were already on edge before this news. so let s do a round-up of how it s playing. let s begin on capitol hill. cnn s senior congressional correspondent manu raju. what else are we expecting from sondland? we expect gordon sondland to throw rudy giuliani under the bus. but the question is, will he throw the president under the bus as well? that s going to be a big question today because according to witness testimony after witness testimony, gordon sondland had direct interactions with the president and then sondland later told other witnesses that the president himself had essentially linked military aid to ukraine in exchange for this public declaration by the ukrainians to announce investigations into the president s political rivals. now the question is will sondland confirm those accounts or will he say as he did in his closed door deposition, he did not recall some of those key accounts. already amend his testimony saying he later remembered in september he had a conversation w
yeah, which is ultimately, you know, the fundamental question. what i ll be looking for from sondland is whether he says, yes, i have the whole picture and it was totally fine. or i didn t have the whole picture. now that i think about it, it was not totally fine which we saw a bit of from volker. i think the president is clearly hoping for the former. i saw what was going on and it was totally fine and here s why it was totally fine. i really don t care what sondland thinks is totally fine. i care what the house of representatives thinks is totally fine. the issue here, all this like, did you think it was bribery? these are fact witnesses. they re not judges. the issue is what was the conversation? what was he told to do? what did he do? the notion that any exchange, any quid pro quo, i m trying to speak english as much as possible, not latin, but any
closed doors that are going to be things they are going to look at when they talk to him today in an open setting. one of the things he said is that president trump directed him to work with rudy giuliani, his private attorney, on ukraine. and he said that disappointed him. that he would not have suggested that someone who is of the president s personal attorney area would work on foreign policy but nonetheless, he did it. the other thing he claimed is he was unaware initially that giuliani was pushing for investigations into biden. burisma was on the table, but he claimed the two were separate. so there are a number of things in his closed door testimony that folks are going to ask him about today. he s also going to be asked a lot about that phone conversation he had while at a restaurant, outdoor terrace at a restaurant in kiev, the ukrainian capital with the president of the united states. a conversation that could be heard by others at that table, including david holmes, the
stuff. i noted that there was big stuff going on in ukraine. like the war with russia and ambassador sondland replied that he meant big stuff that benefits the president. like the biden investigation that mr. giuliani was pushing. so here what sondland was doing in this conversation was discussing these investigations. these investigations that would benefit president trump politically and also claiming that that s the only thing that president trump really cared about when it came to ukraine. very, very important. kylie atwood doing excellent reporting for us, as usual. you know, chris, gordon sondland, he s represented by a well-known, highly respected washington attorney who i m sure is telling him, gordon, ambassador, you ve got to tell the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth no matter where that winds up. otherwise you ll be in big trouble. absolutely. i mean, look. this isn t just about going in and having a candid conversation. he has to worry about his
president cares about is this fantasy about the 2016 crowd strike and joe biden s son. there is no conceivable way that is that would be very listen. of all the corruption in ukraine if it were true, and i m not saying it is, but if it were true that the president believed that the vice president s son got a payoff to influence u.s. policy, and if it were true that ukraine interfered in the 2016 election, that would be incredibly significant. there is no basis for that. you can t assume fantasies. you can t that s what i m saying. what s in the president s head matters. but we do know, based on david homes, the political counselor, the counsel forr political affairs in ukraine who overheard a conversation directly from the president with ambassador sondland and then ambassador sondland said according to david holmes, the president doesn t care about ukraine.