they re trying to zero in on whether these witnesses really knew what the president wanted or intended here. of course we should note at the same time the president has prevented witnesses who would know that from testifying at all. tell us how they plan to make that argument. reporter: bill taylor is testifying tomorrow, he testified that he had been told by the ambassador of the european union that president trump had withheld everything, aid to ukraine nearly $400 million, as well as a meeting between trump and the ukrainians until until that public declaration of investigations was announced. those investigations that could help the president politically. but i m told from a source who s involved in the republican game plan here is they want to try to make the case that he doesn t have a direct knowledge of what the president said. it s a game of telephone, where information from the president came from various channels.
emails stolen by russia were going to be released and via wikileaks that their reaction was one of happiness and he, gates, called that announcement a gift to the campaign. we re joined now to discuss this and other developments today, former fbi special agent and legal security analyst. and, mark, you ve covered this from the beginning. a lot of folks have let this drop at the end of the mueller report. but what you re seeing here, one is an allegation of communications between the trump campaign and wikileaks via roger stone, that s a key question in this trial here. but also what s clear from gates testimony is the trump campaign was welcoming this information stolen by russia. tell us the significance of his testimony. yeah, the timing is interesting, right? because it puts the timetable back earlier to when the trump campaign knew about possibly wikileaks putting out information that could, in their minds, help the campaign.
but in terms of the facts, we have some overwhelming evidence that the president of the united states conspired with his lawyer to undermine the electoral process in this country through the intervention of a foreign power. it s a very grave charge and there are a lot of facts that support the charge. where this is going to go, i think we all need to take a step back, particularly journalists. we don t know where this is going to go because a lot of it is going to have to do with how the american people process this information and particularly on capitol hill, not so much how the house processes the information, but how senators look at this information. the conventional wisdom is that he would be acquitted, the president, in the senate. i think it s a time to put conventional wisdom aside. we don t know. senators are very sensitive to the will of the people and if the people in this country turn
along with the two others that have been leading this investigation put together their public report and provide it to the house judiciary committee which would start to move forward on articles of impeachment assuming democrats are going down that road. and by all indication dollars they most certainly are. watch for two people in particular to do the questioning, the democratic attorney and the republican attorney dan goldman on the house democratic side, steve castor on the house republican side. part of the reason why they want to do this is so get into the substance, the meat of what has happened in this throughout their investigation, what bill taylor has to say. oftentimes those five-minute round of questioning does not lead to that. a lot of members give speeches instead. we ll see how the staff members do at drawing out information from these key witnesses. some of them ask long questions. we have experience on that. so house gop, they released their defense on impeachment
this is in the spring of 2016. recall what s happening at that time. this is just after the russian government, according to the mueller investigation, had penetrated democratic servers, it is right around the time a young trump campaign aide george papadopoulos is told dirt about hillary clinton, and so now we re hearing that roger stone informs the campaign about wikileaks information. previous, you know, earlier than known before. so that s quite interesting. now, i think it s important for viewers to know that, you know, most likely this is all information that was in the mueller report but was redacted because of the ongoing stone trial. so it s not new information that mueller didn t know about. that s a very interesting point. asha, let me ask you something that just crossed also. mick mulvaney is no longer trying to attach him selvf to te lawsuit asking the court if he