yes or someone is a businessman as in trump's a business man and he was explaining to me. the. relationship the understanding that that a business man would have when he is about to sign a check and by that he clearly meant that president front was thinking about her head in front of him the possibility of providing security assistance to ukraine it was similar to writing a check to. someone who you're about to send he used he used that analogy very clearly to indicate that this would be this would require something if that person over to him something before you signed the check he wanted to get that get it whatever is owed paid back to him and better vocal use very similar language about a week later which indicates to me that they had that conversation as well did you

crane oh anything to the united states let's go with they didn't they owed appreciation for the support and they they were getting support and they appreciated that but there was not and there was not there was nothing owed to present trouble on that but you understood the upshot of this comment given made by both ambassador sunland and ambassador volcker to be that president trump believed that ukraine owed him something personally is that accurate. it's hard to understand but. there was a feeling. on by president trump. that he it and this came out in the in the transcript i'm sorry is came out in the discussion with the inaugural delegation when they came back to have a conversation with president on may 23rd that he had a he had

a feeling of having been wronged by the ukrainians. and so this was something that he thought they owed him to really fix that wrong right but what he what he was talking about is you understood it because in the context of the conversation is that what he owed him were these investigations that he wanted that would have been to fix the wrong exactly and those investigations into the 2016 election and biden embarrassment that's correct now during this early period in september you we've talked a little bit about the fact that you continually heard that the president was repeatedly saying that there was no quid pro quos that right that's correct and he still says that repeatedly today but regardless of what you call it whether it's a quid pro quo bribery extortion abuse of power of the office of the presidency the fact of the matter as you understood it is that security assistance and the

white house meeting were not going to be provided unless you crane initiated these 2 investigations that would benefit donald trump's reelection is that what you understood the facts to be mr rove and what i can do here for you today is tell you what i heard from people and in this case that was what i heard from them besser solve them. he described the conditions for the security systems and the white house meeting in in those terms that is required they were dependent upon conditioned on pursuing these investigations and you heard that from ambassador sunline himself correct correct and you also heard a similar story from mr morrison as well as that right who also talked to about or stalin about the conversations that he had had in warsaw with ukrainians and what mr morrison recounted to you was substantially similar to what mr sunland recounted

to you write yes and so regardless of what ukrainians may say now now that everything is out in the public and we're here in this public hearing that they felt no pressure from president trump it was your clear understanding was it not that in early september when the pressure campaign was still secret that the ukrainians believed that they needed to announce these public investigations all right. let's go i know that the ukrainians were very concerned about the security assistance and i know they were prepared preparing. to do to make a public statement that is with the c.n.n. interview that that that was being planned those are the 2 pieces that i know and that c.n.n. interview was to announce these investigations as you understood it right that was

the implication that was certainly the implication we've been focused a lot on the september timeframe but i want to go back 2 months to july before the july 25th call and you testified ambassador taylor in your your opening statement that it was in the middle of july when you understood that the white house meeting was 1st a condition on these investigations is that is that accurate. yes we were preparing and i agreed that the white house meeting was going to be an important step in u.s. ukranian relations so in june and in early july attempts to to work out a way to get that meeting included a phone call and so there were several conversations about how to have this phone call that eventually happened on july 25th and you described in your opening statement a a july 10th white house meeting with

a number of officials where ambassador bolton used the term that something was a drug deal what did you understand him to mean in hearing that he said that use this term drug deal is gone i don't know i don't know what a bus or bolton had in mind and was that in reference to a discussion in that meeting related to the white house meeting that president selenski wanted and in connection to the investigations the context of that comment was the discussion that mr dunn in little coup was mr bolton's counterpart ukrainian counterpart of those national security advisor had had with mr bolton and that conversation was very substantive up until the point where. the white house meeting was raised and mr and besser sunland

