differences. and the similarities of cultures across the world. al-jazeera. israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu is indicted on bribery and fraud charges after a lengthy corruption and. and us impeachment inquiry here's details of a restaurant phone call it's true presidents from the hearing all the brits are on preserving shortly. for the breaking news that is coming out of israel in the past hour the prime minister benjamin netanyahu has been formally charged with fraud breach of trust and accepting bribes the attorney general announced this decision

a short while ago that yahoo has for years tonight any wrongdoing in this investigation has been going on for years he is really under no legal obligation to resign after being charged that perhaps may be challenged in the courts but this is all happening as the country is really in a political stalemate let's go to our correspondent gary foster who is in west jerusalem so as you pointed out just a few minutes ago harry this is breaking now but it's actually been developing for years. that's right this has been a long running investigation it was opened in december 26th in the police recommended charges in 2018 and in february this year the attorney general said that he was minded to prosecute nessun yahoo on exactly these charges in these 3 separate cases now there were pretty indictment hearings that were acquired before that happened and they took place in october there was some question then as to whether netanyahu is lawyers had successfully argued away the bribery case which is

by far the most important charge most serious charge but in fact no he has been charged with bribery the 1st sitting israeli prime minister ever to have that charge against him and there are these 3 separate cases the most serious of those cases involves netanyahu is relationship what the attorney general calls an extraordinarily close and frequent relationship between the prime minister and his wife and the business men show elevates and his wife he's the he was the chief stakeholder in the country's biggest telecoms company he also owned a news site while er and the charges that netanyahu and his alternate guys as communications minister at the time accelerated regulator e changes which hugely benefited the television telecoms company in return for favorable coverage on the new site well and according to the attorney general it wasn't just a general shift in tone but hundreds of calls almost

a daily calls sometimes from the prime minister's office from his family to the intermediaries who would facilitate better coverage even demanding stories be moved up or moved down or held in place for a specific amount of time so real interference allegedly in the runnings of the supposedly free media. online news site now in the other of the 2 cases one of them is quite similar he said 2 of trying to deal with on. shannon who is the owner of one of the biggest newspapers in the country saying that he would hamper the activities of one of his competitors and again if again he was given favorable coverage in that newspaper now that it was never actually followed through on but there were these extensive discussions so in that case the attorney general says that bribery was offered but it wasn't successfully concluded so in that case fraud and breach of trust or the charges similarly in the 1st of the

charges to be the 1st of the cases to be investigated. very expensive gifts being given to netanyahu by the very rich associates businessmen again in return for promises of favors to them conflicts of interest which didn't really extend all the way in the attorney general's. appreciation of this to bribery so again fraud and breach of trust are the charges in that case ok so as we said none of this is happening at a back in this is happening as there is this sad political stalemate happening with the government right now in israel so that kind of connect all that 4th. that's right it is extraordinary timing already we have an unprecedented happening in israel earlier today in the form of a 21 day period in which any member of the israeli parliament the knesset can try to form a coalition government because neither benjamin netanyahu nor his main rival in the

last election last 2 elections which have both been inconclusive has been able to form a coalition government that's never happened in israeli history before neither has this a sitting prime minister being charged with bribery and so this really goes to the heart of it benjamin netanyahu has been wanting to stay in power at least in part if not many analysts would say that the key motivator because he wants to fight these corruption charges from the prime minister's office that that would give him an extra level of power of leverage to try to fight off these charges all the way up until the court case now according to the to israeli law any minister who is charged with a criminal offense is supposed to step down while he fights that charge so she fights that charge it doesn't specify what the prime minister should do however so the assumption is or the argument is from netanyahu and his team that he can stay on in power that is likely to be charged as i could be challenged rather in the supreme court that might take some time before ruling comes down the other thing of

course that we have to look at is the politics of all this will the seriousness of these charges even though we've kind of been pricing them in we've kind of expected they would be coming this is still a huge moment a real bombshell will the seriousness of all this start to splinter away support within their own party likud up until now his support has seemed fairly solid but today even before the indictment came in his main rival his main potential rival at least for the premiership for the leadership of likud has said that if israel does go to a 3rd election which it will if there's no resolution in these next 21 days then he wants to challenge netanyahu in a leadership primary and he's calling on other members of likud to see. support that so it's really crucial now the politics of all this is nothing you know able to fight off the political challenges is able to fight off the legal challenge to his own ability legally even to stay in the prime minister's office ok harry fawcett with the breaking news there prime minister benjamin netanyahu indicted

