a difference. by the way it's all about boeing because boeing is going to resume deliveries of its 737 max jets. that wraps up the hour for me. i'm going to see you back here tomorrow at 3:00 p.m. eastern. "deadline: white house" with nicolle wallace begins right now. ♪ hi, everyone. it's 4:00 in washington, d.c. where in about 40 hours of the public phase of the impeachment proceedings into donald j. trump will commence. there is no shortage of damaging new testimony from a parade of witnesses. investigating whether donald trump abused the power of his office when he requested investigations into a political rival. the first two witnesses who americans will hear from in those televised hearings on wednesday have already delivered some of the most devastating and detailed accounts of the conditioning of both military aid and a presidential meeting with donald trump on a public

commitment to commence politically motivated investigations into the bidens and the 2016 election sought by trump and his personal lawyer, rudy giuliani. those first two witnesses, ambassador bill taylor and state department employee george kent are slated for wednesday. ambassador marie yovanovitch, the target of an orchestrated smear campaign by giuliani who was ultimately removed from her post to appease donald trump testifies friday. donald trump showing signs of strain under the crush of evidence of his brazen misconduct and the tone and tenor of the gott defense of said misconduct. trump tweeting this about the july 25th call at the center of the scandal. quote, republicans don't be led into the fool's trap of saying it was not perfect but he's not impeachable. it's much stronger than that. nothing was done wrong. with the timeline coming into focus, especially with testimony from kent reveals a far more

daunting span of presidential conduct actually under scrutiny and a far more vast number of actions for republicans to defend. here are the witnesses who have testified so far. career diplomats, current trump administration officials and a few of donald trump's own political appointees. together these witnesses have corroborated multiple times over every significant allegation in the original whistle-blower complaint and have described the following. a quid pro quo conditioning military aid on investigations. another quid pro quo in the trump/zelensky meeting. a smear campaign against former ukraine ambassador. and secretary of state mike pompeo's inaction in the face of that smear campaign. a damage picture the trump administration but the questions witnesses will likely face in public beginning this week are expected to zero in on the fundamental issue laid out in today's "washington post." quote, amid the torrent of

testimony, it is easy to forget that the crux of the historic house impeachment inquiry boils down to a simple question. what did trump want from the ukrainians and what exactly did he do? that's where we start today with some of our favorite reporters and friends. with us from the "new york times," chief white house correspondent peter baker. jeremy bash. former democratic congress woman donna edwards. former deputy assistant attorney general harry litman. and heidi przybyla. jeremy bash, i start with you. we both worked in administrations where like ambassador taylor and george kent were known to us. i was in a communications function. they were always kept so walled off from the dirty business of politics. the fact that these 11 witnesses in counting have testified to the most sort of craven political black op in recent

history is just a remarkable thing to sort of become to come into focus and for the american to hear. >> this is a historic week, nicole. it begins on a historic day, a day we honor veterans. and a veteran will lead off the testimony on wednesday. bill taylor served in the 101st airborne serving in vietnam. he then devoted his life to public service. and his career to the united states department of state. he was serving. he has served republicans, democrats, every president since the 1980s without any favor to any political party or another. he was recruited earlier this year by none other than president trump and secretary mike pompeo to come back and be america's envoy to ukraine. so he has no political axes to grind. he has no political agenda. if you read his deposition, which is already on the record, he paints a devastating portrait of an effort by the president to

subvert american national security. >> you know what, peter baker, i know you've got some breaking news that i'm going to get to in a second. but i believe your byline is on that extraordinary piece of reporting when bill taylor first became known. i spoke to a source on the hill yesterday who said -- i said what's been the most dramatic piece of testimony? and he said it is still that opening statement from ambassador bill taylor. and i think you and your colleagues have reported on sort of bill taylor's vantage point. it's not right/left. it's an american trying to do the right thing by our ally, the ukrainians. talk about the potential impact of his testimony. >> well, one thing he did in his opening statement testimony was make clear that there are real ground-level consequences to what happened here. it's just not an abstract question of what was said in a phone call that wholly backed security aid had real implications for a country that's under aggress from

russia. he described going to the front lines in eastern ukraine where the ukrainians have been facing off against russian-armed separatists for five years. he described being there on a damaged bridge and looking over across the sea basically enemies who were waiting to take advantage of ukrainian weakness. and without u.s. aid he said people would die. so it wasn't just a question for him of numbers on a piece of paper, words on a transcript. it was a matter of jeopardizing the national security of a friend in order to try to get political advantage at home. that's what made it so powerful. he doesn't seem to have an ax to grind. he obviously has a pro ukrainian vantage point from serving there for so long, both before and now. but the president of course immediately trashed him as a never-trumper. and i think that's what he'll probably be up against when he's questioned on wednesday. but he's a pretty formidable witness because he doesn't seem to be known as a partisan