intervened to talk about the investigations it was at that point that ambassador bolton ceased the meeting closed the meeting finished the meeting. and. told his staff to report this meeting to the lawyers and he also later then indicated to fiona hill who was also participant. and ses death that he besser bolton didn't want to be associated with this drug deal so it was in the implication was it was the the domestic politics that was being cooked up and did ambassador son say this in front of the ukrainian officials to your understanding and bus a bus or son listen in the meeting where besser bolton was having a conversation with his counterpart range the issue of investigations being

important to come before the white house meeting that had just been raised well and ukraine officials where they and ukraine officials were in that meeting as they are now a around the same time in mid july did you have any discussions with ukrainian officials about these investigations. i don't recall well let me show you a text message that you wrote on july 21st where you wrote it again to ambassadors sunline and volker and if you could just read what you what you wrote here on july 21st one thing curtain i talked about yesterday was done in looks point that president alinsky is sensitive about ukraine being taken seriously not merely as an instrument in washington domestic reelection politics and sausage on

a look i think you just said is ambassador bolton counterpart wright is the national security advisor to the it wasn't no longer but it was at the time what did you understand it to mean when that selenski had concerns about being an instrument in washington domestic reelection politics mr dunne in local understood . that these investigations were pursuant to mr giuliani's request to develop information to find information about and the bidens this was very well known in public. mr julian had made this point clear in several. instances in the beginning in the in the spring time and mr donald was aware that that was a problem and would you agree that because president selenski is worried about this they understood at least that there was some pressure for them to pursue these

investigations is that fair. mr dialogue indicated that prisons lenski certainly understood that he did not want to get involved in these type of activities now i'm going to move ahead now to july 25th which was when president trump and president selenski had the phone call but before we get to the phone call i want to show both of you a text message neither of which neither of you is on this text message it is between ambassador volker and andre yarmuk a top aide to president selenski i will read it because neither of you is on it ambassador volcker says good lunch thanks heard from white house assuming presidency convinces trump he will investigate slash get to the bottom of what happened in 2016 we will nail down date for a visit to washington good luck see you tomorrow kirk and this was a half hour less than a half hour before the call actually occurred. now investor taylor was ambassador

volker with you in ukraine at this time he was did you know that he was prepping president selenski for this phone call with president trump in this way not in this way mr goldman but i knew that the besser volcker or was prepping ukrainians for the phone call earlier wrong that is in that a meeting in toronto on july 2nd. mr volcker the besser volcker had a conversation with the president linsky. and had indicated in a phone call that he at that time was going to talk mr dillon ski presents lewinsky through. the steps that need to be taken in order to get to the phone call understood and you testified earlier that the security assistance had already been frozen to your knowledge at least by july 18th is that right that's correct that

was just a week earlier than this correct so just so we're clear ambassador taylor before this july 25th call president trump had frozen the security assistance that ukraine needed and that the white house meeting was conditioned on ukraine initiating this investigation and that had been relayed to the ukrainians is that an accurate state of play at this time that's an accurate state of play that i at that point had no indication that any discussion of the security assistance being subject to condition by conditions on the investigations had taken place right but you understood that the white house made that's correct all right let's move ahead to this july 25th call and between the presidents now am i correct about that neither of you were on this call is that right mr can't. that's correct and you

were neither as well so you both read it after it was released publicly at the end of september yes yes i want to spend just a little time reading the transcript as we've been encouraged to do and i want to particularly note for excerpts of the transcripts one that relates to the security assistance we've been talking about another that discusses a favor that president trump asked of president selenski a 3rd where president trump asks the ukrainian president to investigate his political opponent former vice president biden and then a final one where the ukrainian president directly links the desired white house visit to the political investigations that president trump wanted so let's go look at the 1st egg syrups which is a near the beginning of the call when president selenski discusses the military aid that the u.s. provides to ukraine he says i would also like to thank you for your great support

