When people in the government get worried, sometimes what they do is they draft memos. Because when theyre concerned about getting caught up in something that doesnt seem right, they dont want to be a part of it. So, on that day, mark sandy and other colleagues at omb drafted and sent a memo about Ukraine Military aid to acting director vaughn. According to sandy, the memo advocated for the release of the funds. It said that the military aid was consistent with American National security interests, it would help to oppose russian aggression, and it was backed by strong bipartisan support. But President Trump did not lift the hold. Over the next several weeks, omb continued to issue funding documents that kept kicking the can down the road. Supposedly to allow for more of this, quote, interagency process. Well, inserting those footnotes throughout the apportionment documents stating the delay wouldnt affect the funding. But heres the really shocking part. There was no interagency process. They made it up. It had ended months before. They made it up because nobody could say the real reason for the hold. In total, omb issued nine of these documents between july 25th and september 10th. Did the white house respond to ombs concerns and recommendation and release the aid . Did the white house instruct omb to continue creating a paper trail in an effort to justify the hold . Who knew what and when . Omb documents should shed light on ombs actions as the president s scheme unravelled. Did the white house direct omb to continue issuing the hold . What was omb told about the president s reasons for releasing the hold . What communications did omb officials have with the white house around the time of the release . As the president s scheme unravelled, did anyone at omb connect the dots about the real reason for the hold . The omb documents would shed light on all of these questions, and the American People deserve answers. I remember what it feels like to not have the equipment you need when you need it. Real peoples lives are at stake. Thats why this matters. We need this information so we can ensure that this never happens again. Eventually, this will all come out. We will have answers to these questions. The question now is whether well have them in time and who here will be on the right side of history. Mr. Sekulow. Sir, chief justice, the house managers reserve the balance of our time for an opportunity to respond to the president s argument. Thank you. Mr. Sekulow. Thank you, mr. Chief justice, members of the senate. Manager crow, you should be happy to know that the aid that was provided to ukraine over the course of the president S Administration included lethal weapons. Those were not provided by the previouS Administration. The suggestion that the ukraine failed to get any equipment is false. The security assistant was not refunding ukraine over the summer of 2019. There was no lack of equipment due to the temporary pause. It was future funding. The Ukrainian Deputy minister of defense who oversaw u. S. Aid shipments said the hold came and went so quickly, they did not notice any change. Under secretary of state david hale, explained the paused aid was future assistance, not to keep the army going now. So, the made up narrative that Security Assistance was conditioned on ukraine taking some action on investigations is further disproved by the straightforward fact that the aid was delivered on september 11 of 2019 without ukraine taking any action on any investigation. Its interesting to note that the Obama Administration withheld 585 million of promised aid to egypt in 2013, but the administrations public message was that the money was not officially on hold, aztec anically it was not due until september 30th, the end of the fiscal year so they didnt have to disclose the halt to anyone. Sounds like this may be a practice of a number of administrations. In fact, to the president , this president has been concerned about how aid is being put forward. So, there have been pauses on foreign aid in a variety of context. In september of 2019, the administration announced that it was withholding over 100 million in aid to afghanistan over concerned about government corruption. In august of 2019, President Trump announced that the administration and seoul were in talks to substantially increase south koreas share of the expensive u. S. Military support for south korea. In june, President Trump cut or paused over 550 million in foreign aid to el salvador, honduras, and guatemala because those countries were not fairly sharing the burdens of prevents mass migrations to the United States. This is not the only administration. As i said, president obama withheld hundreds of millions of dollars of aid to egypt. To be clear and i want to be clear ambassador yovanovitch herself testified that our policy actually got stronger under President Trump. Largely because, unlike the Obama Administration, quote, thiS Administration made the decision to provide lethal weapons to ukraine to help ukraine fend off russian aggression. She testified in a deposition before your various committees that actually it felt in the three years i was there partly because of my efforts but also the Interagency Team and President Trumps decision to provide lethal weapons to ukraine, that our policy actually got stronger. Deputy assistant secretary kents name come up a couple of time, agrees javelins are incredibly effective weapons in stopping armored defense and the russians are scared of them. Ambassador volker explained that President Trump approved each of the decisions made along the way, and as a result americas policy towards ukraine strengthened. So, we want to talk about facts, go do your own discovery and your own witnesses that you called. This also supposedly started because of the whistleblower. Where is that whistleblower . The house