person, somebody who is concerned about national security and foreign policy. >> peter, can we examine the anticipated smear? i believe you are probably accurate in predicting the smear. but can we just fact-check that a little bit? he was recruited, as jeremy said, by mike pompeo who is the trumpest of all national security figures. the notion that ambassador bill taylor was in the ukraine running what he believed to be foreign policy is ludicrous, false, and a smear, a slander, a smear. >> what the white house said after he testified was that his testimony, they turned it to radical unelected bureaucrats. >> hand-picked by mike pompeo? >> hand-picked by mike pompeo, yes. we've seen this again and again in this administration. people who turn on the president who become alienated from the way he does business or are concerned by the things he does

who find objections to his policies, the way he conducts the presidency. they say that out loud or leave or what have you. then immediately become, you know, the enemy as far as president trump is concerned. he said again and again he is a counter puncher. it doesn't matter if he once picked you to be a part of his team. if you turn against him, he will come after you very hard. and bill taylor represents the deep state in effect that he is part of a larger group of veterans who never accepted president trump as their leader and were working to undermine them. so i think you'll probably hear a little of that on wednesday. >> you are jumping out of your chair. >> i think what the republicans are going to try to do is something different. i think they are going to say hunter biden, biden, joe, joe biden. i think they're also going to try to attack the democrats on the house intelligence committee and attack the process. i don't think they're going to get very far at all if they attack ambassador bill taylor. >> i want to come to you because this is a body in which you

served. and in terms of laying out the evidence, i think the process of releasing the transcripts other than probably forcing me to up my eyeglass prescription has been done in a professional way. it's been stripped of sort of partisanship. i think the highlights have been where the eregular policy channel, which is how ambassador bill taylor describes it, deviated from stated u.s. foreign policy. and i think the two witnesses are there for advocates of what american policy had always been against russia's enemies who used to be our friends. it would seem to me to the democrats are trying to underscore the themes that have come up during trump's presidency. whose side is he on? >> and even the testimony that's been released, it's pretty voluminous for most americans to absorb, which is why the testimony of these witnesses is going to be so important. and i do agree that i think it's going to be really difficult to

attack these witnesses in that kind of way when they're in front of you when you have career public servants raising their right hand swearing to the oath. that's going to be difficult. but i think that it is true. you are going to hear 2016 election in biden and hillary clinton again and again. all of these things. but it's not going to matter because what the american public is going to see is they're going to see patriots. and reading their testimony, i got the feeling about who they are and why they serve. american people are going to see that in front of them. and i can't imagine that people will come away from that not believing that they are telling the truth and the president is not. >> and we are expecting to possibly get more testimony during this hour. everyone can see me in my glasses for the rest of it once that drops from a pentagon official testified to or was at least asked about the process. excuse me. of withholding military aid. talk about -- peter baker has

some brand-new reporting about john bolton. tell me what john bolton is needed for in this investigation. it would seem that witnesses like fiona hill and colonel vindman and bill taylor and gordon sondland have all brought him to life. what is it -- or, i mean, am i accurate in saying that they want to do this -- do they still want john bolton? >> i will tell you that democrats don't think they need them. they've already got the goods. and the question now is how we schedule the witnesses so that we can tell the story in the most compelling way. they told me that the reason why they were doing that is number one, bill taylor is the most compelling because he draws a straight line to president trump who said it was president trump's orders that zelensky go to a microphone and announce these investigations or -- and this is the or and the hammer -- there would be a stalemate, essentially a quid pro quo or democrats want us to drop the latin now and just say this is basically a guns for dirt situation here.

and so democrats don't think that they need him. it's hard to think that he wouldn't have something valuable if he had all of these notes. maybe he has something more first hand of his, you know, conversations with the president. but simple answer to your question is they do not need him. they have so much volume here of witnesses. and, by the way, rudy giuliani himself last week tweeting that he was acting in ukraine solely at the discretion of his client president trump. so part of the strategy here is going to be to try to distance -- >> yeah, rudy, exactly. but he tweets last week i was acting only on behalf of trump, make no mistake. >> peter baker, you have the freshest scoopiest news on the bolton front. let me read this. you just dropped a story in the last hour, president trump's former national security adviser

filed a motion trying to keep mick mulvaney the president's acting chief of staff from joining a lawsuit over the impeachment inquiry. bolton's lawyer arguing in court papers that mulvaney should not be allowed to jump into the existing lawsuit as a plaintiff because his interests are significantly different. but the legal schism underscored a broader rift between mulvaney who facilitated trump's effort to pressure ukraine. so it would seem to me that what's already on the public record is that bolton thought that mulvaney was basically running a drug deal. how on earth could mulvaney's interest be aligned? >> that's what john bolton and charles kupperman, his deputy who has this lawsuit, are saying is that these are very different situations here. mulvaney is still on the white house staff. bolton and kupperman are not. he was not involved in national security as a regular matter of course. and that's different in terms of whether privilege or immunity