harry thank you very much. at the same time the other world leader that is a potential legal jeopardy as u.s. president donald trump the impeachment hearings focused on him have been happening and washington d.c. the reason the room looks almost empty now is because they are on break the chairman adam schiff called a break so that the members of that committee who are legislators can go to the floor of the house and cast votes that actually have nothing to do with the impeachment so when the testimony resumes we'll take you back there what's been happening is russia spec's part dr fiona hill has been testifying as has david holmes one of the reasons he is key is he is a foreign service officer who was actually based at the embassy and ukraine obviously immersed in u.s. policy on ukraine but he said as he testified there was a moment when he began to realize that there were other people that also had their

hands in u.s. policy one of them actually being a civilian rudy giuliani the president's personal attorney let's listen to what he set beginning in march 21000 the situation at the embassy and in ukraine changed dramatically specifically the 3 priorities of security economy and justice and our support for ukrainian democratic resistance to russian aggression became overshadowed by a political agenda promoted by former new york new york city mayor rudy giuliani and a qadri of officials operating with a direct channel to the white house. ok so our white house correspondent kimberly helka is covering the story will get to kimberly in just a moment 1st let's go to castro who is on capitol hill where this testimony has been happening kimberly give us i mean i'm sorry and heidi pardon me. highlights of dave holmes' testimony he's key for a few reasons a phone call that he heard and a lot of what he said actually lines up what the master gordon saw and said

yesterday. that's right now the reason that the investigators brought holmes into this inquiry is kind of a last minute addition on the witness list is because of new information that he brought forward quite recently and that was the immediate the media actions that or the fallout that happened right after trump had asked the president of ukraine on a phone call for investigations into trump's political rivals the bidets and what holmes testified to is that he was in ukraine and that ambassador a solemn lender who had been the main communicator between this shadow channel that we just heard about and the ukrainian officials someone was in kiev visiting and right after trump had spoken with selenski on the phone sunland as well as homes as well as ukraine officials met together to discuss that phone call home said that president alinsky said on 3 occasions that trump had brought us sensitive issues on

this phone call and later holmes came to realize after seeing the transcript of this call that those sensitive issues were the investigations into joe biden home says right after a meeting with the president of ukraine then the american officials went to have lunch and he had they sat down at a restaurant patio outdoors and then holmes took notice he said because someone said well i'm going to call the president now holmes who is a career foreign service officer said he was he was. it surprised he didn't he never heard someone just call the president during the middle of lunch on a busy restaurant patios so he paid attention and he says that he heard the song and then speak directly with the president he heard trump's voice and this is exactly what he heard. on bass or silence phone was not on speaker phone i could hear the president's voice through the earpiece of the phone the president's voice

was loud and recognizable and a baster song and held the phone away from his ear for a period of time presumably because of the loud volume i heard a baster song and greet the president and explain he was calling from kieve i heard president trump and clarify that ambassador song was in ukraine vasser song replied yes he was in ukraine and went on to state the president selenski quote loves your ass i then heard president trump ask so he's going to do the investigation. vaster song replied that he's going to do it adding the president's alinsky will do anything you ask him to do. and then in fact according to holmes testimony the conversation with solomon would further and someone said to holmes that the president doesn't give an expletive about ukraine that he only cares about the quote big stuff and holmes says and he said well the big stuff when that mean the war that ukraine is fighting against russia which you know has national security

stakes for the united states and someone's response was no not that stuff the big stuff for the president are these investigations that he hoped would help him politically ok maybe based on what we've seen in the last few days when as i said when the recess and everyone gets back to the hearing room it'll be time for the. ranking member part of the newness to to start his questioning based on what we seen what do you think we can expect from the republicans in the line of questioning particularly since dr fiona hill has said a lot of the conspiracy theories that have been al fair about ukraine just aren't true and the republicans have referenced a lot of those conspiracy theories. that's right and she had an outright warning she said members of these committees. and basically paraphrasing they should be careful what they say because russia is watching her exact words were actually

