senate who support this president can count on unless and until proven otherwise. that's our broadcast for this tuesday night. thank you so much for being here with us. good night from our nbc news headquarters here in new york. thanks for being here tonight. great to have you with us. it is mid -- it's great of you to be here. thank you for being with us. it's election night across the country tonight. off-year election. so that means there's elections of various shapes and sizes all over the country. some of them are going to prove to be very, very consequential. including in the great state of virginia tonight. every seat in the virginia legislature was on the ballot tonight. every state house seat, every state senate seat. democrats controlled the statewide offices already in virginia, but this meant that control of the legislature was on the ballot as well.

while the associated press has now called it for the democrats in the state legislature. democrats have flipped enough seats tonight to gain control of the state house and the state senate in virginia. that big double flip tonight means that democrats have control of all the statewide offices in the state. they've also got control of the state legislature in the state. and that puts democrats in complete control of the virginia state government for the first time in 26 years. of course the further big news tonight is out of kentucky, where the democratic state attorney general, andy beshear, has turfed out republican incumbent governor matt bevin. nbc news has called andy beshear the apparent winner in this kentucky's governor's race, which will frankly send shockwaves through not just kentucky politics but through national politics for a long time given that kentucky is a state that donald trump won in 2016 by oh, say, 30 points. here to help us make sense of these election results is msnbc

national political correspondent the indefatigable steve kornacki. >> all right, rachel, let's begin in kentucky. andy beshear, you just mentioned it, the democrat taking out matt bevin the incumbent republican. obviously the backdrop this a big trump state in 2016. he won it by 30 points. he was there the other night trying to get matt bevin across the finish line. why did bevin fall short? why was beshear able to win? it there are a couple of things to talk about here, a couple of factors went into this. number one was in the democratic areas of kentucky, there are not many democratic areas of kentucky but in the democratic areas that do exist the turnout, the support level for beshear was through the roof. let me show you what i mean. jefferson county, louisville, city of louisville is their biggest county in the state by far. look at this. the margin for victory for beshear over bevin almost 100,000 vote difference here. in some context here, the last time around when bevin got elected in 2015, the democratic margin in this county was just 37,000. so it exploded from 37,000 up to

100,000. you saw a similar dynamic here, fayette county. this is where lexington is, the university of kentucky. again, 36,000 vote-plus difference there. beshear beating bevin by it was only 10,000 for the democrat in the last gubernatorial election. so that help for democrats. there were other factors, though, as well. another is we talk about the suburbs. we talk about nationally, suburban areas, traditionally republican areas that have moved toward the democrats, moved away from donald trump in this era. you saw that in the suburbs of northern kentucky. suburbs of cincinnati. cincinnati's just over the ohio river. other size on the ohio line. but these three counties in particular in northern kentucky, big suburban counties, about 10% of the state population in these three counties. and they swung pretty dramatically. let me give you an example of what i mean. boone county. yes, matt bevin won this. he got 56% of the vote. when he got elected governor four years ago, he got 66% of the vote in this county. this is the kind of county

republicans usually depend on to drive up their margins. he didn't drive it up here like he did last time, like he's supposed to do, like a republican is supposed to do. kenton county next door, matt bevin won this easily in 2016. look, he lost it. he got 57% of the vote last time around. tonight he lost it outtrite beshear. same thing in campbell county. bevin won this thing by 10 points last time around. tonight he loses it by 6. so population-dense suburbs in northern kentucky really dramatically moving away from bevin and toward beshear. that's the second part of the formula for beshear. even that, though, those two things alone or those two things together wouldn't have been enough. the third ingredient that got beshear across the finish line here in kentucky, rural eastern kentucky. this is a part of the state that really you talk about kentucky decades ago was a democratic state. still a lot of democrats there in kentucky. they're culturally conservative, and they tend to vote republican overwhelmingly republican in presidential elections.

this part of the state, rural eastern kentucky. look at this. a county like bath county. a small county but beshear wins this by six points. look at that. trump won it by 37. it was trump by 37 points. tonight democrats win it by six points. that's a swing of more than 40 points. when you have swings like, that a lot of these blue counties in eastern kentucky it's a very similar story. that's the third ingredient for beshear. rural parts of the state that are ancestrally democratic. the folks that were there, their parents all kind of democrats. they inherdt the democratic registration. they kept it. they vote republican in national levels. they went with beshear tonight. that was an essential ingredient for him. those are the three sort of things that went into that. also we'll get to the other governor's race tonight. there was a second governor's race in mississippi. tate reeves, the republican, we're declaring him the apparent winner here. the reason for the hesitation, because his margin is strong there. the reason for the hesitation is mississippi has an unusual procedure. you have to win a majority of the popular vote.

