It is 12 00 in new york. Were following what has already been a dramatic day of testimony on capitol hill from two key witnesses, former nsc Senior Adviser fiona hill and current u. S. Diplomat david holmes, both witnesses raising alarms today about the conduct they witnessed between the Trump Administration and ukraine, namely the conditioning of both military aid and a white house meeting on a commitment from the ukrainians into those investigations designed to hurt the bidens, a Smear Campaign against Ukraine Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch who was apparently standing in the way. The conduct of both of todays witness witnesses, they believed lives could be jeopardized in ukraine. Here is some of the dramatic testimony of fiona hill and david holmes. The barrage of allegations
directed against ambassador yovanovitch, a career ambassador, is unlike anything i have seen in my professional career. I heard ambassador sondland say to the president , yes, he was in ukraine, and went on to say
the degree to which republicans are hanging on to that as defense of the president shows you the trouble they re in on defending on some of the merits. to me, one of the shocking things over the last two days has been that it s almost just completely accepted now, every witness has said that there was a quid pro quo for the white house meeting. everyone takes this as almost just an understood fact here, that the white house was willing to withhold this meeting until it got investigations. that makes a very short bridge to the white house wanting to withhold the military aid as well. there s been no serious effort to undermine that simple fact of the withholding of the white house meeting which still, as they state here today, never happened. i m so glad you said that, garrett. it is our job, we re paid to stare at the trees and talk about the trees, but the forest that i think was crystallized yesterday by sondland s testimony is that the military aid and the meeting were conditioned
russia, ambassador michael mcfaul, who, lucky for us, is also an msnbc international affairs analyst. i will start with you. reset what we have seen today, for anyone who missed this dramatic opening statement, a complete indictment from fiona hill of the conspiracy theories and those who spread them. to me, right, nicolle? yes. it s very clear, we ve been talking now for days and days about whether there was linkage, a quid pro quo, an if you do this, i ll do that kind of relationship between an oval office visit and the investigations of burisma slash biden and this cockamamie, crazy conspiracy theory about the ukrainian meddling in the 2016 election. and fiona hill, just sticking to the facts that she knows well, especially fiona hill but also david holmes, made it crystal clear that there was, especially
conspiracy theories than a serious policy or legal person in rudy giuliani. that s exactly right. as you mentioned, i have my investigation binder which is swelling with evidence and testimony, what mr. weissman and mr. rosenberg and others keep in their mind, i have to write it down. they have more experience than i do. but yeah, we keep the call notes handy because remember the question of, oh, will there be tapes. lordy, i hope there are tapes. when you deal with the foreign policy process, there are, as andrew was explaining earlier, very careful notes done through the normal process. and this now declassified by order of the president, september 24th, includes all of that, with the president, as you say, saying, i want you to talk to rudy and my attorney general. wow. if you could speak to them, that would be great. the former ambassador, the woman, quote, was bad news, the people she was dealing with, bad news. the other thing, much talk about bide en s son, biden stopped the p
in business, the bankruptcbankr the troubles he s had in his campaign. is he getting this far by cheating? does he habitually cheat, is he cheating in ways that are illegal or impeachable? this is the disorder of my mind, we had a guy on who wrote a book about how he cheats at golf. cheating is cheating. the behavior of cheating doesn t really pick and choose between cheating in business. cheating at golf, not impeachable. yes. going out on a limb. briefly, david holmes testimony today about that phone call, overheard phone call, the republicans presumably this afternoon will try to undermine that but that links the president directly to sondland and to the orders to go after biden. it also, in terms of the other sort of court, in terms of court of public opinion, you can hear sondland and trump having that conversation. it makes us cringe, it makes the prudish side of me cringe, he