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Has taken down. and i just want your viewers to know, lawrence, that it s not just the ambassador who s able to review those transcripts. every member on the republican side, up to about 50 of them, are able to also review those transcripts and participate in these hearings, despite all of the attacks they ve made on their lack of access. ambassador mcfall, if you could suggest a question to colonel vindman tomorrow, what would you suggest the committee, knowing what his job is and knowing the types of information he has access to, what would you suggest the committee should zero in on with colonel vindman tomorrow? on the small part, again, i don t know how the trump national security works, but when i work at the national security counsel, it would be somebody like a director, the level that he was at, that would review those transcripts that you are talking about, right? so he would know if that was the transcript or not. but the big question, and i think that s really revealing ....
Government s support of ukraine. following the call, i again reported membership concerns to nsc s lead counsel, that would be john eisenberg. colonel vindman stresses that he personally has had no direct contact or communication with president trump. and he also says he is not the whistle-blower. he says, i want the committees to know i am not the whistle-blower who brought this issue to the cia and the committees attention. i do not know who the whistle-blower is and i would not feel comfortable to speculate as to the identity of the whistle-blower. colonel vindman begins his opening statement with some basic biographical information. he says, i have dedicated my entire professional life to the united states of america. for more than two decades, it has been my honor to serve as an officer in the united states army. as an infantry officer, i served multiple overseas tours, including south korea and germany, and a deployment to iraq for combat operations. in iraq, i was wounded i ....
Links up why this is related to our national security. and the reason is, the reason that ukraine did not want to be put in this position is that if their aid was politicized, if it became a democrat versus republican thing, because, say, the democrats thought, well, you know, ukraine is investigating joe biden on a bogus charge, then it would be less likely that they would get aid in the future. less likely that they would be able to defend themselves against russia. that is very much in our national security interests. that s why we re giving them $400 million, is that this is a national security issue for us, and this has now become enmeshed in this case. we re joined now by a member of the house intelligence committee and house judiciary committee, democratic congressman, eric swalwell. congressman swalwell, i want to get your reaction to colonel vindman s opening statement. it has been made public and i know it s going to be something he delivers in the closed-door ....
As you were talking about earlier, that i think what this testimony suggests is that the phone call was just one act, was just one play, if you will, in a long, multiple month, many, many different iterations with the ukrainians. and i want to know when he knew, the other things that happened before that phone call. and secondly, i would ask him about the first phone call. we haven t talked much about that phone call, but there was a congratulatory phone call to president zelensky earlier in the year. and josh letterman, that takes you back to your reporting. you ve done important work on the timeline reporting today. and it seems that colonel vindman s testimony is lightnnip with your timeline. reporter: that s right. ....
To me in reading that statement tonight, lawrence, was the fact that he says that he began to understand as early as the spring that what he described as outside influencers were getting involved in ukraine policy in a way that was contrary to u.s. national security interests. that links up very well with what we are reporting at nbc news tonight, which is that as early as mid-may, long before had previously been known, fiona hill, a top official at the white house had been notified that president zelensky just barely taking office as the new president here in ukraine, was concerned and rattled by this pressure campaign from rudy giuliani and ambassador sondland. so we re getting a much bigger and broader picture, consistent from multiple people who are coming forward, describing a pressure campaign that started early and that was clear to the ukrainians that they were going to have to do what rudy giuliani wanted if they were going to have the type of relationship with the united stat ....