you also have to win a majority of the state legislative districts. there are 122 of them in mississippi. and frankly we won't have the final count on that probably till tomorrow. we think just based on the vote return pattern that he's probably got somewhere in the 70s, well into the 70s. he'll easily hit that number. we think that will happen. but we want to see that happen before we officially characterize him as the winner. but certainly you just look at the vote totals there, tate reeves, certainly when it comes to the popular vote the comfortable winner there. and finally, the final story, and rachel, you mentioned this as well. the state of virginia. the commonwealth of virginia. the house of delegates. republicans came into the night with a narrow advantage 37 one vacancy that was a democratic seat. really 50 -- 49. really it was 51-49 coming into tonight. the associated press says democrats have picked up five. a net gaven five. the a.p. says for democrats on the house delegate side, that is enough to get the delegates into control there on the state senate side. again there, was a vacancy. so it came into tonight 21-19 essentially.

republican vacancy. it was 21-19 essentially and the associated press says the democrats have picked up two seats there. net gain of two. they needed one because a 20-20 tie they would have been able to break with a lieutenant governor's vote. the democrats get the house of delegates. the democrats also already have the governor in virginia. they have the lieutenant governor. they have the attorney general. democrats have complete control of virginia state government. it's just again to put that in some perspective the transformation politically, the state of virginia, these are presidential election results this virginia going back to 1968. basically going back a half century here. look at this. these are republican margins here. right? down through the years. we use the to call this a safe republican state. we didn't even think about it in presidential elections. it started to change -- barack obama, somewhere between george w. bush and barack obama in 2008. remember that barack obama carried the state. of course he won very comfortably nationally. so that was right in line with kind of the national number. 2012 barack obama got

re-elected. 2016 hillary clinton carried it by six points. better than her national number. if you think ahead to 2020 in virginia remember we were talking this week about all those swing state polls, all those combat'llground state polls in the presidential election, pennsylvania, wisconsin, arizona, michigan. virginia wasn't on that list. wasn't that long ago virginia would have been the first state on that list when it came to swing states. we're not even talking about virginia as much of a swing state anymore. it used to be a red state. became a swing state. and i think now between that 2016 result and what you see here complete control of the state government in virginia. this is a blue state now. we've been talking about that evolution for a while. this might be night that really kind of becomes official. big picture here. look, democrats are thrilled at what they get out of kentucky. a narrow win. but they won the governor's race in kentucky. republicans will say hey, yes. but we won silently in mississippi. and democrats will come back and say okay, how about virginia, how about that state that used

to be a republican state, now again completing that transformation pretty much into a blue state? look, there's something for everybody to sort of brag about tonight but i think certainly the headline tonight is that the incumbent governor, you did see a governor go down in the state of kentucky and again, it was right after the president's visit. certainly all eyes were on that. but a very fascinating election night. wish we did these more often. anyway, rachel maddow will be right back after this. t back af. there's the amped-up, over-tuned, feeding-frenzy-of sheet-metal-kind. and then there's performance that just leaves you feeling better as a result. that's the kind lincoln's about. ♪

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you think we've got it bad? spare a thought for our cousins across the pond today. >> a vital part of cooperation with our nato allies is defending ourselves against russian attempts to interfere with our democracy. to that end can i ask the secretary of state what possible reason the government can have to delay the publication of the isc report until after the general election? what on earth do they have to hide? >> what on earth do they have to hide? we've got our own drama over here. but our closest overseas ally is having their own very american-seeming version of it

right now all of a sudden. for the past year and a half the intelligence committee in the british parliament with the help of british intelligence services, they've been doing a review about russian influence operations in the uk, the possibility of russian interference in the brexit referendum where the uk surprised everybody in the world by voting to extract itself from the european union. the intelligence report has also been looking at whether russia more broadly has been penetrating and subverting british political institutions, whether russian money has been used by the kremlin to try to influence british politics and political outcomes. they've been working on this thing for a year and a half. they finished it. the finished report is apparently about 50 pages. the intelligence committees finished it. they put the report through whatever classification review it needed to go through. they put in the redactions that were warranted in terms of sensitive information that couldn't be shown to the public. they got that all done. and then one last step. they submitted for one last sign-off to number 10 downing