managers have 35 minutes remaining. Mr. Chief justice, at war, time matters. Minutes and hours can seem like years. So, the idea that, well, it made it there eventually just doesnt work. And yes, the aid was provided. It was provided by congress. This senate and the house of representatives with the president s signature. The congress is the one that sends the aid. And millions of dollars of this aid would have been lost because of the delay had congress not actually passed another law that extended that deadline to allow the funds to be spent. Let me repeat that. The delay had jeopardized the expenditure of the money to such an extent that congress had to pass another law to extend the deadline so that the money and the equipment got to the people on the front lines. Need i also reiterate, the supposed interagency process, the concerns that the president and his counsel continue to raise about corruption and making sure that the process went right. There was no interagency process. The whole thing was made up. It was a phantom. There was a delay, and delays matter. Mr. Chief justice, i reserve the balance of my time for mr. Schiff. Mr. Schiff. Thank you, mr. Chief justice. Just a few additional points i would like to make on this amendment and on my colleagues arguments. First of all, mr. Sekulow makes the point that the aid ultimately got released. They ultimately got the money, right . Yes. They got the money after the president got caught, after the president was forced to relieve the hold on the aid, after he got caught, yes. But even then, even then, they had held on to the aid so long that it took a subsequent act of congress to make sure it could all go out the door. So, what . Is the president supposed to get credit for that, that we had to intervene because he withheld the aid so long . And thats the only reason ukraine got all of the aid that we had approved in the first place. My colleagues have glossed over the fact that what they did was illegal, that the jao, an independent Watchdog Agency found that that hold was illegal. So, it not only violated the law. It not only took an act of congress to make sure they ultimately got the aid. This is this is supposed to be the defense for why you shouldnt see the documents. Is that what were to believe . Counsel also says hes not the first president to withhold aid, and thats true. After all, counsel says, well, president obama withheld aid to egypt. Yes, at the urging of members of congress. Senators mccain and graham urged that that aid be withheld. And why . Because there was a revolution in egypt after it was appropriated. That wasnt something that was hidden from congress. That was a pretty darn good reason to think do we still want to give aid to this government after this revolution . Were not saying that aid has never been withheld. Thats absurd. But i would hope and expect this is the first time aid has been withheld by a president of the United States to coerce an ally at war to help him cheat in the next election. I think thats a first. But what we do here may determine whether its the last. And one other thing about this pause in aid, right, the argument well, no harm no foul. Okay. You got caught, they got the aid, whats the big deal . Well, as we heard during the trial, its not just the aid. I mean, the aid is obviously the most important thing as mr. Crow mentioned without it you cant defend yourself, and well have testimony about just what kind of military aid the president was withholding. But we also had testimony that it was the fact of the aid itself that was so important to ukraine, the fact that the United States had ukraines back. And why . Because this new president of ukraine, this new untested former comedian, president of ukraine, at war with russia, was going to be going into a negotiation with Vladimir Putin with an eye to ending that conflict. And whether he went into that negotiation from a position of strength or position of weakness would depend on whether we had his back. So, with had the ukrainians learned and the russians learned the United States did not have his back, was withholding this aid, what message do you think that sent to Vladimir Putin . What message do you think it sent Vladimir Putin when donald trump wouldnt let Volodymyr Zelensky in the door of the white house but would let the Russian Foreign minister . What message does that send . Its not just the aid, if all the aid was delivered, its what message does the freeze send to our friend and even more importantly to our foe. And the message it sent was a disaster, was a disaster. Now, you might ask yourself because counsel has said President Trump has given lethal weapons to ukraine. You might ask yourself if the president was so concerned about corruption, why did he do that in 2017, and why did he do that in 2018 . Why was it only 2019 there was a problem . Was there no corruption in ukraine in 2017 . Was there no corruption in ukraine in 2018 . No. Ukraine has always battled corruption. It wasnt the presence or lack of corruption from one year to another. It was the presence of joe biden as a potential candidate for president. That was the key change in 2019. That made all the difference which gets back to one of the key moments in this saga. You know, a lot of you are attorneys. Youre probably much better attorneys than i am, and im sure you had the experience in cases you tried where there was some vignette, some conversation, some document that may not have been the most important on its face, but it told you something about the case that was much larger than that conversation. For me, one of those conversations was not on july 25th between President Trump and president zelensky but on july 26th, the very next day. Now, you may have watched some of the house proceedings or you may havent, some people watching may have seen it, maybe they