the prosecutors with the manhattan d.a. s office gathered in court on the very same day that the trial over concealing hush money payments to porn star stormy daniels was originally supposed to begin. but instead of what was supposed to be the first day of jury selection, team trump and the manhattan d.a. tangled over a sudden twist in the case that led to the trial being delayed. that last minute release of nearly 100,000 pages of evidence provided by the justice department in its investigation of witness michael cohen. at stake in today s hearing, whether trump would be able to delay accountability in this case as well as he hassaged to do in the federal documents case, but the judge did not buy what team trump was selling. the judge accusing trump s defense lawyers in bringing up the issue of delay in getting documents only to derail the trial. the judge asking why the attorneys didn t mention the issue in february. the judge said this, quote, why didn t you bring any of
but, shazam, last week, you come forward with supposedly this new information? there is nothing different in there than what we had on the transcript. maybe that s the reason their star witness, their first witness didn t bring it up. but they had to have something. so you are their closing witness because you overheard the president talking to ambassador sondland. sir, if i can answer. i see four seconds left on the clock. mr. holmes, you may take as long as you need. thank you, sir. i believe that ambassador taylor did already know when i briefed him when i returned from vacation on the 6th. it was not news to him that the president was pressing for a bide investigation. that s not what i asked. i asked why he didn t share with us. mr. jordan, please do not interrupt the witness any further. mr. holmes your time expired yours has not. you may answer the question. it s exactly my point. i briefed the call in detail deputy chief commission. come back, referred to the call
there wasn t an answer. it was a filibuster. mr. jordan we will hear the witness s answer. have you concluded mr. holmes. vicious sir. thank you. mr. hymes. thank you, mr. chairman, dr. hill, mr. holmes, thank you for your testimony. dr. hill, you made a fairly dramatic comment in your statement to which the ranching member took some exception. i m more interested in the ukraine piece of this. but you said some you on this committee appear to believe that russia in its security services did not conduct a campaign against our country and that somehow for some reason ukraine did. i m really much more interested in the ukraine piece of this. but i do want to defend you briefly. i don t know what my colleagues believe, but i do have a pretty good sense of what the effects are of creating ambiguity, of lacking clarity and conviction around the russian attack on the election of 2016. in response to your comment, the ranking member offered up a report, which varies in material respe
And it did not effect security assistance, having meetings with them. if it would, there would have been a lot of people he wouldn t have met with. thank you, dr. hill. mr. chairman, i seek unanimous consent to add to the record a politico article of december 1st, 2016 entitled russia accuses ukraine of sabotaging trump. it outlines russian senior officials making allegations that there was ukrainian interference in the 2016 election. without objection, mr. conway. thank you, mr. chairman. i yield to mr. ratcliffe. thank you, gentlemen, for yielding. i want to pick up where my colleague across the aisle, congressman hymes left off earlier purchasefully, dr. hill, he was not dochedding you. he was defending himself and democrats. i want to make sure record is clear. ranking member nunes is correct. he correctly noted in his opening republicans, not democrats on this committee, were the first ones. the first ones to raise the
Your committee if his work is completed? well, i think he could potentially conclude if the report is publicly available that it speaks for itself. and certainly he has taken the position that he s declined to be public in his communication with the american people. he s let his work speak for itself to date. he may let the report speak for itself. but it will be critical that the report is seen by the american people. and congressman hymes, it s entirely possible the report won t speak for itself because as the rules suggest it can be a really minimal report simply saying here are the prosecutions we brought and here s why, here are the prosecutions we declined to bring, the so-called declinations in that rule, and here s why. and those that could be basically written in shorthand. yeah, that s right. lawrence, there s two reasons why these types of reports are generally kept private. one is and in this case this would be true.