Stay updated with breaking news from Sondland doesn t. Get real-time updates on events, politics, business, and more. Visit us for reliable news and exclusive interviews.
Card witness. Has already revised his initial testimony in the president s dealings with ukraine. Sondland has arrived and will be before the committee in a moment. Late yesterday we had a hearing that lasted deep into the night. Well see how far we go today. Welcome back to continuing coverage on the fox news channel. Im bill hemmer. Good morning, bill. Im sandra smith. Lawmakers are expected to double down on a phone call with the president. Team fox coverage back with us now. Chris wallace, bret baier, Martha Maccallum and bret baier. Well be with you guys throughout the entire day. Ken, we have an oping statement from Gordon Sondland. There are a lot of skipped areas in 23 pages. Opening statement will last at
least 10 minutes. From what youve been able to glean off of this, in a quick speed read what do you see as critical for sondland . Right. It looks as if there ma ....
We americans have a tradition of very serious, very important foreign policy. we don t want to be associated with the kind of three stooges foreign policy that involve black mail. i m anticipating that as more details like this come out which all confirm the whistle-blower account, that it s going to put a lot of pressure on senators who care about foreign policy to think about what is the right thing for future presidencies. i want to get to the senators in a minute. i wanted to take a moment you said about the tapes. one of the things that we don t have, that lawmakers haven t seen are a lot of these documents. what we learned today is that ambassador sondland doesn t have access to some of his own documents. in fact, i want to play some of what he had to say today when he was asked multiple times about his recollection of records and what he did have. take a listen. i can t find the records. ....
That the president is saying go talk to rudy giuliani, he knows what i want. and so it is hard for you to distance the president from where this is. and a big republican argument is that sondland doesn t have a lot of credibility left but you saw him bring text messages and emails that he with the secretary of state, the chief of staff, several of their top deputies talking about this and none of them asked when he said hopefully the ukrainian president will be what breaks the log jam and pleases president trump and no one acted surprised at what he said and they all seemed to understand what he was saying so maybe it wasn t explicit but if they are presuming the president wants the same thing you have to ask why do they all operate under the same mentality. and this is one of the most significant and striking things that happened today. the republicans started out thinking that sondland was going to be a friendly witness. we saw this reversal occur which all of a sudden the democr ....
Together although he certainly one thinks he could. on page 5 he specifically and really talks about how unhappy they were. they didn t want to deal with rudy giuliani. they thought he was outside the regular channels but on page 5 he says, sondland in his opening statement. mr. giuliani s requests were a quid pro quo for arranging a white house visit for president zelensky. he was expressing the desires of the president of the united states. that all sounds pretty damaging but here is where at least in his opening statement sondland doesn t do that much damage to the president. and that is that he does not take us inside the oval office. he doesn t talk as a lot of us had expected him to about what the president told him directly. as bret mentioned he comes to believe there is a link to military aid. he understands what giuliani is saying but he never recounts specific meetings with the president where the president said do this, tie this, and i ....
From the norm in both terms of policy and process. in february ambassador sondland traveled to ukraine on his first official trip to that country. while in kiev he met with then u.s. ambassador marie yovanovitch and found her to be an excellent diplomat with a deep command of ukraine dynamics. zelensky spoke to president trump and said he congratulateed him and pledged to send someone at a high level. by the time that of that call and inaugural may 20th trump s he ordered pence not to attend the inauguration but the three amigos, energy secretary rick perry, ambassador sondland and ambassador kurt volker. ....