might apply. but mostly that he doesn't come at it from the same point of view. he is still operating they say on behalf of the president and they are taking a neutral position and he has already said that there was a quid pro quo. i don't know if we are supposed to use that phrase any more or not. but he said there was a direct link between the security aid being cut off and the president's desire for an investigation of democrats. he then tried to take it back. both bolton and kupperman haven't said publicly what their version of events is. but broadly speaking, put aside illegality what you have is these two men who are on very different sides of this issue. mick mulvaney tried to make it work for the president. he was the one who followed the order to cut off the security aid. john bolton said i don't want any part of this drug deal that mulvaney that organizing here. he told his aides to go talk to the white house lawyers about it. >> but we don't know and why the democrats are side deciding to give up this testimony is

interesting. we don't know is what the president said. most of the testimony we got so far is second hand. they may be enough to power an impeachment given that we know where the democrats are already going it. >> may be more than enough to get a vote. but the truth is they haven't put us inside the oval office in the same way bolton would. he was the national security adviser and met with the president every day. so if you want, to you know, get inside that oval office, clearly he is one witness they would want to talk to. but they don't want to be mucked up in a long legal battle and they clearly are deciding to move forward if they don't have him ready to testify. peter, what does john bolton want? >> that's a great question. it's really not clear. it's kind of a big mystery in washington. he's not -- he's not a never-trumper in the sense of, you know, republicans have kind of gone over to democrats. i don't think he's out there ready to, you know, launch a

jihad against the president. yet he was so against what was going on here, he made it very clear that he thought this was inappropriate that rudy giuliani was out of line, they were doing things they shouldn't do. he said rudy giuliani was a hand grenade that was going to blow everybody up. so he clearly has a very strong point of view about the way this ukraine pressure campaign was being waged. and, you know, it seemed like he kind of wants to testify, but he wants a court to tell him it's okay to do it. he doesn't want to be defying the president who is telling him not to without a court saying do it, you have no choice. >> if the houses drop the subpoena for mr. kupperman, who was bolton's deputy, and mr. kupperman's lawyer is john bolton's lawyer, who is on the other side? if the house is no longer seeking their testimony -- i've watched enough tv to know you've got the lawyers for kupperman and bolton and i guess they are kicking mulvaney off of their table. who is on the other side -- >> you don't want to be bolton

and mulvaney weren't even talking. they have sued everybody in sight. so kupperman has actually sued the congress, the president in his official capacity, all kinds of other people. he is saying i don't know what to do. tell me, court. but i think, as peter says, for bolton it's different. he is playing this teasing game. yet he seems to not be a bad guy. >> it's like saying i am choosing -- princes choosing between two princes. congress is out of the game. they are not seeking anymore. so who is bolton -- >> they are not seeking and what that means in law terms there is no case anymore. >> so what happens to bolton's testimony? if peter's right and he wants to testify and he thought this was a drug deal. >> he said you want to give me a subpoena. they won't give him a subpoena. schiff is saying it'll take too long to get. it probably will not be given because they are not going to drop the subpoena on him. so far they only want the letter. i just want to go back very

quickly to what this is going to look like and remind that schiff is a prosecutor. danny goldmany who is going to be doing the questioning is a prosecutor. they have documents to work with. this is going to be stuff like we haven't seen in clinton, we haven't seen in watergate. they are going to go through with like a hundred bite-sized pieces all solid gold that they've already mined the deposition for. schiff's going to start by doing a professional sculpting of what the story is here. and i think what you do with taylor, what they should do in trial will anesthetlet them go. what will go on the evening news, the sound bytes and schiff's presentation. >> it's a great point to sort of end this segment on because what we will see is something we've never seen before. we've i think been at this point in three times. but every other sort of wall-to-wall hearing of the

trump era has featured lawmakers doing the questioning, often these are dan goldman, a former msnbc alum. we are proud to have had him in the msnbc family before he went on to serve the congress and serve the country. but to see a focused inquisition around a fact pattern that proves a single point in the democrats' view that donald trump abused his power is something we've never seen before in a presidency. >> in clinton's case there was just a defense attorney. to hear they really have the goods, it'll be dramatic. >> that's right. i think democrats have to exercise a lot of discipline is that to the extent that there are member questions, they really have to cease and desist and not worry about going toe to toe with republicans with all the obfuscation and things that they throw out there. i think it's going to be really important. >> since each side will have had its 90 minutes by that point,