these fictions that's what she called these consumers conspiracy theories regarding ukraine she said these fictions are harmful even if they're deployed for purely domestic political purposes so apparently knowledge that that these questions coming from republicans on this panel are partisan in nature they're trying to protect the president. rather than get down to what the trevon says in this case and it will be interesting to see whether that. impacts the way that republicans approach now that it's their turn to question witnesses we know that in the previous hearings that for each and every witness who appeared in public that ranking member of the newness has essentially followed a script and has a straight from it for every single witness in which he makes a statement quote unquote statement about ukraine and then says to the witness how are you aware of this and that's been a tactic that republicans have been using to get the narrative that would help the

president out there to the american public that narrative being the president's thinking that ukraine somehow plotted against him in the 2016 elections but on a hill who is the ukrainian and russian expert at the white house has been very clear saying that that line of questioning is dangerous in and of itself ok how did your custer live on capitol hill let's go to white house correspondent now kimberly let's talk about what heidi was just referencing mayor of this really weighty testimony from dr fiona hill who is a russia expert she had a warning basically about what the goals and and the motives of russia have been and still are and basically telling politicians and maybe the community at large don't let russia be affective it basically manipulating you and repeating things

that are are not true tell us some some more of that the highlights the top the top line of her testimony. yeah i think what was really striking in the headline from dr fiona hill which was expected was not only that she took a swipe at president donald trump but she also cautioned very strongly members of the committee who are republican who she says have been perpetuating what she calls a false narrative namely that ukraine meddled in the 2016 us election she says that perpetuating this she says is the narrative of the russian security services and she also says that it's conclusive and we do know this from our reporting over the years that in the united states multiple intelligence agencies have concluded that it was russia alone that singlehandedly interfered in the 2016 u.s. election she goes on further to say that well ukraine she believes did not interfere in 2016 she is concerned about interference by russia again in

2020 right now russia's security services their proxies have geared up to repeat their interference in the 2020 alexion we are running out of time to stop them in the course of this investigation i would ask that you please not promote politically diverse. interests. now as we look ahead to the republican questioning that will take place in these impeachment hearings we already have a little bit of a window into how we expect that republicans will counter fight back to the claims that have been bade by dr fiona hill we got an e-mail sent out to reporters i just received in the last hour from the trouble war room a rapid response where it has highlighted news articles from prominent newspapers including the new york times the financial times and others highlighting headlines and some reporting that indicates that there was at least

a legitimate question of some potential ukrainian meddling in 2016 so expect that these will be highlighted in the next hour whether or not it will take hold what we see here is in the face of sort of mounting difficult testimony an increasing effort by republicans to try to fight back whether or not it will be successful though we will have to see. can really and this testimony as you said yes and it's mounting testimony that really does not reflect well on total trump off and he were spawn's by tweeting and he is it attacked a lot of the witnesses very personally has he yet attacked either in these 2 witnesses personally. yes he absolutely has in the case of these proceedings as we saw last week we have in fact seen the president injecting himself directly into these proceedings he's attacked the democrats today

calling them human scum he's called these hearings the most unfair in american history say never in my wildest dreams did i think that i would be attached to the word impeachment he's also taken aim at the this is the sort of the phone call with regard to what we heard from the foreign service officer mr hale saying that there's really questioning the testimony of how he could have overheard this phone call saying in fact that he never has phone calls where he is speaking very loudly that he would be aware of this sort of thing so he really centered in trying to undermine that testimony one other thing he did which was very notable is that he's trying to make the case yeah this testimony is bad but it's not impeachable offenses that we're talking about here he quoted from ken starr the former independent counsel back in the late 1990 s. saying does this reach the level of treason bribery other high crimes and misdemeanors no where close that's certainly the president's opinion it will be up

to those voting in the chambers whether or not they believe this mounting evidence amounts to a need for removing the president from office but you can from all of this underscore that this is a president that his speaking as his own advocate trying to counter these testimonies in real time all right kimberly how could live in the white house can really now let's go to robinson will burn 6 assistant professor in the department of political science at howard university he's joining us now from washington d.c. you've been listening to the testimony from both of these witnesses this morning what stood out for you. there are a few points one is the consistency of testimony yesterday investor to the european union gordon song and mentioned that he felt that there was something of an implicit exchange that the president wanted with ukrainian foreign policy he gave an account of a july 26th phone conversation which today mr holmes was able to work out almost

exactly in the same way that consistency is pretty damning and as a 2nd point it shows that there's 1st hand evidence that trump himself wanted this investigation g.o.p. counterarguments have long rested on the argument that trump himself was directly was not directly involved and today's testimony and yesterday's testimony both essentially and the feasibility of that argument trump seems to have been directly involved in this and the republicans have also talked very much about there this is all hearsay there's no firsthand accounts etc etc and the other people that do have 1st hand accounts be at the 3 amigos are whomever the president is not allowing them to testify how democrats break that log jam let me ask. so there are members rick perry for example paul volcker who have refused to appear but what we have is essentially members of either white house staff or u.s.

