could inflict grave constitutional injury on the house impeachment probe. and finally, this brief cites some precedent that trump and presumably mr. bolton may be concerned about, that congress has more power to force testimony when probing, quote, misconduct by impeachable officials. impeachable officials. the president s the most important impeachable official there. so while these white house officials do follow a long line of aides who do wrestle with these dilemmas, and some of them are real, rarely do you see a chief of staff join a suit against his own boss, the president, or what mulvaney is doing this evening, a suit telling him to reject his own boss s order or accusing him of a bribery plot that may be impeachable, let alone an official who reportedly accused him of cooking up a drug deal. so as with so much in 2019, this is a little different. what happens next in this case after that hearing late today,
of witnesses threatening to out the whistleblower, and actually physically storming the witness room to try to prevent the proceedings from going forward. that s a pretty weak defense. one thing we have been hearing from republicans as well as the white house is there s no direct link between president trump and this quid pro quo. they argue officials were simply acting on what they presumed the president wanted. can you prove president trump knew what mulvaney, or rudy giuliani were doing? you know, that s gaslighting. the white house released the transcript of the phone conversation of july 25th. that is the president talking. by the way, witnessed by one of our witnesses, colonel vindman, who was on the call and heard the same thing the transcript reflects. and in that transcript, out of the president s own mouth, not somebody else s, he says, yeah, we can start to consider that military aid you need that i have suspended but we need a favor, though. we need a favor first, thoug
not rise to the level of an impeachable offense. quite a change in tactics there, natasha. yeah. we ve come a long way from the moment when mick mulvaney stood up before the press corps and basically admitted that this was a quid pro quo, and republicans and trump allies and even the white house kind of went crazy and were really eager to distance themselves from what mulvaney had said, because it seemed like it was just so damaging to the narrative that they were trying to put out there, that this wasn t a quid pro quo, that the president wasn t extorting ukraine. but now it seems like they have no choice, obviously, but to admit that a quid pro quo occurred because of all the witness testimony that we ve seen in the last two to three weeks, from pentagon officials, state department officials, white house officials, who have corroborated, many of them having been on the phone call themselves, who have corroborated not only the fact that the president asked the president of ukraine
regretting now so clearly leaning on the no quid pro quo. even when the call notes themselves show there was a fairly obvious one after today s testimony of bill taylor. yeah, it seems like they should have gone with what mulvaney said. okay, there was a quid pro quo, get over it, it happens all the time in u.s. foreign policy. but instead they were relying on what the president was putting out there, which was the only thing that was discussed within this realm was what the transcript showed, which was i didn t explicitly say, you re not going to get military assistance unless you investigate the bidens. well, i guess the republicans weren t banking on the state department employees and the career officials actually defying the state department and testifying to congress and telling them everything that they knew and found out over the last, you know, six to eight months about what giuliani was doing. and this is also different and more explosive because for the first time, bill tay
clearly leaning on the no quid pro quo even with the call notes themselves show there was a fairly obvious one after today s testimony of bill taylor. yeah, seems like they should have gone with what mulvaney said, okay, there was a quid pro quo, get over it, it happens all the time in u.s. foreign policy. but instead they were relying on what the president put out there which was the only thing that was discussed in this realm was what the transcript showed, which was i didn t explicitly say you re not going to get military assistance unless you investigate the bidens. well, i guess the republicans weren t banking on the state department employees and the cull rear officials actually defying the state department and testifying to congress and telling them everything they knew and found out over the last 6 to 8 months about what giuliani was doing and this is also different and more explosive because the first time bill taylor has testified to the president s direct involvement in th