in the area of defense we are ready to continue to cooperate for the next steps specifically we are almost ready to buy more javelins from the united states for defense purposes now at the time of this phone call ambassador taylor and mr can you both knew that the aid had been frozen is that right is correct and ambassador tell you testified that president trump obviously also knew that the aid had been frozen as well since he was that responsible for doing that is that correct that's what i had been told that's what we heard on that conference call yes but to neither of your knowledge the ukrainians were not aware of that at that point not to my knowledge not to my knowledge but right after president selenski thanks president trump for his great support in the area of defense president trump then says and we'll go to the next excerpt. i want you to do us a favor though because our country has been through a lot and ukraine knows

a lot about it i would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with ukraine they say crowd strike i guess you have one of your wealthy people the server they say ukraine has it and then at the end of the paragraph he says whatever you can do it's very important that you do it if that's possible now mr ken you've testified a little bit about how important this white house meeting was to president selenski how would you expect a new ukrainian president to interpret a request for a favor from the president of the united states i cannot interpret the mind of president selenski other than to say that it was very clear that what they were hoping to get out of this meeting was a date and a confirmation that he could come to washington obviously you can't put yourself in the mind but if the ukrainian president for a country that's so dependent on the united states for for all things including

military assistance is requested to do a favor how do you think the ukrainians would interpret that. if you go further into the call record as part of this and we don't have it on the screen but to the best of my reelect recollection reading it after it was released in september 25th president selenski went into having whatever your problems were that was the old team i've got a new team and we will do whatever is appropriate and be transparent and honest about it i don't remember the exact words but he was trying to be in his own words in response be responsive. to conduct. a business of ukrainian government in a transparent and honest manner now when he talks about this crowd strike in the server what do you understand this to be a reference to. to be honest i had not heard of crowd strike until i read this

transcript on september 25th do you now understand what it relates to i understand it has to do with the story that there's a server with missing e-mails i also understand that one of the owners of or of crowd strike is a russian american i'm not aware of any connection to the company now are you aware that this is all part of a larger allegation that ukraine interfered in the 2016 election yes that is my understanding and to your knowledge is there any factual basis to support the allegation that ukraine interfered in the 2016 election to my knowledge there's no factual basis no and in fact who did interfere in the 2016 election i think it's amply clear that russian interference was at the heart of the interference in the 2016 election cycle let's move to the 3rd excerpt that i mention related to vice president biden. and it says the other thing there's

a lot of talk about biden's son this is president trump speaking that biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the attorney general would be great biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it it sounds horrible now at the time of this call vice president biden was the front runner for the democratic nomination in the 2020 alexion and mr credit are you familiar as you indicate in your opening statement about these allegations related to vice president biden i am and to your knowledge is there any factual basis to support those allegations none whatsoever when vice president biden acted in ukraine did he act in accordance with official u.s. policy he did now let's go to the in the last excerpts that i wanted to highlight. which is president selenski speaking and he says i also

want to thank you for your invitation to visit the united states specifically washington d.c. on the other hand i also want to ensure you that we will be very serious about the case and we will work on the investigation now ambassador taylor right after president that selenski mentions is much desired washington visit he says on the other hand and then says that ukraine will be very serious about the investigation is this the same link between the white house visit and the investigations that ambassador volcker had texted to andre your moc just a few minutes before this conversation that's my assumption now just to summarize what we've just read in this july 25th call between the presidents the ukrainian president thanked president trump for security assistance that president trump had just frozen to which president trump responded that he wanted president selenski to do him a favor though by investigating the 2016 u.s.

