is that right? i think that s about right, nicole. he definitely delivered the corruption message when he met with president zelensky in early september which was a period when the aid was being held up and before it was released. you know, look, the argument that my reporter colleagues heard from the white house was that the vice president was unaware of the request to biden about biden. i don t know if that s actually true. it doesn t quite add up for a couple of reasons. one is that the vice president s national security adviser keith kellogg listened in on that call that trump had with president zelensky. so would ve been aware of everything that the president said to his ukrainian counterpart. and the other thing it just doesn t fit tight for pence. he is actually quite studious. he s somebody who tends to read his briefing materials who tends to do his homework to be prepared for foreign visits certainly and for sessions with forren leaders.
and country demanding foreign governments help in dirtying up the biden family, his number two is seeking to distance himself from the whole ugly episode. if we are to believe that the man who has been nothing but duty and subservient really knew nothing of trump s requests to get the ukrainian president to investigate the bidens. from a stunning new report in the washington post, an account of what the vice president knew and when he knew it. one of pence s top advisers is on the july 25th call, and the vice president should ve had access to the transcript within the hour, officials said. but despite that potentially incriminating fact, his aides insist he was in the dark. quote, officials close to pence insist that he was unaware of trump s efforts to press zelensky for damaging information about biden and his son. but the post also reports that pence was ultimately involved to communicate with the ukrainian leader about corruption which the ukrainians understood to
crowd strike. but you have to believe that not only did pence s national security adviser cover up what he heard on the call from pence thinking maybe he will be president in six weeks, but he also was immune to all the efforts that came before that call from bossert and others to disavow donald trump. since we re all speculating i will speculate too. i assume that pence is trying to carve out some plausible deniability that i m not going to talk to zelensky about the bidens so he can leak this story saying that he didn t know it. and i have another explanation for everybody being on the call. and mike knows ten times more about this than i do, and it s another organized crime reference. it s like the mafia don that wants to get everybody dirty and in on the call at the same time. it s like i want you to know about this, i want you to know biso i have leverage over all of you. i want mud on all of you. that s why everybody was there.
reportedly provided advice to the ukrainian leadership about how to, quote, navigate the demands that the president had made of zelensky. now rick stengel, would seem based on his testimony or his deposition today that what he s trying to articulate is that he was telling them all to steer clear. you know i ve been talking about ukraine for a long time. my book which is out next week begins in ukraine. i just want to explain something what volker was experiencing. i love ukraine. they are fabulous people. they have suffered more than anybody on earth. they are an incredibly corrupt society since they became free of the soviet union in 1991. what prosecutors meant in ukraine is, oh, eugene, i m about to prosecute you in something, but i am about to pay you off. i imagine telling rudy giuliani is these guys will tell you anything.
that volker was named in the whistle-blower complaint as the diplomat who set up a meeting between giuliani and a top adviser to ukrainian president zelensky ahmed trump s effort to pressure ukraine to investigate the bidens. between giuliani. this would seem, ambassador, mcfaul, the beginning of the thread being pulled on rudy giuliani and donald trump s loyalty to right-wing fringe conspiracy theories over the expertise of even the political appointees at the united states state department. what could go wrong? what could go wrong? we know what could go wrong. and i do know kurt volker. i ve known him for a long time. he worked in the bush administration before taking on this job. remember kurt was an unpaid envoy. he was not confirmed by the senate. he s not part of the state department. so i think that made him