members can't ask questions until both sides have had their say and presented their case and daniel goldman will have put out all of those snippet sound bytes. and we all know how the news industry works. those will be the headlines, i think. >> i just think all the evidence is already known. this is really just for television. but the factual record is established. democrats just have to not mess this up. [ laughter ] >> you never know what's going to happen in live television. take it from me. after the break, nancy pelosi in this now famous image of her faceoff with donald trump said to the president with you, all roads lead to putin. one of wednesday's witnesses and what he might tell us taking his cues from donald trump. sheds new light on the timeline of that pressure campaign in ukraine. now the focus of the impeachment proceedings against trump, the surprising source of this trove of new information, rudy giuliani's former partner who since flipped on giuliani and

donald trump and wants to tell all to congress. and nikki haley is trying to sell books by telling people she rebuffed efforts by the white house's chief of staff and the secretary of state to protect the country from trump. how nikki haley is seeking to outdo sean hannity and kellyanne conway as trump apologist. all those stories coming up. seen my glasses? i've always had a knack for finding things... ...colon cancer,to be exact. and i find it noninvasively... no need for time off or special prep. it all starts here... you collect your sample, and cologuard uses the dna in your stool to find 92% of colon cancers. you can always count on me to know where to look. oh, i found them! i can do this test now! ask your doctor if cologuard is right for you. covered by medicare and most major insurers

all roads seem to lead to putin with the president though. i also pointed out to the president i had concerns that all roads seemed to lead to putin. i have concerns about all roads

leading to putin. again, all roads lead to putin. the list goes on and on. >> and on and on and on it goes. and in an alarming revelation buried deep in the testimony of one of the career diplomats set to testify publicly this week yet another connection between this trump scandal and russian president vladimir putin. testimony from career diplomat george kent who we'll all see and hear from on wednesday confirms that president trump's view on ukraine which influenced a shadow foreign policy run by an irregular channel of officials may have been driven by two oligarchs, one, vladimir putin and the putin aligned leader from hongary. that transcript the description of two mid-may phone calls between trump and those oligarchs described to kent by fiona hill. she worked in the nfc for john bolton. it could have a significant impact in the timeline in understanding the origins of the ukraine scandal. quote, questioner, what was the change following those two

conversations with orban and putin. kent? fiona hill assessed both leaders both putin and orban extensively talked ukraine down, said it was corrupt. said zelensky was in the thralls of oligarchs. did dr. hill think that that had an impact on trump's outlook? kent. i cannot recall what she said in that meeting besides giving me the brief readouts of those two meetings, but that was my takeaway and that those two world leaders along with rudy giuliani shaped the president's view of ukraine and zelensky and would account for the change from a very positive first call on april 21st to his negative assessment of ukraine when he had the meeting in the oval office on may 23rd. peter and the table back. jeremy, it's been pointed out to me that we are folkused obviously on the call, the summary of the call. but that the origins of the scandal were put in motion way before the aid was actually held up. and i think peter and his colleagues have written about

diplomats encountering a president whose mind had been poisoned against zelensky and the new leaders of ukraine. it would seem that kent has testified to the fact that putin and his ally did the poisoning. it's just stunning. there are no new stories in the trump presidency. >> and the cia made clear in its assessment in january 2017 that putin had interfered in the 2016 election to benefit donald trump. putin denied that in helsinki. trump said i believe putin. so clearly there had been dialogue between trump and putin about the origins of the 2016 interference. putin clearly told trump, hey, it wasn't us, it was the ukrainians. you can't trust them. this is part of a broader geostrategic effort by putin to denigrate ukraine because putin has designs on ukraine. putin has invaded ukraine. putin wants to push back support because the united states is the only thing standing between vladimir putin and complete domination of ukraine. >> what used to be.

that's what these diplomats will testify to believing our policy. >> i went through lieutenant colonel vindman's testimony last week. even if he doesn't testify, there's some pretty compelling testimony in there that i'm sure the prosecutors will point to that it was the president and the president alone who was obsessed that the ukrainians were out to get him. it was all coming from the president that somehow ukraine had been behind the 2016 election interference and not russia. these are all russian talking points and exactly in putin's interest for that line to be pushed that it was actually -- >> peter baker, this is a part of the world you know very well. but let me put to you a couple specific questions on this topic. bo tom bossert said he tried over and over and over again to get through to donald trump, that ukraine had nothing to do with

