i'm not as i would i'm asking a bestseller i'm just saying you still believed that the security assistance was conditioned on the investigation after you spoke to president trump yes or no from a time frame standpoint yes now ambassador taylor also testified that and mr morrison both of them testified that you told them that president trump said there was no quid pro quo which you also included in that text message that you referred but then you went on and they had slight variations as to what you told them but then you said that to ambassador taylor that president selenski himself not the prosecutor general needed to clear things up in public or there would be a stalemate and mr morrison recounted something similar you don't have any reason to doubt that both of their very similar recollections of the conversations they had with you do you ambassador sunline let me break that down mr goldman. the text as i said about the no quid pro quo was my effort to

respond to ambassador taylor's concerns to go to president trump apparently ambassador taylor had access to secretary pompei oh he did not have access to president trump so i made the phone call i said what do you want president trump responded with what i put in the text and then i strongly encouraged. embassador taylor to take it up with the secretary and he responded i agree when i said that as far as the other part of your question relating to. whether or not the prosecutor could make the statement or selenski could make the statement i don't recall who told me whether it was volcker or whether it was giuliani or whether it was president trump it's gotta be zaleski it can't be the prosecutor but that's what i relate whoever i got that information from i relayed that to i believe both mr or excuse me ambassador taylor and to mr morris but as of september 9th you

understood did you not that president trump either himself or through his agents required that president selenski make a public announcement of the 2 investigations that president trump cared about in order to get both the white house meeting and to release the security assistance is that correct i believe that is correct as chairman are you about concludes our 45 minutes i now recognize mr noon as. ok. when we take a 5 or 10 minute break thank you. this is the 5th day of the impeachment inquiry into us president donald trump you had just been listening to the embassador to the e.u. gordon song when he made an opening statement and has just been question by adam schiff the leader of the house intelligence committee the democrats and also the

counsel for the democrats as well. he made news he said basically there was a quid pro quo we've heard that phrase quite a bit he used that exact phrase in a statement he said it became clear to him that the only way you crane was going to get about $400000000.00 in aid that had already been proved by both parties the only way to get that a was for ukraine's new president selenski to make an announcement not necessarily do an investigation and make an announcement of an investigation into. a company that former vice president joe biden's son was on the board so basically an investigation into the bidens he also made clear that everyone was in the loop another exact quote everyone was in the loop basically that meant he said

secretary state pompei o at some point was aware of this he referenced repeatedly rudy giuliani the president's personal attorney who was in charge basically of the efforts. of energy rick perry as well chief of staff nick mick mulvaney that is former national security advisor john bolton current volcker who also testified former special envoy to the ukraine he testified yesterday and he implied that at some point bice president mike pence also became aware so let's go ahead and play just a bit of the testimony of an ambassador horns on let's listen this is not my 1st time cooperating with this committee as you know i've already provided 10 hours of deposition testimony and i did so despite directives from the white house and the state department that i refused to appear as many others have done i agreed to

testify because i respect. the gravity of the moment and i believe i have an obligation to account fully for my role in these events to let everyone know what things stand right now this is just a quick 5 minute break before the republicans get a chance to to question the ambassador kimberly helping us following the developments outside of the white house we're going to speak to kimberly in just a moment birth is going to castro is just outside the chambers where this hearing is being held there on a quick 5 minute recess it's been quite a quite a morning there in washington ivy. that's right it's been quite a morning with gordon solomon starting his testimony by saying yes there was absolutely an explicit quid pro quo referencing that there was a white house meeting dangled for president selenski an invitation for him to meet with trump and he and someone said that it was very clear that the president was

not going to allow selenski to visit without launching investigation without ukraine announcing it wasn't launched investigations into joe biden but then it gets even more interesting when someone goes further and talks about the 2nd that broke while there has been alleged here that being that trump also was withholding the military aid to ukraine in exchange for the public announcement of those investigations and someone has very carefully worded testimony here i know you read some of his exact quotes out loud to others that struck me was someone said it was quote common knowledge that these 2 things were linked that the aide and the statement for the best occasions into the bidens were conditioned and he said that it was absolutely conditioned and this is how he explained his reasoning leading him to that conclusion. i was adamantly suppose adamantly opposed to any

