called including mr. pompeo, mr. mulvaney and john bolton, the president's former national security adviser. any new reporting on any of those individuals and their posture toward the impeachment proceeding? >> no. but from those group of people, especially pompeo, you saw pushback today. you saw them trying to refute what sondland was saying and put as much distance between him and the administration as possible. pompeo coming out and saying in a statement that he put out on his plane that any implication that he talked to sondland about the fact that the aide was linked to the investigations is not true. now, we went back and looked at the transcript and it's not entirely clear that sondland said that exactly. what sondland was saying that was the aide had been basically -- not the aide but sondland is basically saying that pompeo knew about the

statement that they were trying to get the ukrainians to put out. he knew about another effort they were trying to do with the ukrainian president. but sort of as much as possible today you saw mike pence putting out a statement that pushed back on what sondland said about him. and that was sort of how the administration was trying to undermine this testimony, which, as you were pointing out earlier, does rope in a lot of people in ways that we didn't have before. >> i wonder your take on sort of the sweep of what the regular channel included, the regular channel was the trump-directed rudy contaminated, if you will, pompeo green-lighting and vice president pence at least aware of a pressure campaign in ukraine. >> yeah. sondland making the argument today that why would he be the irregular channel when he was talking to the white house chief of staff, the secretary of state, the top folks at the

national security council. he is saying, look, if people were excluded from that, i'm sorry, sorry if you weren't part of the party. but we were in the channel. we were doing what the president wanted. the president asked us to do this. he said talk to rudy giuliani. we were the people at the top of the administration, and we were communicating this and everyone knew about it. it was not just me. i was not a lone actor in this. >> it was notable that in the prepared opening statement, sondland makes clear that if he had known that rudy giuliani's associates were under criminal investigation in the southern district of new york, he would not have even at the president's direction, he seemed to testify that he would not have worked with them. what do we know about any potential for the criminal investigation into giuliani's associates or giuliani's foreign

business and this impeachment inquiry intersecting at any point in the near future? >> well, we don't really know much. but what sondland was trying to do and what sondland was trying to say is essentially that i would have stopped if i knew there was criminal implications to this. and that is sort of significant. because the question keeps on coming up. why was it that sondland did what he did? why did he continue to play ball with giuliani? and he tried to explain today that that was how the only way the united states and ukraine were going to have normal relations was in they were able to satisfy and pacify giuliani and the president, essentially trying to conduct american foreign policy around the president and his personal lawyer. and him saying, look, me trying to do that was better off than anything else. >> ambassador mcfaul, you're often on the receiving end of

this observation from me. but can you just take us through how weird that is? this is not normal. this is so far from normal. and i ask about the criminal aspect because it's just a constant plot twist. anything related to trump always involves either a past, present, or future intersection with a federal criminal investigation. >> well, you know more about that than i do. but it is very strange the way this happened. i think it was a good strategy by ambassador sondland to say we are all in this together and pulled everybody under the bus with him. i think it's important to underscore that not once was the main quid pro quo that he started with ever, ever refuted. that is to say the holding of the oval office visit in return for those investigations, right? every republican pivoted to the military assistance and then said, well, did you ever hear

donald trump say he was withholding assistance from that? and remember that was not where he started with. but i think the military assistance is also important to understand in terms of the foreign policy implications of this. everybody that we know on the record all the way to the very top thought that it was a bad idea in terms of american foreign policy to withhold that assistance. so the republicans when they are saying, well, it's just your perception that he was doing it for this reason, remember, they're just inventing their own perception that somehow president trump was just doing this to fight corruption. for me i want to know, well, if he's so concerned about corruption, why didn't he do it in 2017? why didn't he do it in 2018? and one of the explanations might be was back then when giuliani gets involved, he is working with the par shanko government, mr. ludt sanko, people that we have now established as being corrupt, mr. lutshenko in particular.