election and the bidens then president selenski says that he will pursue these investigations right after he mentions the white house visit is that your understanding ambassador taylor of what we just read yes and mr kent is that yours yes you'll back the majority time has expired will you gentlemen like brief recess let's take a 5 minute recess and then we'll resume with a minority questioning. all right well if you're just joining us you've been listening to the 1st couple of hours of hearings live from capitol hill extended coverage of the impeachment inquiry against us president donald trump the investigation had up to now involved hearings conducted behind closed doors but today we had the 1st public hearings that began and have been a televised live over the last couple of hours have been hearing testimony from 2

prominent u.s. diplomats on what they knew about the central issue at the heart of this impeachment inquiry president trams july 25th telephone call with the ukrainian president. and the allegation that trump pressured the ukrainian leader to investigate democratic rival joe biden's family we have correspondents covering this from all the angles castro is live for us from capitol hill in washington d.c. where those hearings have been taking place. so heidi this was a chance for the public to really get to grips with this story many americans and people around the world. who haven't been perhaps following the story as much as others have. getting to see the witnesses hearing what they had to say. did we learn anything new did this did this add to to what what is what we already know

about this story. will have some it's interesting because in fact you know republicans have accused democrats who are hosting these hearings of having staged a dress rehearsal previously because these same witnesses gave for all intents and purposes the same testimonies behind closed doors just a few weeks ago so in fact for those who are following these developments very closely there isn't much new information back there were hundreds of pages of transcripts already released from them answering pretty much the exact same questions but what is of merit today in this impeachment inquiry is delivering the message and getting ahead of the getting not just focus on these nuances but really selling the story to the american public and that's exactly why democrats are doing basically they're going through the same motions again but this time with cameras in the hearing room with americans tuned in to this television event happening in

their living rooms and the democrats very very strategically selected ambassador william taylor as one of those 2 witnesses to begin this public face of the inquiry noting i'm sure that it's its ambassador taylor who is getting the brunt of the questions as well in the reason that he can't have the potential to play such an important role in all of this as if they're trying to sell the story to the american public is because taylor can be cast really as the protagonist that's he has a very compelling background he's bipartisan he has experience in the military and the state department and the private sector and when he was asked to come out of retirement in june and go to kiev and become the acting u.s. ambassador in ukraine. he really found himself dropped into the middle of the

mystery and then he began to undertake an investigation of sorts on his own talking to his colleagues in the state department to figure out what's going on and he very uses compelling terms to describe what he thought was alarming he said 1st of all he didn't know why his predecessor the previous u.s. ambassador to ukraine had been removed from that position without an explanation he was also very concerned that the president's private attorney rudy giuliani was poking around ukraine he was having meetings with ukrainian officials outside of normal diplomatic channels and what ambassador taylor discovered is that the purpose of those meetings was that president trump had been asking his personal attorney as well as a few other select aides to pressure ukraine to release a statement that would be damaging to trump's political opponents here at home

including joe biden the former vice president and what taylor also learns from his conversations with other u.s. officials is that as leverage the administration was using in security aid to ukraine $400000000.00 worth that ukraine with counting on and that's why he says all of this was in his eyes a such great concern. all right how to show castro live there or in washington what this was always billed. as hearing in which we were going to hear 2 competing narratives are on this from the democratic side the accusation from them the president trump abused his office and that there was clear evidence to indicate that on the republican side saying that this entire investigation was a waste of time and was politically partisan and we got a sense of that from the 2 senior congressman on that committee adam schiff and

congressman is going to give you excerpts from from each of their opening statements. the questions presented by this impeachment inquiry are whether president trump sought to exploit that allies vulnerability and invite ukraine's interference in our elections whether president trump sought to condition official acts such as a white house meeting or u.s. military assistance on ukraine's willingness to assist with 2 political investigations that would help his re-election campaign and if president trump did either whether such an abuse of his power is compatible with the office of the presidency the matter is as simple and as terrible as that this is a carefully orchestrated media smear campaign for example after a valiant publicly that impeachment requires bipartisan support democrats are pushing

impeachment forward without the backing of a single republican the witnesses deemed suitable for television by the democrats were put through a closed door audition process and a cult like atmosphere in the basement of the capitol or denmark democrats conducted secret depositions released a flood of misleading and one sided leaks and later selectively released transcripts in a highly staged manner. all right well joseph is an associate professor of political science at texas a and m. university here in qatar he joins us live now thanks very much for being with us non-o. you've been listening to all of this testimony from the beginning and as you were saying these are the 1st public hearings and the 2 witnesses that we heard from there the 2 senior diplomats william taylor and george can't have went before the committee in the closed door session last month and essentially what we what we

