for working for donald trump. and that is this kind of behavior is normal. top aides get desensitized. and laura cooper is walking in now. laura cooper, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for russia and ukraine and asia. and when they got and there is david hale, the undersecretary of state for political affairs. go ahead. cooper testified whenever they got the surprising call that the aid was being withheld that on that call the line from the white house was this was coming from the president himself. and so she s someone who is going to be able to testify the view from the department of defense, how involved was the president, what was being communicated to them about why this aid was being frozen? that is another interesting thing about the testimony and may get into that here, she testified the white house is saying this is all about about anti-corruption and she testified that during this period it was held july, august
understood an investigation into burisma should have been known to be an investigation into biden which was inappropriate. and conversations with ambassador sondland about conversations we layed to the ukrainians about the hold on the security assistance being a result of the failure to secure the investigation. i can understand why the minority does not want to now characterize them as minority requested witnesses and nonetheless they are minority requested witnesses. i now recognize myself for five minutes. i want to begin by asking you, miss cooper, about what you just informed us of so i understand the import of what you re saying. as early as july 25th, the same day president trump spoke with president zelensky on the phone and asked for this favor, the same day that president zelensky
aware that the aid was being withheld? sir, just to be clear, the september 5th conversation that i had was specific to the hold. there was an awareness of that, and there was a question of concern. okay. thank you. you know, miss cooper, to both of you, undersecretary hill, as well. at the end of the day, it really does, and i ve done this before, and it does come down to this. the transcript i m holding up is the transcript of the phone call between president zelensky and president trump that i would hope every american would take the opportunity to read and it s only a few pages long, and much more information beyond that is maybe helpful to inform, but it really comes down to those conversations and those few sentences. mr. hill, going quickly through a series of questions and i have your answers here so this won t take long, and you ve answered them generally, you should evaluate whether the country is worthy of our aid, is that fair
associates have now been criminally indicted and he had no security clearances at all. listen to this. president trump directed us to, quote, talk with rudy. the president directed us to do so. when the president says talk to my personal lawyer, mr. giuliani, we followed his direction. i worked with mr. rudy giuliani on ukraine matters at the express direction of the president of the united states. so we followed the president s orders. i followed the directions of the president. you were attorney at the national security agency, the top secret u.s. intelligence agency. is it appropriate that someone with no security clearances is in charge of u.s./ukraine relations. the president of the united states is allowed to use private citizens in personal capacity but that said there is no question this is highly inappropriate and the significant testimony about giuliani was to the extent he
announcer: this is cnn breaking news. welcome to our viewers in the united states and around the world. i m wolf blitzer in the situation room. we re standing by for the impeachment inquiry to resume with now testimony from pentagon official laura cooper and david hale. that is about to begin. but what we ve heard so far today is truly remarkable. president trump s hand-picked ambassador to the european union gordon sondland testifying there was a quid pro quo with ukraine. sondland saying in part what he calls the express direction of president trump and that the vice president, the secretary of state, and the acting white house chief of staff all knew about it. let s bring in our reporters and our analysts to discuss. and i want to play a clip first