but again in terms of national security, nobody, not one single person has testified or said on the record that it was a good idea to withhold military assistance to ukraine. there must be some other explanation for that. >> ambassador, can we allow to rest in peace till the end of time two big lies? one that donald trump cared about corruption anywhere. former doj official said to me go look for a single example of donald trump having his feathers ruffled about corruption in america, in europe, in af -- donald trump has never said a word about corruption anywhere. and, two, the idea that all of these people were just like a dog on a bone running after zelensky to get him to commit publicly to investigate burisma without ever googling what the heck burisma was? [ laughter ] >> yes. let's talk about both those. first of all, if president trump

cared about corruption anywhere, but even let's just talk about ukraine. there would be some evidence of that, right? there would be a speech that he gave saying we need to fight corruption. he would have raised it on the phone call with the brand-new president, president zelensky to say i know that you're an anti-corruption person. we are going to work together on this. i am going to increase my anti-corruption assistance. there is none of those facts. we have a treaty with ukraine to fight corruption including about americans. if he really wanted to go after mr. biden, hunter biden, he could have invoked that. there is no evidence from the department of justice. so, yes, bring some facts, bring some evidence. otherwise it's just hearsay. with respect to burisma and biden, you know, i just say two things on that. one, why was it that ambassador sondland and ambassador volker never had just the slightest bit of curiosity that of all the companies in ukraine burisma is not a major company there, by the way, of all the companies in

ukraine known for corruption that he chose just this one. and they never once bothered to think, huh, i wonder why he's interested in this company. that just doesn't pass the laugh test for me. i don't think it'll pass the laugh test with many other people as well. >> there was something powerful about his plain spokenness. i talk about how he really did -- let's listen to this. sondland himself said i don't know how anyone could characterize my work as being part of anything other than the regular policy channel. let's listen. >> did anyone else express any concerns to you about this so-called irregular channel? >> i am not sure how someone could characterize something as an irregular channel when you're talking to the president of the united states, the secretary of state, the national security adviser, the chief of staff of the white house, the secretary of energy. i don't know how that's irregular if a bunch of folks

that are not in that channel are aggrieved for some reason for not being included, i don't know how they can consider us to be the irregular channel and they to be the regular channel when it's the leadership that makes the decisions. >> so, right. you know, when you're trying to construct a case around a crime boss, the picture of the boss goes right at the top of a pyramid. and then all of the crime boss's deputies kind of form the pyramid underneath. and that's the picture that mr. sondland painted today when he said regular channel. and -- because this is i think important. the reason why you have lieutenant colonel vindman and others raising the red flag and complaining is exactly what ambassador mcfaul is saying is because there is no other explanation, no other explanation for why this meeting is not happening since it's in u.s. national missy interests

and why this aid is being frozen after the department of defense had already certified to congress that the anti-corruption benchmarks had been made. so it is regular channel in order to accomplish the personal interests of the president over the national security policy of the country. and that's what makes it impeachable. >> and for viewers watching trying to keep track of all of these threads, that's the difference between clumsy 2016 foreign help where there is meetings. but campaigns don't have a state department. campaigns don't have diplomats and experts. so you could show up with the meeting and talk that talk about maybe russia helps. and you could publicly welcome the emails and those things that shocked a lot of people, a lot of national security people, lawyers, republicans when donald trump was a candidate that the republican party wasn't sold on -- that's way out of bounds. mueller investigated and didn't charge an election conspiracy. he found a lot of other crimes.

but that was a hot mess type of collusion, not chargeable according to mueller. this is not hot mess collusion. this is pretty organized. and what mr. sondland as a current ambassador and employee, a duly appointed officer of the united states in the world of donald trump said today was this is exactly what we were trying to do. we were conditioning money, your taxpayer money that is controlled by law and statute and we were seizing it. we were effectively probably illegally seizing it. that hasn't been adjudicated. that's not hot mess collusion. that is very organized collusion with the arm of the state department. and this is why if people notice that the folks who follow this day in and day out see this as pretty serious. because if you can do this at the state department. if you can do it with mike pompeo who used to run the cia and you can get away with it, then you could do it with the pentagon. you could do it for the next election. you can do it in a way where the democracy itself is profoundly challenged which is why the founders wrote into the

constitution treason and bribery as the main things. other high crimes you could debate. but those were defined because treason and bribery is how you sell off the government and lose control of it to the highest bidder, be it a foreign adversary or really wealthy people who have other interests in mind. that was really damning in that sense. >> jason, it's also -- i know schiff spent some time today taking people through, taking sondland and then coming out and explaining to the public how all of the requirements for the bribery statute have been met. but make it easier for people. it's clear abuse of power. and i think what sondland was describing was having been conducted by the regular policy channel, the president with the knowledge of the vice president with the secretary of state being briefed with rudy giuliani being in the middle of all of it was something that, and congressman maloney did an artful job of getting him to say this out loud and in the room. he was doing this for the president's political gain. this had nothing to do with u.s. national security.