heard from them was more of the same of what they what they gave in that closed door session and there is a fair degree of political theater to some of this isn't there and the fact that this is this is playing out before the public now did you hear anything new and what were your overall impressions of this so far i think the most important thing we heard were these 2 witnesses explaining why the ukraine is so important to american interests and how the president's alleged actions worked against american interests in american national security there's been a lot of allegations about the president's behavior a lot of discussion about about how this may have played out and the personalities involved but negotiating the this impeachment process involves a judgment about whether the president's actions constitute an abuse of power that would justify potentially removing him from office and these 2 witnesses statements

about the importance of ukraine to american security and how the president's irregular informal diplomacy to advance his own election interests may have hurt their security was i think important new addition to the public discussion about about impeachment i want to ask you as well in particular about william taylor the u.s. ambassador to ukraine who we heard a lot more from it's fair to say what did you make of his overall demeanor and he's credibility. as as a witness when he said but i think it's a stark contrast to all of the other public discussion most of the debate has been carried out by people who come off as extremely partisan supporters of the president opponents of the president and here finally in public for the 1st time we see the career diplomats and public servants who have been tasked with with representing the united states abroad telling their version of events for

a 3rd take on this from a from a neutral point of view and that again is another important new element of the impeachment process we're hearing for the 1st time one of the things that struck me was something that. william taylor said in that testimony and i want to ask you about this what do you what did you make of the fact that this is a current u.s. and bass and making it very clear that the president's attitude towards another country was in his words illogical could not be explained and was crazy what do you make of that i mean those are stunning things for sitting in a basket or acting ambassador to say about the u.s. president or any about or to say about the head of state of his own country and the fact that this experience a public servant can attach no logical explanation to the president's actions other than the president's narrow political self interest is pretty startling. all

right for the moment joseph thanks very much there'll be lots more to chew on on this no doubt but for the moment thanks very much let's go to kimberly how can our white house correspondent who is standing by there securely we know that. at least that's what we've been told the president did not watch and any of this but what are they likely to be saying about this. well i suspect the president did watch because throughout this there was some tweeting and retreating that was taking place mostly of arguments favorable to the president and we did have a statement also from the press secretary stephanie grisham on social media she says that this hearing is a sham hearing it's boring and a colossal waste of taxpayer time so it does appear that the white house at least staff if not the president is watching this very carefully because some of the testimony that has been presented thus far will it might be boring is particularly

damning if you drill down deep into what the case is being made there were 2 channels of foreign policy with respect to ukraine let's take a listen to the opening statements of both of these career of officials who have served they know under multiple presidents bill democrat and republican as a general principle i do not believe united states should ask other countries to engage in selective politically associated investigations or prosecutions against opponents of those in power because such selective actions undermine the rule of law regardless of the country in a regular in a sea secure video conference call on july 18th i heard a staff person from the office of management budget say that there was a hole on security assistance to ukraine but could not say why. toward the end of an otherwise normal meeting the voice on the call the person was off screen said that she was from over in b. and her boss instructed her not to approve any additional spending on security

systems for ukraine until further notice i and others sat in astonishment ukrainians were fighting russians and counted on not only the training and weapons but also the assurance of u.s. support all that the o.m.b. staff person said was that the directive had come from the president to the chief of staff to o.m.b. yeah as you say kimberly some pretty damning testimony there from 2 people who are career officials career diplomats and while we're waiting for this recess to end the hearings to to pick up we are going to that the republicans are going to get their opportunity to essentially cross-examine a both of these 2 witnesses and presumably that's something that the the white house is going to be very eagerly awaiting yeah because good circularly given the fact that.