2016 election meddling. he was compaexasperated. he kept running into a wall. it wasn't just rudy giuliani poisoning his mind it. >> would appear that vladimir putin was in on the game, too. >> yeah, which is no real surprise. vladimir putin of course as we just said had his eyes on ukraine. the idea that ukraine is independent is something that russians never really accepted, at least the russian elite in moscow. and the idea that anybody else particularly europeans would have relationships with ukraine that would be in fact more preferable than the russians goes against the grachblt so he has been talking down every ukrainian leadership that wasn't under his thumb. and no question about it that that's a line that the president seemed to be repeating when he talks about how they tried to take him down. they tried to take me down. and he's convinced of it. he wouldn't listen to tom

bossert. he wouldn't listen to john bolton. he wouldn't listen to anybody else who was telling him that that wasn't the case. that was something that fixed in his mind that really shaped his approach to ukraine and president zelensky. >> all right. so for everyone at home with a bingo card that had on it for today's testimony transcripts that would be released, the testimony that inspired the pocket protector brigade protest of house republican members who had access to the skiffs but stormed them anyway for reasons they will have to deal with in therapy, that is the transcript that has come out in the last five minutes. the witness was laura cooper. she is the deputy assistant secretary of defense. he was called because the house had some questions about some of the mechanical aspects of withholding military aid that has already been authorized by congress. there were questions about legality that stretched from the pentagon into the district of columbia and i believe up to the highest level of omb about whoo it was legal for trump to wehold

military aid. this is her transcript. laura cooper testified to this. she said towards the end of august when kurt volker met with me for what, you know, i thought was going to be, you know, just a routine touch base on ukraine but also i thought it was going to be a strategizing session on how we get the security assistance released knowing that we both wanted the funding released. so in that meeting he did mention something to me that, you know, was the first about how somehow an effort that he was engaged in to see if there was a statement that the government of ukraine would make that would somehow disavow any interference in u.s. elections and would commit to the prosecution of any individuals involved in election interference. and that was about as specific as it got. questioner, okay, did he indicate to you that if that channel he was working with successful it might lift this issue? yes, it would seem, jeremy bash, we have another witness. this one from the pentagon

testifying to the conditioning of military aid on the investigations of both the bidens and exonerating him. let me read this again. she testified that there needed to be a statement that the government of ukraine would make that would somehow disavow any interference in u.s. election and would commit to the prosecution of any individuals involved in election interference. donald trump directs the cia, the fbi, the nsa, i mean, why is he asking ukraine to disavow 2016 election? what is this testimony about? >> and this is highly significant because laura cooper is a senior official at the united states department of defense. she is the deputy assistant secretary of defense responsible for russia and ukraine. there's really no higher official that's specifically responsible for security aid to ukraine. she testified before the congressional committees overseeing this matter that this aid was vital, that it was necessary for ukraine's defense, that the instruction to withhold

it came specifically from the white house, specifically from omb, specifically from the president. she's bewildered and she is concerned and she's highly worried that this denial of aid to ukraine will undermine american national security. once she seeks clarification on why she receives the real answer which is that the president of the united states was demanding political investigations of his rivals. >> i cannot stop thinking, heidi, about what lindsey graham used to represent. he used to travel the world with joe liebermann and john mccain promising this. lindsey graham's mission in the senate as the member -- and i think hillary clinton probably travelled to some of these countries with him when she was in the senate, promising that this aid would be there for u.s. allies threatened by russia. how does someone like lindsey graham not take this testimony from a defense -- from a secretary of defense and say we've got a smoking gun on our hands, folks. >> remember the rally that trump went to last week that said read the transcript? that's what they're not doing.

the last time we talked to lindsey graham, he said this is all a hoax, this is all made up, and i'm not going to -- it's all rigged and i'm not even going to read the transcript. there will come a time when that is not possible to say anymore because this will all be coming out publicly. but for right now he seems to just be kind of putting his hand up because it is probably very hard to be confronted with the cold, hard facts because it was also lindsey graham who said on camera that if we had evidence of a quid pro quo that would be very problematic. now we have not just some evidence, we have an overwhelming volume of evidence. and so, you know, until this gets to the senate, i think he can kind of look the other way. but at some point he is going to be forced to sit as a juror and listen to this in an open setting. >> this is just amazing. this was dropped in the 4:00 hour is another testimony from another witness who appeared before the house impeachment

investigators. her name is laura cooper. she inspired that ridiculous protest. i believe her testimony was delayed five hours, why they cleared outhouse members who were storming skiffs that they actually had access, to at least 30 of them. they brought their cell phones in and had to be decontaminated from the intrusion of cell phones which were not allowed inside skiffs, their secure areas for reviewing classified information. her transcripts out today and let me read a little bit more from her transcript. she's asked on the topic of providing critical security assistance to ukraine, whether it serves u.s. national security in order to deter russian aggression elsewhere in the world. questioner says how important is security assistance to the ukrainians? she says security assistance is vital to helping the ukrainians defend themselves. the questioner says can you explain a little more? she responds, well, if you go back to 2014 when ukraine found itself under attack by russia,