foreign service who were still in the room and can give sufficient testimony one of dr hill's points today were counted in the 1st of 2 july 10th white house meetings in which song one simply expressed that there was a quid pro quo necessary this was a moment in which john bolton essentially excused himself from the meeting and expressed some pretty serious reservations about the policy making so even though some of the individuals that the white house had been most directly involved are not testifying people in the room have still been able to give enough evidence. how concerning is this to you. about what what this happening on the on the stage on the world stage the the image the integrity of the department of state that there have been career officials career diplomats who have been attacked personally by

the white house sector say has not come to their defense and there have been members of congress that are trafficking in and conspiracy theories how how is all this being seen. you see 2 different things going on one is that the white house is appointing members are essentially staffers who are going to be sympathetic to donald trump but further down we see career civil service officers intelligence officers who are not comfortable with trump's more personally motivated approaches to foreign policy they want to hold the line on and make sure u.s. foreign policy is consistent across administrations and trump is had a very hard time dealing with these committed nonpartisan staffers and military officers the 2nd thing we see is members of congress essentially and particularly the g.o.p. adopting as their response to these impeachment proceedings. fieri that ukraine was the party that intervened in the 2016 election that's

a pretty weak counterargument given that the that the united states senate bipartisan report from the intelligence committee pretty decisively rebutted it and so what this shows is something like an amateurish mr foreign policy coming from some parts of the white house and even from some parts of the g.o.p. members of the house intelligence committee they're really being pushed back on their heels by this regular consistent and pretty damning testimony against the president amateur honesty think that's a strong enough word is this potentially dangerous that policy is being conducted this way. it certainly puts american foreign policy towards ukraine in a way plash again there was sort of a 3 point foreign policy emphasizing rule of law and anti-corruption and security is basically the 3 pillars of u.s. approaches to ukrainian policy prior to trump and trump over the summer basically derailed that in favor of his own policy and now that certainly is

a reversal of the previous sort of state department aims and that is plausible could plausibly be a setback for american foreign policy making. dave holmes talked about and i think that everyone that has testified so far. really talked about the predicament that ukraine it is that they are in a position where they they need the united states they want to please the u.s. to to get what it is that they need but dave holmes made the point that this isn't in the past he painted a picture of ukraine still currently wanting to to get what it is that they need from from the u.s. so what might the long lasting effects of all of this be. this is situated in a much broader and more complicated story about the united states is interaction with europe with nato and particularly with ukraine which is sort of the hot point between nato on one hand and russia on the other inconsistent foreign policy

towards ukraine and ukraine's efforts to shore up its own democracy have made it harder for the u.s. to basically hold a consistent stance in support of nato and ukraine and sort of westernization and liberalization efforts and even after the trump administration will make it harder for the united states to be able to claim sort of foreign policy credibility this is basically publicly laid bare that the trump administration is running a shadow foreign policy in contradiction to its own a stance of bleeding neutral foreign policy towards ukraine so that sort of is undermined american credibility going forward as well and into that debate foreign policy that the dave hall is described as pro peace economic growth and anti-corruption all right robinson the burns thank you so much assistant professor at howard university so de paul is as we were talking about he is the foreign service officer who was based at the embassy in ukraine he described the moment of

this testimony when it became clear to him that ambassador song lennon was the leader of the 3 amigos as they recall that would be rick perry and rudy giuliani the moment that it became clear to him that they were running ukraine foreign policy well basser songlines mandate as ambassador as the accredited ambassador to the european union did not cover individual member states let alone non member countries like ukraine he made clear that he had direct and frequent access to president trump and chief of staff mick mulvaney and portrayed himself as the conduit to the president and mr cheney for this group secretary perry investor son learned about revoke or leader style themselves the 3 amigos and made clear they would take the lead on coordinating our policy engagement with his alinsky administration. talk more about the testimony from david holmes castro has been covering this from capitol hill heidi it's interesting how dave holmes actually came into all of this he came into this when he realized that he had overheard