street, so the british prime minister boris johnson could put his signature on it as a formality and then it could be released to parliament and ultimately to the public. that process is an official thing in the british parliamentary system. the cabinet office says the prime minister has ten days to give something like that one last look and affix his signature and then away it goes. but that ten-day period has come and gone now. and now the new british prime minister boris johnson says he's not going to release that report. at least he's not going to allow it to be released before the uk has their next general election on december 12th. i mean, boris johnson is only prime minister because of the political disaster that is the brexit vote in the uk. the only reason they're having another election next month is because of the brexit disaster in the uk. well, here's the long-awaited report on potential foreign influence in creating the brexit disaster in the uk in the first place. the report is done. the intelligence committee did

it, wants it out. this is a non-partisan intelligence product that's designed to let the british people know what's going on. they specifically tried to have it finished before the next election. but boris johnson is like yeah, i know, but i'm just not going to allow it to be released. no, not before the voting. and so today in parliament in london there was an emergency debate on what the heck is going on here. >> thank you very much, mr. speaker, for granting this urgent question. and can i thank the learned members of the field for all its efforts. i can only echo his words about the utterly unjustifiable, unprecedented, and clearly politically motivated reasons for delaying publication of this report until after the election. this is not at the request of the intelligence agencieses. there are no foreign powers we have to consult, which was the reason for the result -- for the delay of the rendition report. this is nothing less than an

attempt to suppress the truth. from the public and from parliament. and it is an affront to our democracy. so we are bound to ask, what is downing street so worried about? why would they not welcome an official report into attempted russian interference in the 2016 referendum, whether successful or otherwise? and i fear it is because they realize this report will lead to other questions about the links between russia and brexit and with the current leadership of the tory party, which risks derailing their election pain. >> so boris johnson, the british prime minister, is being criticized there in parliament today in this emergency debate by senior member of the opposition labour party. but he's taking criticism on this point from both labour and conservative mps. the prime minister's office honestly has no explanation as to why they're not letting this report be released. basically, all they've said is they want more time.

under the rules they don't get more time. but they are suppressing that report nonetheless. they are not allowing it out before the election. now, it's interesting watching this from over here. you see the contrast in terms of the way things run over there and the way things run here. number one, everybody who speaks in parliament is very articulate and that's hard to get used to. but number two, nobody in britain seems to believe there's any real risk of this report being leaked either to parliament or to the public. and if that's the case, if there's no chance this thing could leak this may be a done deal. parliament had this emergency debate on the subject today which didn't resolve the issue. at end of the day parliament closed their doors and went home. they're now due to be home and out of session until the election happens, till after the election happens on december 12th. and under the rules for how these things are handled this report because it's a parliamentary report, it can't be released while the parliament is not in session. and so prime minister boris johnson appears to have submarined this thing to keep it away from the british public

before they have to go vote on whether or not they want to keep him as prime minister. and to be clear about what a freaking mess this is for them, this gentleman is the top adviser to boris johnson as prime minister. remember when steve bannon was working in the white house in the way that "saturday night live" portrayed steve bannon in the white house was that he was the grim reaper and it was super terrifying? he was like -- that is how dominick cummings is seen in britain. but he ended up as boris johnson's top adviser. he ended up in the prime minister's office specifically because of brexit. he was the campaign director for the vote leave campaign during the brexit referendum. vote leave since that referendum has been fined and referred to the police for illegal spending in the brexit campaign. just this past week police referred ha tha case to prosecutors for potential criminal prosecution. dominick cummings simultaneously has become the subject of some kind of high-level whistle-blower complaint raising

concerns about his unexplained links to the russian government and russian interests. as he was running the brexit campaign and then becoming the top adviser to the pro-brexit prime minister who now won't let the brexit russian interference report come out before people have to vote on him. as of tonight the prime minister's office is refusing to answer questions about that as well. now, so you know, take comfort, america, it's not just us. even our closest overseas ally is living their version of the same nightmare with even more urgency about the perversion of the next election, which for us is a year away but for them it's less than six weeks away. and in the midst of everything else going on here president trump found time today for a one-on-one phone call with boris johnson. you can imagine the conversation. so tell me more about you just not allowing the russian interference report to be released. you're just sitting on it? you're just keeping it? you're just saying people can't see it until after the election or maybe never? tell me what that's like.