the state of the ukrainian armed forces was significantly less capable than it is today. that capability increase is largely the result of u.s. and allied assistance. and now what you see is a ukrainian armed force that is better able to deter russian aggression. and you've seen a drop in the kinetic action, although not a complete lack of hostility. we still have casualties on a regular basis. so security assistance that is provided by the u.s. is within the ukrainians, national interest. is that? it is also within the u.s. national interest to provide security assistance to ukraine. i mean, donna edwards, it would seem that the democrats have an opportunity to really make this an american national security issue. donald trump, based on the testimony from laura cooper, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for russia, ukraine, and eurasia testifying to the fact that this represented a national security threat to the united states of america. >> it also shoots down another argument that this should not be

within the purview of the intelligence committee. this is directly in their purview because it impacts national security. and the other thing i take away from this is what she is also saying is that part of the demand was to disavow what all of our intelligence agencies in a unified way said which was that russia interfered in our election. it's asking to disavow that completely. i can understand why republicans storm the skiff and -- >> to stop her. >> and did not want her to testify because this is damning for the president of the united states. and it does land directly in the white house. >> you know, i don't appreciate, but i am not ignorant to the potential for the effectiveness of donald trump trying to paint diplomats as sort of silently being in opposition to his america-first brand. i completely reject the idea that it can turn the pentagon into some hotbed of anti-trumpers.

it's asinine on its face. i dare them to try it. >> both the pentagon -- it's not simply that it's -- this is the -- it's been bipartisan since 2014. this is the thing that ukraine depends on thus far. but it's also kind of an article of faith in the state department in the pentagon, putin's a bad guy, orban's a bad guy. to have the world reversed like this i think provokes some of the ire. they are [ bleep ] off and when they clearly are trying to simply reverse the world view and tell them black is now white. they know what security interest, you know, this is for. and it's being undermined completely. >> let me just say i don't know how much of this will come out in the hearings. but in vindman's testimony, it really is compelling just how perilously close we came to having ukrainians not get this aid. if you think about it the pressure campaign went over months. and it went into september.

and in his testimony he says if it hadn't been figured out by the end of september, they would have gotten nothing. he also says at the top of his testimony that it's not just the military assistance that that assistance accounts for a huge portion of ukraine's gdp. so we are talking about here not just the military portion of this but potentially collapsing, our only buffer in that area. look at a map, folks, leading to russian aggression. >> let me just ask you, though. i want to hear -- i didn't mean to cut you off there. but just also speak as a former chief of staff in that building of the pentagon. was this previously unfathomable to you? >> what would laura cooper have been thinking as she was sitting in meetings which has told her that the big program she is working on to provide assistance to the ukrainians to defend themselves against a fight from russia that is being delayed from the president. she is thinking w.t.f. there is some secret program here that's undermining american

foreign policy what the congress has authorized. she's got to wonder exactly what's going on. now it's clear from her testimony that was just released in the last 30 minutes. the she doesn't have full visibility. she is sort of peering up against the glass thinking there is something going on here, i am not being told the whole story. i know it has something to do with election interference. but there is something rotten in denmark and i am not cool with it. >> before we lose you, this is a part of the world you know a lot about. have you ever read so many transcripts of so many u.s. government officials being at their witt's end, being sort of flabbergasted, perplexed, some of them feeling ire building inside that u.s. policy was clearly moving in a pro putin direction and really threatening the security of an ally like ukraine? have you seen any fact pattern like this ever? >> in a pro putin way or a pro russian way, no. there are times in previous

administrations where are career government employees didn't particularly cotton to the administration's policy. we saw that during the iraq war. we saw that at times under clinton, for instance. some people lit over welfare reform. there were times when the professional staff is sort of at odds with the political leaders. but they defer to the political leaders because the political leaders are elected. but i haven't seen starting in 1997 when i started covering the white house that the president of the united states was distorting foreign policy to suit his own personal political interests. that is what's different here. what you say is some of the president's defenders say we do quid pro quo for american aid all the time. we do that to achieve policy ends. we don't do it to tilt policy in the favor of where the president thinks his domestic political interests lie. as you point out, to do it in the direction that president putin would want us to do, it makes it all the more unusual.

>> peter baker, harry litman, thank you both. we will be calling on you early and often this week. we are going to sneak in a break. head up to capitol hill for more on this breaking transcript we just got our hands on. stay with us. ands on. stay with us nutes. and i'll tell you some important things to know about medicare. first, it doesn't pay for everything. say this pizza... [mmm pizza...] is your part b medical expenses. this much - about 80 percent... medicare will pay for. what's left... this slice here... well... that's on you. and that's where an aarp medicare supplement insurance plan, insured by unitedhealthcare insurance company comes in. this type of plan helps pay some of what medicare doesn't. and these are the only plans to carry the aarp endorsement. that's because they meet their high standards of quality and service. wanna learn more? it's easy. call unitedhealthcare insurance company now and ask... for this free decision guide.