>> and everybody was aware of that because they were frustrated because they had national security goals that they couldn't accomplish. the republicans' only way of trying to stop sondland's testimony today was to either make him sort of this isolated case or make him seem like a dummy. and you had jim jordan say do you know what quid pro quo was? let's see, i used to run hotels. i gave the president a million dollars. now i'm a u.n. ambassador. i guess i know when what a quid pro quo is. and when he says, well, the meeting didn't happen and the money came through anyway. you actually had sondland saying we desperately wanted the president to meet with zelensky. they sounded like they were trying to set up a hinge date. he's charming, you will get along. he said i understand this game enough to know that something was happening here. then you had devin nunes who said you are kind of the lone amigo. i don't know if you necessarily know what you're doing. the fact of the matter is he did understand that this was something that i had three several people working with.

we all had a plan. we were all trying to execute it. and we were being frustrated by this administration for political reasons. >> all right. we have that moment. this is congressman maloney eliciting that dramatic moment out of today's witness gordon sondland. >> when he asked you investigations when iwe all agree now means the bidens we just did this about 30 seconds ago. it's pretty simple question, isn't it? i guess i'm having trouble why you can't just say -- >> when he asked about investigations, i assumed he meant -- >> i know what you assumed. but who would benefit from an investigation of the bidens? >> they're two different questions. >> i am just asking you one. who would benefit from an investigation of the bidens? >> i assume president trump would benefit. >> there we have it, see? [ applause ] didn't hurt a bit, did it? but let me ask you something. >> mr. maloney, excuse me, i've been very forthright and i really resent what you're trying

to -- >> fair enough. this is your third try to do so, sir. didn't work so well the first time, did it? we had a little declaration coming after you. and now we are here a third time and we've got a dusey of a statement. so with all do respect, sir, we appreciate your candor. but let's be clear on what it took to get it out of you. >> we are waiting for the congressman aforementioned congressman to join us. we've been talking about that moment as really one of the most powerful ones that we saw. why was that important to you to get that on the record? and it was also powerful to remind people that this is his third at-bat. >> well, because i think it's just sometimes good to go back to basics, right? i mean, who was going to benefit from this? everybody in the u.s. government who comes before us now says, oh, we would have just liked to have the meetings. we would have just done the security aid. we shouldn't have held it up.

and the question is who did it and why. and those are the basic questions and the answer's clear. the president did it, and he did it to benefit himself personally, the white house, meaning the security assistance. and so when you talk about quid pro quo and you talk about these other things, it's easy for us all to sound like a bunch of lawyers. but i just wanted to bring it back to the basics. and also, you know, forgive me, but i wanted there to be a little accountability for gordon sondland, who i thought was a little smug through a lot of today's hearings. and i think his testimony to date has been, well, let's just say incomplete. so we appreciate his candor, as i said. but we should be clear what it took to get it out of him. >> congressman, do you feel -- is there any effort to revisit the decision not to use the courts to pressure ambassador bolton to come before your committee? and i ask that because the narrative around john bolton has been to put him on the side to depict him almost as a conscientious objector inside

the white house. he was sending his deputies to the white house counsel's office. he called rudy giuliani a hand grenade. he talked about what mulvaney was doing as a drug deal. it appeared that gordon sondland went out of his way to say that john bolton asked for rudy's cell phone number and then one of your colleagues said why do you underscore that? why did you make that point twice? he said you work in the white house, you can get anybody's phone number. he appeared to throw john bolton under the bus. i wonder if that changed your calculation about his importance as a witness. >> well, what's important to gordon sondland is not always what's important to us. what's important to us is to understand what the president did and what he was thinking and what it meant and to hold him accountable for it. and that's our primary focus. look, you know, john bolton's day is coming. so is mick mulvaney. so is secretary pompeo's. so is everybody who thinks they can run fast enough to escape

the scandal and taint of this administration. i'd refer them to roger stone and paul manafort and paul gates and michael cohen and others in the past who thought they were clever enough or slick enough to evade the truth, to lie to congress, to intimidate witnesses. but the one who matters is the president of the united states. there are other people who i think have a lot of tough questions to answer. it bothers me that ambassador bolton is selling a book deal when three of his deputies were up here at risk of their own professional careers telling the truth. i think that's disgraceful. i do think the mcgahn decision which is coming quick is going to inform all of us on on the true oversight power of congress is. and we'll take it from there. >> you mentioned don mcgahn. there is also growing evidence of the role of mr. eisenberg. he works in the white house counsel's office. he's assigned to the nsc. he is the lawyer that colonel vindman went to. what's your sense just out of the two days of testimony this