suspension of aid as the ukrainians needed those funds to fight against russian aggression. i tried diligently to ask why the aid was suspended but i never received a clear answer still haven't to this day in the absence of any credible explanation for the suspension of aid i later came to believe that the resumption of security aid would not occur until there was a public statement from ukraine committing to the investigations of the 2016 elections and the recent as mr giuliani had demanded. you can really tell how he's trying to thread the needle there or shall because he also under questioning said something that appears to be supportive of the president another quote i never heard from president trump that aide was condition on

announcement of the investigations referencing at that point the phone conversations that saleh had with president trump he was asked specifically about a conversation in early september which occurred right after it was brought to his attention that there was a lot of among other u.s. ambassadors saying that that was crazy that it appeared that this aide was linked to the political investigations will someone testified that he called trump in the middle of the night that he got a very sour traum who was in a bad mood and when solid ass trump what is it that you do want he said that the president's words were i want nothing i do not want to quit pro quo but selenski the president of ukraine should quote do the right thing so he song line is saying that that's affirmed what his and now us says of the situation was already at that

point that the security aid and that the investigations into the bidens were tied. so heidi this is a lot of what someone is saying it is new information you could you could maybe depending on how you describe it you can say he's updating is testimony changing a bit as you said a lot of this is contradictory to the 10 hours of deposition that he already gave he tried to say or insinuate that some of that is because he was unable to get his documents from the state department because they won't allow him to can you talk a little bit more about that because that's something that out of out of shifts referenced as well that none of the documents that the committee has requested has the white house turned over. that's right it's interesting because someone has been sort of all over the place on his testimonies reversing himself 7 in the past but today we heard him lay the blame also at the feet of the u.s. secretary of state mike pump aoe saying that the state department has not allowed

him to access records of his conversations other documents that song lynn says he needs to refresh his apparently not great memory and further drawing pump ale into the mix someone testified that he got messages from pompei all throughout his dealings with ukraine encouraging him saying that he was doing a great job and that he should keep at it it's interesting to us it's interesting to think what the motivation here is for a song lind is he trying to shift some of this responsibility toward his superiors in order to dig himself out of the legal hit that he might find himself in it's interesting he notably doesn't take the blame for any of what he's saying happened he blames rudy giuliani the private attorney of president trump for what someone says has been this insidious campaign trying to get more trying to get those

investigations out of ukraine and putting more and more as leverage from the u.s. 1st the white house meeting for the lewinsky and later the security aid destined for ukraine and then he blames pompei though for apparently not telling someone that he was doing anything wrong for rather encouraging him as someone was having these meetings with ukrainian officials and making those explicit demands say if you don't give up those the public announcement of the investigations you will not be getting the security aid from the u.s. the bigger question is how much how much blame does he put at the feet of president shrub and notably he seems to be the most tight lipped when he's asked that question. ok heidi this post of there from capitol hill let's go now to the white house our white house correspondent kimberly how get kimberly the key words. from ambassador solomon i followed the directions of the president talking about the man

in the house right behind you. that seems to be the beginning and end of all of this what do we know about what the white house is is watching is paying attention to. well the u.s. president is expected to leave the white house momentarily he's trying to shift directions away from the headlines on capitol hill to austin texas where he's headed to tout creation of jobs at an apple plant that he says is a direct benefit as a result of his policies but there's no question that what most people are going to be focusing on is this testimony that has just taken place on capitol hill and i should note the last few minutes as you were talking with our correspondent joe castro the chair of the house intelligence committee adam schiff spoke to reporters very briefly i did manage to catch a feed of some of that coming from capitol hill and he said that essentially this testimony speaks to the heart of the issue of bribery high crimes and misdemeanors

and there's no question that the sort of the allegations that have been put forward by gordon the ambassador to the european union really has implicated not just the u.s. president but also the secretary of state by com pale and the vice president of the united states mike pence and as a result adam schiff going on to say just moments ago that there is no question that this is why they do not want these documents public that they have been attempting to obstruct this investigation because of their firsthand knowledge of the scheme so given those statements it's pretty unusual that the house intelligence chair was speaking in the midst of proceedings to reporters they seem to believe judging from that language that this is a pivotal moment as we're on day 4 of these public hearing so now we're watching very carefully to see what the president of the united states is going to say it's notable that he is leaving his departure to later in the day perhaps watching these proceedings we do know that he watched them yesterday and before that in advance of