and this -- you have a whistleblower too? you're just refusing to engage on that? you think that's going to work? you got anybody who can help you figure out who the whistle-blower is? you going to go after him, bore snis i mean, imagine what these two have to talk about at this point in both of their careers. here at home today to say the least was not an awesome day for president trump either electorally in terms of what has happened tonight to republican candidates at the polls, nor was it an ideal day nefrmz his ongoing impeachment proceedings in washington. today those proceedings took a sharp turn for the worse in terms of what had been the president's defense. more on that ahead. stay with us. more on that ahead stay with us 25 cent boneless wings at applebee's. get 'em while they're hot. ♪

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we are kaiser permanente. thrive. now that the impeachment committees are starting to release the transcripts from the witness testimony they've already taken behind closed doors, it's starting to seem clear that they think they've got it down, they've got the basics of what happened. the core allegations at the center of the impeachment they feel like they've got the plot. they've got all these mutually corroborating witnesses. how many more people do you need to tell you all the same story? well, the house has requested testimony for some additional white house officials including one that really piqued my interest today. we'll be talking about that on tomorrow's show. but as the closed-door deposition part of the impeachment proceedings broadly starts to wind down, there of course are two big, big questions that are going to determine the president's ultimate fate. one is whether the public testimony part of this may shift public opinion even more

decisively against the president here, whether it may ultimately shake some of the reflexive republican support for the president. the second factor is even more instrumental to the president's fate, which is whether republican senators may ultimately find the behavior that has been uncovered in this impeachment inquiry could ultimately be too much for even them to stomach. >> if you're looking for a circumstance where the president of the united states was threatening the ukraine with cutting off aid unless they investigated his political opponent, you would be very disappointed. that does not exist. >> senator lindsey graham just a couple of weeks ago. phew. relief. obviously, it would be terrible if we had the president threatening the ukraine with cutting off military aid unless they investigated for him. luckily nothing like that has turned up. now of course that is absolutely what has turned up in what is now essentially consensus testimony from all of the witnesses whose testimony we've been able to see.

and so here's the headline in the "new york times" tonight. "key witness revises testimony, citing quid pro quo with ukraine. ambassador gordon sondland says he told ukrainians aid was held up over inquiry demand. gordon sondland, the envoy to the eu, said he told the ukrainians they needed to comply with investigative requests by rudy giuliani." here's the "washington post" tonight. "with revised testimony sondland ties trump to quid pro quo. in a supplemental declaration to his earlier testimony the ambassador to the eu said that aid was linked to the opening of an investigation that could damage 2020 presidential candidate joe biden." yesterday the impeachment committees released testimony from the u.s. ambassador to ukraine marie yovanovitch, who was fired basically as part of this scheme to try and get ukraine to help trump with his re-election effort. they also released testimony from michael mckinley who was a senior state department official who quit the state department after more than 30 years of service in protest of the way that secretary of state mike

pompeo and the administration more broadly has used and abused state department officials like yovanovitch despite the fact that they've done nothing wrong and done nothing to deserve it. well, today we got the full testimony released from another senior trump administration official who resigned when this scandal broke out. kurt volker was president trump's envoy to ukraine. he resigned as soon as he was summoned to testify to the impeachment inquiry. we got his full testimony today. we also got 65 pages of very tiny print printouts of text messages from ambassador volker today. and they were fas sthating. we also today got the full testimony that had been delivered on october 17th by eu ambassador gordon sondland. he had been sort of tasked by the president with carrying out this scheme in ukraine despite the fact that ukraine isn't in the eu and therefore wasn't part of his remit as an ambassador. gordon sondland was a major trump inaugural donor. that pears to have been how he got this ambassadorship in the first place. he previously testified in a way

that seemed sort of positive for president trump. he testified previously, "let me state clearly. inviting a foreign government to undertake investigations for the purpose of influencing an upcoming u.s. election would be wrong. withholding foreign aid in order to pressure a foreign government to take such steps would be wrong. i did not and would not ever participate in such undertakings." that's what he said in the first instance. but in advance of his testimony being made public today just yesterday ambassador gordon sondland approached the committees with a revision of his earlier statement. in contrast to that key claim by him in his earlier testimony, now he does recollection actually that not only did the u.s. government condition foreign aid to ukraine on them helping the white house in the president's forthcoming re-election effort, but actually he was part of it. yeah. gordon sondland absolutely admitting that yeah, he did