week of all the tentacles that this scandal has now reached into deep into the white house counsel's office, deep into the nsc from gordon sondland, all the way to the highest levels of the state department? and today the vice president was implicated as having full knowledge of the pressure campaign and the quid pro quo. >> yeah. that's right. and the people who are saving us are the career foreign service officers, the career united states military officers, people like ambassador yovanovitch, ambassador taylor, lieutenant colonel vindman. they are doing the right thing when their political bosses are doing the wrong thing. secretary pompeo should be ashamed of himself when the people he is supposed to lead, supposed to protect and take care of are out here getting attacked by the president for telling the truth, getting intimidated when they come before congress. so we've seen a real division between the way the people who know right from wrong are behaving and the people at the top, unfortunately, who are the

political layer broad brought in by the president and first and foremost the president himself who are engaging in this effort to gain personally instead of doing the country's business. >> you've been so generous with your time, congressman. if you have a couple more minutes my colleague ari melber has a question for you. >> sure. >> congressman, thanks for joining us on this momentous day. do you see the evidence that mr. sondland provided to your committee today as adding to potential articles of impeachment? and if so which articles? >> you know, that's a great question, ari. i think that i'd want to reserve judgment on that only because exactly what articles of impeachment will be considered by judiciary is not really our focus, right? our focus is on getting the facts out, preparing a report on what happened in an expeditious, fair, and thorough way, and sending that to the judiciary committee and letting them make that decision. it is clear to me, however, that if you look at historical

precedent, the nixon impeachment articles are a real good place to start. >> congressman, thank you again for your time. i know there's more testimony this afternoon. please pop back out in any breaks and let us know what of note is going on in there. we are all watching. thank you. >> happy to do it. >> one of the lines of questioning we have talked about mike pompeo, you and i have talked about mike pompeo a lot, especially last friday with your very -- i think anyone that works in government is particularly haunted by the idea of doing what congressman just described, doing the right thing. if you're subpoenaed you respond to congress. i worked in the white house. i think i turned all my emails to the committee three times. >> we are drawn to that work because we are rule-oriented. >> right. and so i think even by last friday you were watching marie yovanovitch here with me and had some harsh words, deserving words, for mike pompeo. let me play what sondland said about mike pompeo's approval of the job he was doing.

do we have that? >> i mentioned at the outset that throughout these events we kept state department leadership and others apprised of what we were doing. state department was fully supportive of our engagement in ukraine efforts and was aware that a commitment to investigations was among the issues we were pursuing. >> state department fully aware, but investigations which meant investigations into the 20 -- you can kind of have a grab back of which whackadoo theory you want. which if it were a legitimate criminal investigation could be pursued by the department of justice, which donald trump is happy to reach into. >> such an important point. so, one of the things that congress maloney did when he cross-examined mr. sondland was he used logic.

judges also give the following instruction to juries. you never have to suspend as a juror your common sense, your experience or your logic. you the jury are allowed to use all that stuff in weighing the evidence and deciding a case. so logically, if you wanted to open an investigation of hunter biden, if you thought he broke the law, who would you ask to do that? the ukrainians or the fbi? not a close call. and so we know now from ambassador sondland but from others as well, they didn't really want an investigation. they wanted an announcement of an investigation. if you wanted an investigation in a narcotics case you go to the dea. in a gun case you go to the atf. in a public corruption or bribery case you go to the fbi. and to ambassador mcfaul's point from earlier, if the fbi needs help from the ukrainians we have channels to do that. we do it all the time. and so this notion logically drawing on common sense and

experience that we would ask the ukrainians to open an investigation on an american citizen who we suspected of wrongdoing. by the way, i don't suspect him of wrongdoing, would never be done in that way. >> all right. no one is going anywhere. so much to go through from this morning's testimony. so much to look ahead to. this afternoon's witnesses are arriving on capitol hill. that testimony expected to get underway shortly. we are going to sneak in a quick break. we will be right back. >> everyone was in the loop. it was no secret. again, everyone was in the loop. they knew what we were doing and why. at liberty butchumal- cut. liberty biberty- cut. we'll dub it. liberty mutual customizes your car insurance so you only pay for what you need. only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪ i am totally blind.