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lifetime retirement income from tiaa doesn't. guaranteed monthly income for life. nooooo! we are back with the breaking news. testimony from another witness in the impeachment investigation into donald j. trump. msnbc's garrett haake has been reading in for us. what are your takeaways? >> reporter: well, cooper really expands the net here of people who knew what was going on and were totally confused by. she describes a series of meetings in the pentagon and elsewhere where first it's conveyed that the chief of staff doesn't want this money to go out. and that's unusual. and then there is a backchannelling going on of why isn't this money moving. did ukraine meet these various standards that they need to have

met to have this money released? and yes and yes and yes. and if if this is coming from the president, how can the president legally do this. there is an interesting exchange in here where the questioners and i think it's probably one of the attorneys for the committee is trying to pin cooper down on this question of did you ask whether or not this was legal or not. could this be done lawfully? is it a violation of the law? she says sbormt exact phrase, but that's what we're talking about. is it proper, is it legal for this money to be withheld? this is somebody who's been working on this for quite a long time. and then you get into conversations that she has later on with kurt volker, who's a fascinating character in this whole drama, even separately from this who says i think i might have a way to release this aid which everyone else in the whole of government wants. but it's going to involve this statement from the ukrainians. and then the conversation with cooper she comes away thinking it's a conversation just about election interference, specifically backward-looking election interference. so they might come out with some kind of statement disavowing anything that happened in 2016. but she becomes increasingly

aware throughout the timeline laid out in this deposition that this money which the whole rest of the u.s. government wants to see be released is held up for reasons that don't appear to her to be legal or at least above board. then there is volker who might have a solution to get that money released just in the nick of time. it's a fascinating slice of one bureaucrat's view of this whole scheme as it's going on. >> garrett, stay up with us for the rest of our conversation. but let me bring into our conversation betsy woodruff. but it was conditioned on investigating the bidens and burisma and reinvestigating something that the american intelligence agencies had already said was a conspiracy theory that had been communicated to donald trump. let me read that excerpt that garrett was right to point out. so this is on the topic of ambassador kurt volker who has

resigned. he was the first official to resign. he was the first witness to go up and testify as part of the impeachment inquiry. on the topic of whether he was engaged in an effort to see if there was a statement that the government of ukraine could make in order to lift president trump's hopes. there is no debate anymore about whether it was president trump's hold on the military aid. this has moved so far. laura cooper says with respect to -- i forgot how you described it, the questioner says a nontraditional form of diplomacy. she responds nontraditional form of diplomacy. my personal interaction was only with ambassador kurt volker. so on or about august 20th he visited me, and this is not unusual because he was working on the peace negotiations and peace process. so we were actually supporting him in terms of developing concepts for political peace-keeping operations, how the military relates to the possible political settlement. so i met with him many, many times. the but towards the end of

august when he met with me for what i thought was going to be just a routine touch-base on ukraine but also i thought it was going to be a strategizing session on how do we get the funding released. he did mention something to me, you know, was the first about somehow an effort that he was engaged in so see if there was a statement that the government of ukraine would make that would somehow disavow any interference in the u.s. elections it would commit to the prosecution of any individuals involved in election isht facetious. that was about as specific as he got. did he indicate to you that if that channel he was working was successful might lift this issue? yes. there is now such a crush of evidence that military aid was tide to the political investigations. i don't know how anybody denies that with a straight face. >> the people who knew the most about the intersection of american military aid and the ukrainian government, kurt volker and ambassador gordon sondland, both were operating under the assumption that unless kiev put out a statement saying

they were going to go after first the conspiracy theory that the ukrainians meddled in the 2016 election and also this investigation of the company linked to biden they weren't going to get their money. now, beyond that, republicans are going to try to muddy the waters and say maybe these guys reached this assumption independently without any direction from the white house. the other piece of this new testimony that i think bears highlighting is when cooper talks about the process. like, she's sort of a defense nerd. but some of the details here that are a little bit drier are actually quite important. she talks about the ways legally that a president can hold back military aid and at one point, the questioner asks her did the question do what was required under both methods, which involved telling congress? and she said no. part of the reason that this entire situation unfolded was because there was so much congressional pressure very late in the game that the president finally released this aid. if congress hadn't pressured the