didnt. But theres a scene in a ukrainian restaurant, a restaurant in kyiv, this is not some never trumper. This is a milliondollar donor to the trump inauguration, okay . If theres a bias there, its clearly a Million Dollar bias in favor of this president , not against him. So, theres the scene in kyiv in this restaurant. And sondland has a cell phone and hes sitting with david holm holmes whos a career u. S. Diplomat in the ukraine embassy. And Gordon Sondland calls the white house. Gordon sondland holding for the white house, holding for the president. Hes connected to the president. Thats pretty impressive. This isnt some guy with no relationship to the president. The president may say Gordon Sondland, i barely know him or something to that effect. But this is a guy that can pick up a cell phone and call the president from a restaurant in kyiv. And the president s voice is so loud that david holmes can hear it. And what does the president say . Does he say hows that reform coming . Hows the attack on corruption going . No. He just says is he going to do the investigation. Is zelensky going to do the investigation . And sondland says, yes, hell do anything you want. He loves your ass. This is the extent of the president s interest in ukraine, and they go on to talk about other things. And then they hang up. And david holmes turns to the ambassador and says in language which i will have to modify to remove an expletive, says something along the lines of does the president give a blank about ukraine . And sondland says no, he doesnt give a blank about ukraine. He only cares about the big stuff, like the investigation of the bidens that giuliani wants. This is a milliondollar donor to the trump inaugural admitting the president doesnt care about ukraine. He doesnt care whether they get military dollars to defend themselves. He doesnt care about what position zelensky goes into in these negotiations with putin. He doesnt care about that. Isnt that clear . Its why he didnt care about corruption in 2017 or 2018, and he certainly didnt care about it in 2019. All he cared about was the big stuff that affected him personally like this investigation that he wanted of the bidens. So, when you ask do you want to see these documents, do you want to know if these documents corroborate ambassador sondland . Will the documents show as we fully expect they will that the only thing he cared about was the big stuff that affected him . David holmes response was well, you know, theres some big stuff going on here like a war with russia. This isnt withholding aid because of a revolution in egypt. This is withholding aid from a country in which 15,000 people have died fighting the russians. And as ambassador taylor said and others, you know, russias fighting to remake the map of europe by dent of military force. If we think thats just about ukraines security, we are very deceived. Its about our security. Its about the tens of thousands of troops that we have in europe. And if we undercut our own ally, if we give russian reason to believe we will not have their back, that well use ukraine as a play thing or worse to get them to help us cheat in an election, that will only embolden putin to do more. You said it as often as i have, the only thing he respects is strength. Do you think that looks like strength of Vladimir Putin . I think that looks like something that Vladimir Putin is only too accustomed to. And that is the kind of corruption that he finds and he perpetuates to his own regime and pushes all around the world. My colleague val demings made reference to a conversation which is another key vignette in this hold sad saga, and thats a conversation ambassador volker has with andrier moyermak. Ambassador volker is telling yermak, you shouldnt do this investigation of your former president poroshenko. You shouldnt engage in political investigations. As representative demings said whats the response from ukraine, oh, you mean like the one you want us to do of the bidens and clintons. Threw it right back in his face. Ukraines not oblivious to that hypocrisy. Mr. Sekulow says what are we here for. You know, part of our strength is not only our support for our allies, not only our military might. Its what we stand for. We used to stand for the rule of law. We used to champion the rule of law around the world. Part of the rule of law is of course that no one is above the law. But to be out in ukraine or anywhere else in the world championing the rule of law saying dont engage in prosecutions and having them throwed right back in our face, oh, you mean like the you want us to do, thats why were here. Thats why were here. Thats why were here. I yield back. Mr. Chief justice. Majority leader is recognized. I send a motion to the desk to table the amendment and ask that yeas and nays. Is there a sufficient second . There is. The clerk will conduct will call the roll. Mr. Alexander. Aye. This is a roll call vote. You are watching the impeachment trial of President Trump. The senators are voting right now this time on minority leader Chuck Schumers amendment. This would subpoena documents and records from the omb, office of management and budget. Thats the White House Agency that put the hold to ukraine. Those documents would be significant. This comes in a day we saw clash after clash just hours before opening arguments. I want to go to Phil Mattingly as we are watching this vote out front live on capitol hill. This is the third amendment. This is a roll call vote. As you anticipate, this will go along party lines. Erin, thats exactly right. Weve seen this throughout the course of the last six hours. The house impeachment managers make the case for supporting documents. One case it was documents related to ukraine. Another the state department, this particularly the office of management and budget, all three of votes. Theyve gone down