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you indicated that you said to him that you were concerned that the delay in the aid was tied to the issue of investigations. is that right? >> i don't know exactly what i said to him. this was a briefing attended by many people and i was invited at the very last minute. i wasn't scheduled to be there. but i think i spoke up at some point late in the meeting and said it looks like everything is being held up until these statements get made. and that's why, you know, personal belief. >> and vice president pence just nodded his head? >> again, i don't recall any exchange or where he asked me any questions. i think it was sort of a duly noted -- >> well, he didn't say, gordon, what are you talking about? >> no, he did not. >> he didn't say what investigations? >> he did not.

>> he did not. any of us who are briefed, politicians, know what that means. aaron blake and jonathan swan. we are also joined by andrew weissmann. we have been watching something so extraordinary. and i articulated this anxiety i have about staring at trees and missing the forest. but if you can just pull us back to the forest on what happened today. >> the main thing that happened is you have a witness who said there was a quid pro quo. he didn't link all of the pieces, but he linked enough of them that you could quibble with all sorts of ends and little pieces of it. but at the end of the day you have somebody who was appointed by the president saying that he was leveraging for his own personal benefit, an investigation into what he then understood was the bidens, not just burisma, but he now understands having looked at everything that this was an

investigation into a political opponent. and as you just law in the last segment, he understands that's wrong and is something that the president was doing. >> if you had these facts on a governor, could you indict on these facts? >> absolutely. this is the kind of case you would bring. there are all sorts of ways of charging this kind of case. the one thing that i think was notable in especially the opening statement was that you had the witness telling you there are documents out there, get them. he made a point of wrapping himself around the documents to corroborate what he was saying. and so there obviously are good reasons why the democrats are saying we don't want to go down that road and we don't want to get into a rabbit hole of the court system and how long that takes. i'm not sure at this point with this witness saying there/there. you may not get them in time. but there is a reason to do it even if you don't get them in time which is the witnesses who are coming up know that when

they tell you a story, they need to worry about some day those documents are going to come out. >> and especially this witness. and i want to ask you about this. our viewers have been covering every twist and turn. i think we can get in the weeds a little bit. talk about gordon sondland's attorney. and talk about that line from congressman maloney where he says basically this is your third try. you submitted to a closed-door deposition. it was not your completely accurate testimony. you submitted a three and a half page addendum and you sit before us today with a totally different, a wholly different, a potentially game-changing different account of what has gone on. what do you think sondland's attorney said to him? was it sort of like this better be the full and final version of the truth? >> so, a lot of us have been prosecutors and defense lawyers. i know him well who is his lawyer.

knowing bob who you do not get better than bob leskin. there is no doubt in my mind that he had a tough-love conversation with him that said you are coming clean now or else, a, i'm not representing you or, b, all bets are off. basically you already had one bite at the apple and you saw what happened. there are documents out there. there are credible witnesses out there. you better tell the truth. and that's all you can really do as counsel. then you hope the witness follows your instructions. and i'm sure bob leskin is hoping that his telling the truth this time. the danger of this witness seems to be what andrew and ari are getting at. this is a guy who did not have any more life lines to call. he had to come clean today. it's the third sort of attempt at telling his story. there was at least one democratic member of this committee that had accused him

of perjury. what do you make of the real sort of scrambling to try to -- i don't even know if you can call it defend themselves, but the other people who were implicated were at best flat-footed today. >> yeah. let me just try it as best i can to explain how they are thinking about this in the white house and republicans on the hill. they are premising all of this on their theory of the case, which is that there is almost nothing that would happen in these hearings that would convince 20 republican senators to convict. and so what they are trying to do is erect these little shields to give to these republican senators one such shield is the turner questioning where you have this clip where he says, you know, no, i didn't get this direct instruction from the president. the one that president trump has

seized upon is him saying out loud recounting the phone call with president trump. and based on our reporting so far, i believe that that is going to be enough for these republican senators because they are so determined to stick with the president. i think the most interesting thing hanging out there is john bolton. i've been watching him the whole way through. i've been trying to find out his intentions. i've been reporting -- i spoke to someone close to him this morning, and i said to them will he reconsider his decision not to voluntarily testify? and they said no comment. i don't have reason to think that he will reverse course that he's going down this legal path. but the reason i think he's interesting is because he clearly is signaling that he has information that has not yet been covered by this. there is a meeting that we have heard about where he was in the oval with president trump. and if john bolton were to come out and say that president trump