participate in that. he helped carry it out. "i didn't mean what i said before." he told the committee in this revised testimony, "i've reviewed the opening statement of ambassador william taylor. i've also reviewed the opening statement of tim morrison. these two opening statements have refreshed my recollection about certain conversations in early september 2019. the conversations described in ambassador taylor and mr. morrison's opening statements have refreshed my recollections about conversations involving the suspension of u.s. aid. i do now recall a conversation on september 1st in warsaw with mr. yermak," top aide to the ukrainian president. "this brief pull-aside conversation followed a larger meeting involving vice president pence and president zelensky. after that large meeting i now recall speaking individually with mr. yermak where i said that resumption of u.s. aid would likely not occur until ukraine provided the public anti-corruption statement that we had been discussing for many

weeks." and when he says the anti-corruption statement we know from the context here, we know in part from the huge raft of text messages that were just released by the committees today that when ambassador sondland, even in his revised testimony calls it a public anti-corruption statement, we know he was well aware that what he was demanding of the ukrainian government was that they announce investigations that were specifically being demanded of them by rudy giuliani and president trump and they were investigations that were designed to help president trump's domestic political considerations. here for example -- it's all -- we've got it now. here's a three-way text conversation between gordon sondland and kurt volker, the ukraine envoy, and another ukrainian official. the ukrainian government at this point has sent over a draft statement they're proposing that their president could make announcing vaguely that ukraine will look into interference in political processes of the u.s. and a transparent and unbiased investigation, these sort of general statements.

kurt volker and gordon sondland then intervene aggressively to say no, no, no, that's not enough. the statement has to be more specific than that. you have to include that the investigations you're launching are into burisma, where hunter biden was on the board, and the 2016 u.s. elections where we're going to claim that ukraine interfered in the trump-clinton race rather than russia having done it. i mean, their text message to the guy in the ukrainian government literally says "following is text with insert at the end for two key items." meaning we are making sure these named investigations that trump wants are going to be in the zelensky statement. i mean, they're writing the zelensky statement for the ukrainian government, making sure that the investigations are in there by name. and sondland's trying to claim he didn't know what the investigation was about? i mean, here's gordon sondland and kurt volker talking about it directly. again, gordon sondland, looks like potus call tomorrow. i spoke directly to zelensky, he

gave him a full briefing, he's got it. kurt volker, good. had breakfast with rudy this morning. teeing up a call with yerm kachlt on monday. must have helped. most important is for zelensky to say that he will help investigation. and here's volker and sondland talking about it amongst themselves. again, gordon sondland. hey, did you connect with andrei? volker, not yet. we will talk with bill and colin later today. want to know our status on asking them to investigate. gordon sondland, good thought. sondland, do we still want zelensky to give us an unequivocal draft with 2016 and burisma? kurt volker, that is the clear message so far. i mean, it's just -- that's it. there it is. the political impact here is clear as day, right? the closest the president had to any sort of defense, backup, toe hold in terms of explaining what he was trying to do in leveraging this other country to give him political help, it wasn't great to begin with. sondland had already testified there definitely was a quid pro

quo with ukraine when it came to them trying to get a meeting in the white house. they couldn't get that meeting unless they announced these investigations. sondland had already admitted that in his earlier testimony. the only place he tried to draw the line in a way that might be more helpful to trump was on the issue of military aid. sondland said in his earlier testimony, no, whatever we did in that meeting there was definitely no withholding of military aid to try to get these investigations out of them. of course not. that would be terrible. i would never be involved in something like that. well, now recognizing that his role in this has been exposed by many other witnesses, ambassador sondland's recollection has been refreshed and now he is admitting even to that yes, it was a quid pro quo for the ukraine military aid. although i will say even in his revised statement it appears that mr. sondland is still not telling the whole truth. in his revised testimony today sondland is still sort of trying to be cute about his own culpability here and maybe the