white house, ukrainians might not have gotten this money in the first place. so the fact the administration appears to have gone to some lengths to cover this up and keep congress from knowing suggests that this was a fairly well-formulated plan. >> there is a practical reality here, which is this woman whose testimony we now see, she speaks on behalf of the secretary of defense. secretary of defense is in the chain of command commanding all u.s. military actions all over the world, including providing security assistance in conjunction with the state department. there's only one person, one person in our government, who can say to the secretary of defense, no. one person who is higher in the chain of command. that's the president. it's not mick mulvaney. it's not an nsc staffer. it's not kurt volker free-lancing. it's not some ambassador. >> it's not rudy giuliani. >> it's not rudy giuliani. it's not these shady ukrainians. one person. the president of the united states. only he can say stop that aid. i'm demanding something for it. >> and, you know, with all of these staffers lawyering up,

there is some concern you see here being expressed that the white house, his lawyers are going to try to create a fall guy. whether it's mick mulvaney or rudy giuliani. but what you see again in this testimony here is that that is going to explode because all of these witnesses are backing each other up that they were working together to try and figure out what it would take to appease trump. they weren't the ones who were orchestrating this below him. they were trying to come together. they all wanted the aid released. nobody thought this was a great idea. even the three amigos, who were the political appointees, wanted to try and get this aid released. >> let me just put something broader on the table. i can't believe how time races by. so, you know, if we didn't have this transcript, we probably would have made our way to the story about nikki haley resisting john kelly and rex tillerson's efforts to serve as guard rails for donald trump. now, they're hardly never trump deep state actors. in fact, john kelly is thought to share a lot of the president's hard-line

immigration policies and rex tillerson was hardly a revered or widely-respected figure at the state department. however, they had illegality as sort of a red line. they had breaking laws as something that gave them heart burn. and just to your point about the question. this was a topic. the white house chief of staff has conveyed that the president has concerns about ukraine and ukraine security assistance and quote, immediately deputies began to raise concerns about how this can be done in a legal fashion. the constant story of the trump administration is how can we change the laws to fit donald trump's impulses? >> it's -- it's put the white house counsel's office through a lot of work. they've really gotten their money out of those lawyers who've constantly been scrambling to try to find ways to make sure that what the president wants done, they're actually allowed to do. and the -- the lawyers are always sort of a really important sub text in this whole story. i remember part of the reason that bolton is described to have cut short a meeting with a ukrainian official is that fiona hill was in, she testified about

this, was because he was worried something illegal was happening according to, i bel it's fiona hill's testimony, he cut it short and then he said go tell the lawyers. >> so that lawyer has a name. i think it's mr. eisenberg. that lawyer mr. eisenberg i believe has a lawyer. that lawyer and his lawyer are going to have to decide whether they take the fall for this. >> and just to -- go ahead, congresswoman. >> no, i was going to say i think this is why you see this range of shifting defenses that the president has displayed, that his supporters in the house have displayed as well. because they can't hone in on something that they can hang their hat on to say, you know what, this is a legitimate reason. this is a legal reason. >> investigating burisma? >> there is no legal reason for having held up aid and this will be indefensible when we finish the testimony this week. >> i mean, i just keep thinking of the human carnage of the trump white house. >> without commenting on

specific individuals because i don't know them and what they did but to your point they got their money's worth, it's unethical. it's unethical for a lawyer to say to someone who is trying to break the law, here's how you can do this and get away with it. that's the first week of law school. we all learned it. in everything we did when we took the bar and swore an oath to uphold the constitution. i mean, that is just wrong. >> and you know, garrett, i think that's the sort of, you know, alice in wonderland dynamic. what the republicans are essentially defending is that which is flat-out wrong, conduct that you get kicked out of law school for. conduct in the bush white house, you would have been fired in less than the time it sent to say get your you know what out of here. and the fact that not only does this go on, not only are bureaucrats and technocrats, but you got every republican up there defending it. how does that story end? >> well, they defend it or delay having to discuss it as long as

possible. i mean, i think that's why we've had so much focus on process so far. none of these republicans really want to debate these issues on the merits themselves. particularly, the elements in these depositions, in these testimonies, the facts generally speaking are not in dispute here. some elements of the timeline are. who told whom what and when. there's certain details that some of these witnesses conflict with each other in. but in the general argument that we're going in here, nobody defends the president. i mean, the question that is the truth serum question, it's the decoding question, is would you do this if it were your campaign? or what would you do if someone you were running against did it to you? and that's the question that stops almost all these lawmakers that try to defend the president in their tracks. >> i want a little cam ran era your head. we have to sneak in our last break. we'll be right back. in our last break. we'll be right back. hey there people eligible for medicare.

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my thanks to my friends on this wild day to kick off a wild week. thanks to betsy woodrough swan, jeremy bash, donna edwards, heidi przybyla. most of all, to you for watching. "mtp daily" with the fabulous katy tur in for chuck starts now. welcome to monday. it's "meet the press daily." good evening. i'm katy tur in new york for chuck todd. we've got breaking news on the impeachment inquiry at the start of this enormously consequential week. and as public impeachment