explicitly linked these two things, that would be very, very difficult for anyone to get around and deny. whereas i think what's come out so far, while it may be clear for anyone drawing the dots, i am not arguing the facts or making a counter case. i am just saying based on the politically that i have reported on the hill, i don't think what happened today is going to be determinitiv in changing his chances of being convicted in the senate. >> let me just follow up with you though on bolton. because it seemed to me that everything changed for john bolton today. and i'm not saying that that changes what he decides to do. but he is someone who is so aware of the levers that influence how he's perceived. he guards his reputation very carefully in conservative circles. and in this story in the ukraine scandal, he was the white knight. his deputy fiona hill testified

that he described rudy giuliani as a hand grenade, that he described mick mulvaney as being engaged in a drug deal, that he didn't want anything to do with. his reputation has been described by other witnesses in the impeachment proceeding was described it as a conscientious objector, that someone who was in the white house at the highest levels had nothing to do with the ukraine extortion campaign or effort. sondland walks in today and says two things that were -- that seemed to take a bite out of that carefully constructed narrative. one, he says that before bolton went overseas, he asked for rudy giuliani's cell phone number. sondland made a big point of making sure everybody got that. and when he was asked why he did that, he said because i thought it was weird. the white house can get anybody's phone number which, having worked at the white house, happens to be true. the second is that he made clear in multiple statements today that everybody at every level in the regular channel was aware of

and working toward the same goal, which was pressuring ukraine to commit to the investigations to release aid in the white house meeting. and he made a point of listing the nsc every single time. i understand last time the invitation was from the house to bolton. bolton might seek to testify to clarify any questions about his role? >> i don't know the answer to that because i have been trying to get the answer to that for some time. they obviously withdrew their subpoena from charlie kupperman and they never issued a subpoena to john bolton because house democrats made the determination that it was going to take too much time. bolton was going down this path with -- bolton and his lawyer chuck cooper, they worked together under reagan and they are very, very tight and they wanted to argue this -- they wanted to basically force the courts to decide this question of separation of powers.

but it is becoming really difficult just politically for him. he has now been -- we got reports that he was doing a paid speech and talking about his time in the white house there. we obviously know that he's got a book deal. he sent all of these signals to the white house that i'm not going to be your loyalist. his agents for the book deal with the same agents that did james comey's book deal. if you are trying to signal to trump i am going to be your synchofant, that's not really something that you do. i don't have enough visibility into his thinking to answer a question like that. i'm been trying to find out and i just simply don't know the answer to that. >> you know, he seems to me, and i spoke to congressional sources yesterday who reiterated that they would not pursue his testimony. it seems that you can get at what he did and what he knew. but it you're john bolton, do

you want to testify? do you want to tell your own story? >> well, if you don't want to testify, and i can't imagine many people really want to be in that situation. you don't really wake up in the morning and think i can't wait to testify in this kind of setting. even if you're john bolton. is his story may come out through dr. hill. so he may decide let's see how that goes because she has a number of useful things to say about where he is. there is no question though that today sondland was basically saying, to use your phrase, don't pretend you are the white knight. you are in the boat with the rest of us going along paddling in the same exact way we were. so you want to pretend this is something you didn't approve? that's not true. and the question is whether dr. hill is going to do enough to separate bolton from the others in terms of what they were doing. >> it's such a good way to put it, aaron blake.

you read a lot about these boats. i think the white house is fair to describe them as bumper cars. it is a famously dysfunctional workplace. to be fair, every white house is fraught, is tense. it's not romper room. but it's not what this white house is. and the idea that anyone even someone like john bolton can leave it to proxies to defend their honor and defend their decisionmaking and leadership to me seems overly optimistic. >> yeah. i really can't decide what i think about this. [ laughter ] >> i love your honesty. >> well, i keep thinking, you know, early on when trump was especially making all these moves that were very much counter to the john bolton vision of foreign policy when he was moving even more so away from the kind of hawkish republican party foreign policy that we're used to, you kind of thought maybe john bolton has

some motivation here to speak out and maybe, you know, send the message about what the president just did with withdrawing from syria and planning a meeting with the taliban at camp david holding out his potential testimony would seem a great way of maybe, you know, easing the president off of some of these inclinations in the future. on the other hand, john bolton is somebody who seems to have real convictions. and his political rise has never necessarily been about playing the game as much as having these real strong feelings about foreign policy. i think what we are hearing from some of these witnesses that behind the scenes that kind of true believer mentality show through with things he told people to report to the lawyers breaking up the meeting with sondland according to some of these witnesses. he seemed to really believe that this was a bad thing. and you have to ultimately wonder if that's not going to push him in the direction of doing something that would be