a bass or sawmills testimony the president said in a tweet saying that there was a lot of confidence coming from the white house in fact during these proceedings the press secretary stephanie grisham all. out attacks saying there is a stark difference between truth and opinion truth derive substance and sustenance from facts whereas opinion is a judgment influenced by predators prejudices apologies she goes on with the hash tag impeachment circus so the republicans defenders of the president seem to be trying to make the case that this is a circus that this is a statement not backed up by fact it's going to be very very hard to do that moving forward given the testimony that we've just heard from the ambassador to the european union and given the fact that so much of the testimony from various people can really it matches up it winds up and it seems that the white house in the past has tried to this question a lot of things question. colonel vend men has tried to paint people as never

trumper as. ambassador gordon psalm one does doesn't fit and never never trump or tell us a little bit more about him. well the fact of the matter is is that he's a major republican donor so that makes it pretty challenging given the fact that essentially he's one of the president's own so the fact that he is saying all of this makes it that much more difficult now for republicans to defend we heard the opening statement from devon newt is where he simply tried to characterize this even using some of the language that we've heard from democrats alleging them that they have a sort of. conspiracy theory with regard to quid pro quo well the problem is is that it's not a conspiracy theory if gordon someone's actually testifying that that's exactly what it was quid pro quo so it's going to make that defense very difficult given the fact that now this there has also been testimony that there was knowledge of

the scheme that extended far and wide sort of to the outer corners of the white house the state department a vice president's office despite denials in the past it's going to be difficult to counter this now the reason the white house had been confident up to this point is they felt that they had gotten something very positive from the hearings on tuesday afternoon kurt volker for example. was mentioned throughout this testimony had essentially done something positive for the president so there was no quid pro quo so now we've got these 2 statements that directly contradict one another it's going to be up to the republicans now moving forward to try to dissect that but given the fact that we have new details from gordon given the fact that he is a republican donor to president trump it's going to be very difficult to accomplish that task ok kimberly hellcat following all of this from the white house ken really thank you we'll come back to you let's bring steve clements into the conversation the host the bottom line al jazeera as weekly political show he joins us live from

washington d.c. . steve this feels like an inflection point today. it's a huge earthquake you know the hearing in part began with the ranking member of the intelligence committee devon yunus warning and master sunline that the democrats were going to smear his reputation it didn't happen and now you want to have this was gordon simon moving and shifting just like kurt volker. ambassador volker shifted yesterday these were 2 moves i think the republicans did not expect and you do feel as if the you know the teeter totter has now gone the other direction and so i think this is staggeringly important i think his testimony was electric and powerful and blunt and on the issue of the ecosystem around the president and what everyone thought was essentially a quid pro quo we now don't have any ambiguity is as far as this testimony is concerned so when you talk about the president's ecosystem yes coordinates on one

side everyone was in the loop about what was going on he also does that this phrase is interesting it was a continuum insidiousness he said that back in may it started with the generic or quests on behalf of president perhaps through rudy giuliani to for there to be some sort of investigations into corruption generally speaking and then he says it became more and more clear that this was specifically about getting the president of ukraine to make an announcement not necessarily the investigation but an announcement of an investigation into. and into the biden so he said it became more and more clear and then he says eventually he started to realize that the release of the a $400000000.00 was contingent upon upon all of this happening any made it clear that so many people knew about this what what does this say how much bigger is this steve if everything that i just said is something that the president's chief of

staff was aware of the secretary of state was aware of secretary of energy was aware of the former national security adviser was aware of what does it say that potentially all of these people knew this was happening. with richard nixon there some of the movies and books that followed that by woodward and bernstein recalled all the president's men in this case i think you could call all the president's people essentially around him were either trying to enact what the president wanted which was this quid pro quid pro quo a deal with selenski that he would make a public announcement of of this investigation into the bidens and bris milah and then the aide would be released or there were members in the administration like john bolton like fiona hill like colonel vidlin and others that were blowing the whistle and saying this was wrong inappropriate all of these people were not democrats challenging donald trump there is