president's. he says in his revised statement today, "with respect to the september 1st warsaw meeting the conversations described in ambassador taylor and mr. morrison's opening statements have refreshed my recollection about conversations involving the suspension of u.s. aid, which have become public only days earlier. i always believed that suspending aid to ukraine was ill-advised although i did not know and still do not know when, why, or by whom the aid was suspended." really? you don't know who suspended the military aid? never heard a single thing in the course of your government service as to who had ordered the military aid suspended? didn't have any idea where that came from or why that was being done? you sure? i mean, you just admitted that you told ukraine why it was being done. you told ukraine that why it was happening was because they hadn't committed to those investigation that's giuliani had asked them for. in terms of who did it and whether or not you knew who ordered the withholding of the military aid, go back to those

text messages. july 18th, 2019. 10:19 a.m. text from bill taylor to gordon sondland. "omb, the office of management and budget at the white house, on a secure video teleconference just now said that all security assistance to ukraine is frozen, per a conversation with mulvaney and potus." and then bill taylor completes his text, "over to you, gordon." whereupon gordon sondland responds, "all over it." so here he is notified in writing and he responds in mid july that per potus, per the president of the united states, all security assistance to ukraine is being withheld. and even now with revised testimony trying to say, hmm, i still don't know when, why, or by whom the aid was suspended, we've simultaneously got the evidence that shows he knows exactly who suspended that aid.

and he knew why. we know that because he told the ukrainians why. this guy was the best hope president trump had among the high-level witnesses in the impeachment inquiry. he didn't do much good for the president when he testified a couple of weekends ago that yeah, rudy giuliani was asking for investigations, ukraine wasn't going to get a white house meeting unless they announced those investigations. it already wasn't good from this guy a couple of weeks ago. now today any last thing he might have been able to provide the president is also gone, with him now admitting that he also personally conveyed to them they weren't going to get their military aid or their white house meetings unless they coughed up those investigations. and he put it in writing and got specific as to which investigations they specifically had to announce including definitely let me spell it out for you, the one linked to joe biden's son. this is really bad. this feels cooked. serving top u.s. diplomat in ukraine bill taylor testifies this was a corrupt quid pro quo. the hard-line super hawk

national security guy who came in to replace fiona hill, as friendly as he tried to be to trump, he also confirmed that yes, this was a corrupt quid pro q quo. now the serving ambassador to the eu, the guy who's not by any stretch of the imagination deep state, this guy who's been a government employee for awful five minutes since he coughed up a million dollars to the trump inaugural, this guy who's only in his job because he gave money to trump and is a loyal trumpy, he too is now confirming this was a corrupt quid pro quo and if i'd given the impression earlier that it wasn't it's just because i forgot. the president's hand-selected personal envoy to ukraine kurt volker, we can see him committing the quid pro quo in writing, in communications that he turned over to the impeachment proceedings. right? here's volker, "heard from the white house. assuming president zelensky convinces trump he will investigate, will get to the bottom of what happened in 2016, we will nail down a date for our visit to washington. good luck." he's texting the ukrainian government, by the way, you're

only getting your visit if you cough up those investigations. and there it is in black and white. and of course there's the president's own words himself. he's got people wearing these "read the transcript" t-shirts at his rallies now. the transcript shows the president asking for investigations into his political rivals and other politically convenient weird conspiracy theory topics. he asked for those things as the favor that he needs, though, when the ukrainian president asks him about sending him some javelin missiles. i mean, it's cooked. all of the evidence says the same thing. all of the witnesses say the same thing. there's only one story here, and it's been corroborated from every possible angle. in terms of whether the president did it, it's done. i mean, at least here on earth one it is done. >> if you're looking for a circumstance where the president of the united states was threatening the ukraine with cutting off aid unless they investigate his political opponent, you would be very disappointed. >> no one who was looking for

that is disappointed anymore. because not only is there a raft of all unanimous evidence all supporting that now, even the people trying to help the president here plainly are having to admit that actually, yeah, what you just described there, lindsey graham, that is exactly what happened. confronted with that reality today from this testimony that was just released from volker and sondland, senator lindsey graham announced that he is no longer reading the transcripts of these witnesses from the impeachment proceedings, he's just refusing to hear any of this anymore. he's just done with it. and that is one way to handle your responsibilities as a united states senator. we've got more to come here tonight. stay with us. t more to come her tonight. stay with us so what are you working on?