rather arduous in the end that maybe he doesn't want to do -- many parts of him that don't want to do this. but maybe ult me deciding this is the right thing to do. >> i would weigh in with maybe he thought it was really bad. and andrew knows a lot more about this, viewers will remember many of the different prosecutions you've done where you have to put yourself back in the mind of what the people thought at the time. this has exploded to become an existential threat to the donald trump presidency in a way that many other scandals have not. but you have to look at what people thought before it exploded, before they knew there'd be a whistle-blower. back when speaker pelosi was telling everyone we are not going to do an impeachment vote before the election and donald trump was on his way to a re-election campaign with mueller in the rear view. what were people thinking then? and i think and i'm saying this as reported analysis not proven yet today. but i think the theory of the case increasingly looks like a lot of people who were playing it both ways put a marker down,

called the lawyers internally and move on and keep working. and that's why you have mr. volker saying things that don't really add up. what do mr. volker and mr. sondland say? i had no idea that burisma had anything to do with the bidens. they have now said that under oath. that doesn't make sense. this was such a big issue that in the obama era people were being warned about the apparent conflict of interest and going out of their way to avoid burisma, not because there was a crime but simply because there was a family connection. you do that in connection. they have a bunch of ukraine experience and donald trump experience. and what is donald trump doing we now know at the time in talking on foreign leader phone calls about biden. not burisma, biden. i think mr. bolton is having a lot of people talk for him because experienced potential witnesses know if someone else says it, it's not perjury.

so i think that's the wider view here. i don't know who the heroes and angels are. i do know that mr. sondland moved from denying quid pro quo bribery to admitting it today. i do know mr. volker tried to help execute aspects of this planning and then walked away from it. everyone who's been under heat, and i will pass it back to andrew who knows more than i, do but everyone who has been under heat has been moving towards confirming an international bribery plot. mick mulvaney still confirmed it in public and then walked it back. so with this and the new york investigation of giuliani, who else is under enough heat to move? because i haven't seen anyone under heat move back towards donald trump and what he claimed because he denied this once before. that's proof that it didn't happen. >> so i think it's a very fair point. one of the things you have to ask in terms of your question is what's john bolton going to do? i think he is going to be happy to have dr. hill do the talking

for him if he did something that he's not proud of because you avoid liability or even smearing your reputation. i thought the weakest point today was the question of whether sondland was really telling the truth about burisma where he says i just thought it was by burisma and the 2016 election. did he not read the "new york times" front page article where giuliani is touting why he is going to ukraine? where he says i am going and it is an investigation of hunter biden that i am going in pursuit of. the idea that that's something that no one followed and is this is the ambassador toed e.e. >> he also made repeated claims that ukraine was in the portfolio from the go. but he missed the one article about donald trump's personal lawyer that was on the front page of the "new york times" heading to, oh, wait for it, ukraine. fox news by the way. and even if you missed that,

does he not have google? [ laughter ] can he not just google burisma? so that to me was -- >> for nothing else to figure out how to spell it. he wanted zelensky to write it in a public statement. all right. we are going to sneak in a break. our thanks to aaron and jonathan. if you guys learn anything else, run back to our cameras. we will take you at any point. we are waiting for this afternoon's session of the public hearings of the impeachment inquiry into donald j. trump. stay with us. that is amazing.

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presumption. >> which is nothing. then you are giving them the evidence that they're running out and doing press conferences and cnn's headline is saying that you're saying the president of the united states should be impeached because he tied aid to investigations, and you don't know that, correct? >> i never said the president of the united states should be impeached. >> in response to my colleagues, my colleagues seem to be under the impression that unless the president spoke the words ambassador sondland, i am bribing the ukrainian president that there is no evidence of bribery. they also seem to say that, well, they got the money, the money may have been conditioned but they got the money. yes, they got caught. >> those were some of the fireworks from today's explosive testimony. the witness was eu ambassador gordon sondland, who our friend paul butler has joined us. essentially, through everyone from the president to the vice

president to the secretary of state to the national security council under the bus where he's been laying for a couple weeks now. >> exactly right. so the blockbuster historic testimony from the opening statement was, and this is a quote, was there a quid pro quo? the answer is yes. that's what sondland said. he said that giuliani was essentially the bag man. the president directed the corrupt, criminal conspiracy and giuliani carried it out. everybody knew. the secretary of state approved it. pompeo green lighted it. secretary of state. pence knew about it. he nodded when he heard about it. and, again, we see also this evolving defense from people like sondland, which i think will also apply to bolton. and the defense is that they were ironically victims of the shakedown. how were they victim?