a divide that's very interesting between those who thought they were just carrying out the president's orders and those inside who said this is inappropriate behavior but they all belong to the president's team and that is what we're seeing play out today and i think that's what's so interesting and will be interesting to see how the republicans defend this because in the past in the testimony that we heard the other day from ambassador taylor. and he says secretary ken you had a case where. there they were being challenge that maybe they didn't hear or see what they thought they did and now that has been removed and i think what it says to your question is it means that we've got a valid it be a solvency to these claims that the president wanted this and it's going to be very very hard i think for the republicans to dispute that and i think we're now will you know probably see an evolution in this discussion to ok maybe the president did want that it's still not impeachable but i see you i absolutely will so let's

continue to listen they have intelligence chairman adam smith has been hearing back and turned it over to the nunez let's listen press conference and bassett or for all the supposedly bombshells that were in your opening testimony i want to get back to the facts of the matter here and thing that the democrats have been unwilling to accept is that their operatives got campaign dirt from ukrainians in the in the 2016 election now they know it they know it's true because we have financial records that show it so they were the democrats were heavily involved working with ukrainians to dirty up the trump campaign in 2016 so that's why i want to go through just a few of the incidents that we know i know you may not know all about them you may know about them now but i want to walk through some of those examples of why the

president may be very upset with ukraine and think that there are a country that's out to get him as i think both you've said that and ambassador volcker have said that from that may 23rd maybe the 1st. question i have is were you aware of the and tied trump efforts by d.n.c. operative alexandra chalupa i'm not aware of it so in 2000. there was a 2017 article that also quotes a ukrainian parliamentarian art to maine coast saying quote it was clear that they were supporting meaning ukraine supporting hillary clinton's candidacy and they did everything from organizing meetings with the clinton team to publicly supporting her to criticizing trump i think that they simply didn't meet with the truck pat

campaign because they thought hillary would win you know that ukrainian official by any chance that i delegated that were you aware that then ukrainian ambassador to the u.s. chalet wrote an op ed in the hill during the 2016 presidential campaign criticizing then candidate trump not aware but you know that now after the last few months correct so probably one of the more disturbing ones is the ukraine internal affairs minister. of mocked and disparage then candidate trump on facebook and twitter were you aware that ukrainian parliamentarian emitted that part of his motivation in spreading the information about the so-called black ledger a disputed document purporting to reveal corruption by a former trump campaign official was to undermine the trump candidacy i wasn't

aware so you may be familiar the black ledger was used in the 2016 election to dirty up a campaign associate and later moeller didn't use that as evidence in his report on election meddling so knowing all these facts from high ranking ukrainian officials and bassett are probably makes a little more sense now as to why the president may think that there's. problems with ukraine and that ukraine was out to out to get him is that correct i understand your i understand your point yes chairman because you said you said in your deposition and i'm just going to make sure this was your read it back to you on page 279 for your legal team quote they are all corrupt this is your this is what you said about your conversation with the president so this is your

words but what the president told you this is the may 23rd meeting that's correct they are all corrupt they're all terrible people and you know i don't want to spend any time with that and he also said they tried to take me down that's correct and they try to take him down i think any logical person that wants to do 2 plus 2 equals 4 games would say that i was in the 2016 election wasn't i believe that's what he was referring to yes right and he memory so during all this time i remember in the spring the democrats russia hopes with witch hunt still ongoing they're still claiming that president trump is a russian agent they're out to get her out to get president trump at the time his personal attorney is then interested in trying to figure out who are these ukrainians that are trying to get to my candidate as those of us the republicans on

this committee who are also trying to get to the bottom of who were the sources in the still dossier that the democrats have paid for house republicans wanted to know that all through the spring and even the summer of and even as of today we still like to know that's why we have subpoenaed the d.n.c. operatives that they refused to subpoena we sent a letter this morning i doubt we'll see those subpoenas we want to know exactly it's the bottom of exactly. who were these democratic operatives that were dirty in up the truck campaign in 2016 and they just can't get over that the that the president would send his personal attorney over there to try to get to the bottom of that an ambassador you had very few dealings with a rudy giuliani a few text messages a few text messages and a few phone calls. so the whistleblower trying to put together here with their timeline they seem to have a timeline problem because the whistleblower that only they know who they want

