why there s been a lot of consternation on capitol hill that, as was referenced earlier by jerry diamond, that there hasn t been a real cohesive strategy for the white house moving forward. i know tony sayeg. i think he is one of the best people this administration has ever had, and i hope for his sake he ll be a little too busy to help in this case because it seems there are not a lot of good answers, and ultimately, that s w