a conversation from ambassador be testified yesterday the ambassador to the e.u. and president donald trump he heard the conversation and it seems as if what he's saying is as all of these pieces began to come into place he realized the context of what it was he heard so let's remind the viewers what he testified to hearing in this phone call. well sure so what what he what he says he heard is that he was sitting on a restaurant patio and in fact and he have with the u.s. ambassador to the european union gordon song land in this was happening the day after president trump had been on the phone with the president of ukraine and explicitly asked the president of ukraine for a favor investigations into joe biden and following up on that phone call the very next day members of the u.s.

embassy as well as ambassador of someone met with president obama skis of ukraine and zelinsky said 3 times that there were sensitive issues raised by a president on the phone calls and homes testify that splayed or when he had access to the transcript of the call he came to understand that those sensitive issues meant the biden investigations then following the face to face meeting with the president of ukraine. home says that they think u.s. officials went on to have lunch at a ukrainian restaurant in kiev and that he was surprised as here's a press event that president at that. ambassador or some wind said he was about. hall trump and it testifies that his career as a foreign service officer he never heard of someone just calling the president of the united states over lunch and in fact the phone call was so loud that holmes

says he heard trump's voice on the other line and he stirred trump's trouble ask someone about the investigations and then following this phone call when holmes asked for more information from somnolent home testifies that song lynn said trump quote didn't give an expletive about ukraine that he only cared about the big stuff and that the big stuff was investigations into biden he also talked quite a bit about the in the you know as he started to realize the the role that rudy giuliani had in ukraine policy of course rudy giuliani former mayor of new york and and president trump's personal attorney and so much of this surrounds the role that rudy giuliani had what he was tasked with doing he said that. a belief he said it was john bolton that described rudy this way me if i'm wrong that rudy giuliani has

a hand grenade that will blow everybody else. talk a little bit more about what holder has been saying about rudy giuliani's role in all of this. right if fact it was dr hill who said who was quoting her boss john bolton and calling giuliani a hand grenade but along the same lines of bad homes testified that back in march of this year is when he 1st became concerned about giuliani's role in implementing u.s. policy in ukraine he said he knew from his contacts with ukrainian members of the iranian government that this has this was happening and holmes himself was reading press reports in the new york times in which julie. nonny himself stated that he was carrying out the president's agenda and trying to dig up trying to get ukraine to help find. how to launch investigations into charisma which is the gas

company on which vice president joe biden's son was a board member of and into the bidens himself themselves and and possibly into the you know these bunked theories that ukraine meddled in the 2016 elections against trump and what holmes testified to is that he was very concerned about this and that in particularly giuliani was trying to get holmes's boss fired who was that was marie yavanna the former u.s. ambassador to ukraine who trump and giuliani had perceived as being against the administration there was no evidence of that but working in conjunction with members of the outgoing ukrainian ministration who later lost favor with their current president that that appeared to be the source of these conspiracy theories that ended up and then fact costing ambassador given

a bitch her job and holmes said that that was unlike anything else he'd seen in his career but some other interesting things he testified to and important things that really get to the heart of the accusations against trump in this impeachment inquiry is whether or not there was a quid pro quo coming from the white house that was leveraging the u.s. security aide and a white house visit for president alinsky in exchange for the investigation into the bidens and on those questions holmes testified that it was made clear to him that the oval office invitation to the lewinsky was contingent on investigations into the bidens and that later he said in his words it was his clear impression that the security aide. hold was likely intended by trump to pressure the ukrainians for those investigations so connecting the dots there that indeed the aid and the investigations were linked we heard similar language yesterday coming

from ambassador solomon who said he presumed the 2 were linked but if you'll notice in their careful wording that still there's no direct connection there's no exact quote of trump saying that these 2 things were connected and in fact we've heard the president did not i time and time again that those 2 things were linked in his mind. heidi and let's just remind viewers the hearings are in recess they're not missing anything once the reste the hearing reconvenes right there on capitol hill we will get back to that and it will be the republicans questioning the with witnesses at that time so stay close. and we do have breaking news we're following out of israel as well the prime minister benjamin netanyahu has been formally charged with fraud breach of trust and accepting bribes the attorney general announced the decision a short time ago we are expecting a news conference to get more details on.