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ukraine. sondland says he told ukrainians aid was held up over inquiry demand." gordon sondland, the envoy to the european union, says he told the ukrainians they needed to comply with investigative requests by rudy giuliani. here's the companion piece in the "washington post" tonight. "with revised testimony sondland ties trump to quid pro quo. in a supplemental declaration to his earlier testimony the ambassador to the eu said that aid was linked to the opening of an investigation that could damage 2020 presidential candidate joe biden." just in case there wasn't enough going on in your news night. joining us now live here on set is congressman eric swalwell. he's a member of the intelligence committee and the judicial committee in the house. nice you have to here. thanks for being here. >> of course. >> first one of the things we're covering tonight is this sort of surprising electoral news tonight, a democrat nbc news projects is the apparent winner in the kentucky governor's race. it appears that democrats have also taken back at least partial control of the legislature in

virginia. as a democrat and as somebody who was recently running for your president's -- for your party's presidential nomination that has to be good news to you. >> it's exciting. i think it started in 2017 after donald trump was elected. we go to alabama and we win there. and then we -- >> doug jones seat. >> doug jones. we pick up seats in the house in the midwest. kansas, iowa, texas. we see gains. and then here in kentucky. and to just really make it hyperlocal i just learned my wife's hometown columbus, indiana, hometown of vice president mike pence, their city council just went majority democratic. >> wow. >> a lot of these issues are local. we can't read too much into what impeachment means for these places. in kentucky, for example, the governor there, governor bevin, was working overtime to reverse the affordable care act. and that was on the ballot there and kentuckians liked that the apparent winner tonight, his father had worked to put kentuckyns on the affordable care act. so that matters.

>> and campaigns matter. candidates matter. local issues matter. and off-year elections i think it's easy to extrapolate from them when you're in favor of the results and it's easy to write them off when it's not. >> the lesson they take away is yes, wisconsin, michigan, pennsylvania, those are going to be important, but look everywhere. there's opportunities everywhere. >> let me ask you about the impeachment proceedings right now. obviously, it's factoring into -- at some level factoring into every race in the country. it's also still -- appears to be in its early stages while it's also moving fast. how quickly do you expect we're going to be moving into the public hearings part of this? >> we're moving expeditiously. and i think the fact that the transcripts from the depositions are coming out is evidence we'll have public hearings. we want to do that as soon as possible. we have john bolton and mick mulvaney supposedly coming in this week. they've been asked to come in. we're kind of getting at least to the end of on this ukraine shakedown who's relevant.

if they don't come in we're not going to do what we did last year, which was try to -- or earlier this year. go to the courts, fight their resistance. we're just going to file that away as, one, a consciousness of guilt. if the white house thought those witnesses could help them they would let them come in. and two, consider that maybe they're defying a lawful subpoena and the president telling them to defy that subpoena is something that should be an article for obstruction of congress. zbluf been outspoken about the legitimacy, appropriateness, even the wisdom of starting with these behind closed doors depositions. you've made the point specifically that witnesses shouldn't have the opportunity to basically line their stories up with each other, to tell each other how they want each other to testify to make sure their stories line up. do you think that's been effective? >> yes. but we have seen efforts by witnesses to still get around that. and as a prosecutor i learned that you want to have a close hold in an investigation to keep the integrity of the

investigation. otherwise, the facts get out in the public. it could compromise whether a witness really knows something or they heard it from someone else or they're trying to manufacture an alibi. here in ambassador sondland's testimony you see that the night before he testified to us he's on the phone with rick perry. and rick perry a couple -- >> about the events in question. >> yes, about the events in question. a couple days before that rick perry gives an interview to the "wall street journal" and we believe that that was a way to kind of get his side out so other witnesses could see that. so republicans are also leaking parts selectively of kurt volker's testimony in the days leading up to ambassador sondland's testimony. so we've seen efforts, even in the close hold that we've had to try get around that so people can tailor their testimony. that's what we want to protect against. >> ambassador sondland's testimony came with a remarkable addendum, that just yesterday he changed his story on one of the main questions at the heart of this. he came in and told you -- just tell me if i've got this right. as far as i can tell, he came in