subpoena who clearly mr vandeman knows who they blocked testimony yesterday from and would not allow mr been made to answer our questions that whistleblower says on july 25th that there were all these promises being made yet the for what they call it the drug deal that the 3 amigos were cooking up seems to be their their latest you're part of the 3 amigos in the drug deal and bassett or were you aware of any drug deal on july 25th when the phone call actually occurred i don't know about any drug deal. and you know you're part of the 3 amigos i am i'm a proud part of the 3 amigos and that's the same thing about sort of volcker said yesterday because by the time of the phone call that suppose or the whistleblower claims was the reason it was the original quid pro quo has now got down to we're

now out a month later or you're involved and there quid pro quo has gotten down to. down to the level of well they want to statement and you don't even know about anything to do with july 25th to do nothing about military aid. being withheld i knew military aid was withheld beginning i believe on july 18th when ambassador taylor told both of us that that was the case that on july but you don't know about you were not on the july 25th call i was not where the aid doesn't come up at all again i just read the readout when everyone else did you know we've got everybody's testify that was on the july 25th call that there was no a discussed on the july 25th call so then you're in the process you have no idea that this is tied to a body else you say you don't realize that until this because until the end of

august. i didn't realize that aid was tied the brewery sma in 2016 peace was much earlier this year or ranking member i'm glad you you bring up 3 sma because this is another issue that the democrats don't want to go into they refused to call on hunter biden hunter biden could to get to the bottom of all of this he could come in and talk about whether or not it was appropriate for him to receive over $50000.00 a month while his dad was vice president and when they actually were able to stop and get to and vesa gator fire they could call in 100 biden but they don't want to do it let's let's talk about greece i'm a ambassador i know you're the ambassador of the e.u. i think some of the members later will get into whether or not it was appropriate for you to be in ukraine or not i believe it was i think you have

a clear mandate and a to do it but you wouldn't be the 1st in bassett or jacques chile be interested in breeze from juneau that in september 2015 then embassador to ukraine geoffrey pyatt publicly called for an investigation into slips soul of a ski the president of brief sma this was the ukrainian ambassador appointed by president obama in ukraine. i wasn't aware of that you were not aware of it now so you would not be the 1st one to be mentioning that investigation should be done on bree some a because it happened during the obama administration that you know that financial records show. routed more than $3000000.00 to the american accounts tied to hunter biden i did not know that you know that recent american lawyers tried to secure a meeting with a new state prosecutor the same day as prisoners predecessor victor show can who

the vice president wanted fired was announced did not know that we're not going to get to the answer to many of these questions because the witnesses that need to come in and clarify exactly what the democrats were doing in 2016 you're not we're not going to build a visit with those witnesses and so it's an inconvenient truth of the democrats don't want to admit it's their operatives that were dirty in up the truck campaign using ukrainian sources in 2016 and they do not want us to get to the bottom of it they don't want you and asser to get to the bottom of it they don't want the president's personal attorney even though he's under a special counsel investigation that they fed into the f.b.i. that we've dealt with for over 3 years and i want to get to the bottom of that master i think mr castro has some questions and you mr nunez good morning

ambassador how are you good morning mr castor welcome back you're here all day on the 17th late into the night thank you for your cooperation with the investigation . the president ever tell you personally about any preconditions for anything now ok so the president never told you about any preconditions for the aide to be released no the president never told you about any preconditions for a white house meeting. personally no the you said you didn't have your records or your documents from the state department but if you did there wouldn't be any document or record that ties president trump personally to any of this correct or i don't want to speculate what would be in your documents or records i don't recall anything like ok now it happens ok. you testified that mr giuliani's requests for a prig a quid pro quo for the white house meeting. and you indicated that you believe that

was he was it even seeing president trump centrists cracked mr my contact with mr giuliani began as i said very late in the process after august 1st where when i was 1st introduced to him i by a text but from ambassador volcker so we had already begun those discussions i believe with the ukrainians prior to august 1st so everything was being funneled through others including mr volcker ok but you testified that mr giuliani was expressing the desires of the president correct that's our understanding again how did you know that who told you well and the president says talk to my personal attorney and then mr giuliani as his personal attorney make certain requests or demands we assume it's coming from the president i don't i don't i'm not testifying that i heard the president tell mr giuliani to tell us so if that's your question my buddy you're dead as.