and told you a couple aweeks basically yeah, there was a quid pro quo in terms of there being a white house meeting for the new ukrainian president, that he wasn't going to get that unless they pursue these investigations. i didn't really know what the investigations were but yeah, that was the quid pro quo. when it comes to military aid, no, i would never be involved in that. now he's admitting yes, there was a quid pro quo for military aid and yes, he was involved in it. >> and he said that after ambassador taylor's opening statement was released, where ambassador taylor said that ambassador sondland told him everything's on the table, it's not on the meeting at the white house, it's also the military assistance. and rachel, if all the president did was ask the president of ukraine to investigate his political opponent, that would be an abuse of power. but he did much worse. he leveraged a white house meeting and $391 million in taxpayer dollars. and i have a different take, though, on ambassador sondland. people are really beating him up for his original statement. and that's really for prosecutors to determine, you know, what that means. but in investigations it's oftentimes the case that people will want to do the right thing

and tell the truth. and i think it's important that if other witnesses have not been truthful to us or have not come in because they've been told to not do that, we should give them the space to do the right thing, especially before these public hearings. >> let me ask you something that's kind of a part hypothetical about that. when i was looking at ambassador sondland's testimony today, particularly this revision, he still insists that he has no idea why the military aid was withheld or who did it. at the same time your committee also released the 75 pages of text messages in which we see ambassador sondland being directly informed by bill taylor that omb was holding up the military aid per the president. >> that's right. >> so he's still telling you as of today in his revised statement i don't know who did it, withholding the military aid. we can see him respond in real time on his phone to being told the president was doing that. he responds to that by saying "i'm all over it," as if i'll work on it. so if it turns out that these

witnesses are lying to you, even if they're not trying to but they are lying to you, should they expect that there will be some consequences of that for them, not just in terms of how it plays for the president's defense? >> i'm sure in a department of justice that actually cares about what happened here, not bill barr's department of justice, will look at the truthfulness of witnesses. but again, this early in the investigation i do think it's common. you see people evolve. and oftentimes there's just some facts that witnesses will, even if they know it, they'll have a close hold on it. fortunately here ambassador sondland's not the only one that proves there was knowledge the security assistance was being withheld. we have other witnesses that know what's going on. we've heard that in public statements. and we can prove that in other ways. >> and all of those mutually kroblting statements from all these different witnesses all telling the same story from everything we've seen in terms of their released opening statements, now the four deposition transcripts that we've had released from your committee, looking at it from the outside and trying to keep up with the tide of paper, i feel like with some nuances,

like gordon sondland saying i had no idea who did that, doesn't seem that believable to me, with some nuances like that set aside, it does seem like all of these witnesses, state department, national security council, former officials, current officials are all telling the same story of rudy giuliani leading an effort at the president's direction to get information that president trump thought he could use against his political opponents and yeah, it was a request but there was also leverage behind it both in terms of white house meetings and in terms of military aid. i feel like that story, now that we understand it, i do feel like every witness that we know you've heard has backed that up. have any of them contradicted the core narrative? >> no. all the arrows point in the same direction. the president was running an extortion shakedown scheme. but i do think it's important that we focus on the president's conduct because we have two sharp straight lines now from the president to rudy giuliani and the president to ambassador sondland where he is saying that for the ukrainians to get this aid and the white house meeting they have to investigate his

political opponent. that's our taxpayer dollars being leveraged by the president solely for his benefit. and focusing on his conduct and understanding that rudy giuliani is the president's lawyer and lawyers don't act outside the interests of their clients. that those two are connected. >> that this isn't -- >> you can't separate -- >> nobody was freelancing here. that this was being directed by the president. and it was a pretty simple and now very understandable scheme. >> we have the whole process now. and evidence will be tested. and that's important. evidence is not a conclusion. but we have enough evidence certainly to bring this forward publicly. >> congressman eric swalwell, a member of the intelligence committee and the judiciary committee, it's great to have you here in person. good to see you. >> thanks a lot, rachel. >> i have to say, i enjoyed your presidential run but you seem healthier and happier. >> i'm very happy. liberated. >> we'll be right back. stay with us. rated. >> we'll be right back stay with us at bayer, we're more than a healthcare company. we help farmers like john by developing digital tools, so he can use less water to grow crops. at bayer, this is why we science.

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steven could only imaginem 24hr to trenjoying a spicy taco.burn, now, his world explodes with flavor. nexium 24hr stops acid before it starts for all-day all-night protection. can you imagine 24-hours without heartburn? unseated the incumbent republican governor. this in a state that donald trump won by 30 points with 99% of precincts reporting, nbc news has declared democrat andy beshear the apparent winner in that kentucky's governor's race. that means he narrowly defeats incumbent governor matt bevin. here is andy beshear declaring victory earlier this evening. >> tonight voters in kentucky