well, everyone understood that the military aid was vital to ukraine. the only way that ukraine could defend itself in its war with russia is if it got the military aid from the united states. the only way that it could get it is if president zelensky would do president trump a political favor. so in a sense, many of these actors who knew were victims. >> and we know a lot of that from a summary of a call released by the white house. it just -- you know, there wasn't some sort of plot here to leak any information. a lot of the members -- to go after the whistle-blower. the whistle-blower is, you know, september 11th is calling and they want their front page back. i mean, the whistle-blower's moment in the sun, for better or for worse, has come and gone. 11 witnesses. they all work for donald trump. gordon sondland is the most politically aligned with donald trump out of everyone we heard from and gave the most

devastating testimony. >> nicolle, to your point, one of the oddest potential defenses that kept being floated today in the line of republican questioning and even sondland at time gesturing at it was, well, we didn't know what investigations meant and whether you could you've miez investigations. the president walked out on the south lawn and was asked what was your goal? and he says i was hoping the ukraine would do a major investigation of the bidens. the son and the father. the potential rival, the potential nominee. he said it. and then he puts out the contemporaneous call notes, which are not a full transcript. >> wait. wait. wait. he also says -- but let's -- i mean, i think we also gloss what are investigations? investigations are the 2020 version of what russia did in 2016. it's cheating. >> and that's the political -- that's the political context. and i know that mr. weissman can't speak to all of this today as a former mueller prosecutor. but i'm over here and i can. in 2016, right, donald trump had

a narrow electoral college victory which he knew and everyone in his team knew was a very hard one to secure. and it was built on the idea that hilary clinton was crooked and there was a criminal investigation into her, which stayed in the news well towards election day. and he's running now, in his mind, maybe against joe biden. and what does he want? he wants to create the same playbook that worked against hilary clinton on the e-mails and endless investigations and to take it back to today, sondland is saying under oath, it didn't matter whether anyone in ukraine was actually investigated or prosecuted. what mattered was the television announcement that biden was dirty, aka crooked, oh, every time donald trump, who's a very litigious person who's been under investigation many times, every time he runs weird. he's running against someone who might cancel out that issue by allegedly being crooked and under investigation. he wanted the tv coverage of an investigation. didn't matter whether it was true. why is that so damning in an

evidentiary perspective? because sondland, who again is a star witness who works for donald trump as of today, tonight, i haven't gotten a news update. sondland is saying very clearly it was not about any potentially legitimate or constitutional goal or a foreign policy goal or his presidential powers. it was about getting something on tv that "the new york times" says donald trump was close to announcing on tv so he could use that to help cheat in the election. that is why today was so different. >> you know, i worked on campaigns and opposition research is almost priceless. i mean, opposition research is the -- i mean, i worked for george w. bush. in 2000, it was news of a dui that broke the week before the general election in 2000. that you can surmise that was the product of investigations or -- or -- or just really good probably beat reporting that looked through police records and found that. that almost cost -- and some people argue that did cost him the election. there was the florida recount. but how does the justice

department look at this and not deem that the crime of something valuable on a political enemy, joe biden, being sought wasn't a crime worth investigating? >> so it is useful to step back and think about what does the public know that has been issued by the department of justice on that issue about what is a thing of value in a campaign finance charge? and the only thing that i know that is public on that comes from the mueller report. where you have the former number two in the solicitor general's office saying that a thing of value -- this is all public, everybody can read it in black and white -- is it can be a thing of value and cites the law for the fact that that law should be interpreted broadly. and it also makes common sense, as anyone in the business knows, it is a thing of value. >> you make ads out of it. you put mailers out of it. so how did the justice department not? >> so we don't know the answer to that.

it is -- to me, it is a fascinating question to know what the justice department was asked about in terms of whether they were ever asked to open a case on hunter biden or joe biden. of course, that would be the normal way if you thought you actually had a predicated investigation, why are you going off to ukraine to investigate two americans? why wouldn't you go to the justice department and ask them, oh, we think there's a factual basis here and the fbi would do an analysis of whether there was factual predication and if there was, they would do an investigation and take it from there. it is -- it is surprising to me. i don't -- i suspect that that did not happen. but i don't see anything in writing from them about saying this is, in fact, not a campaign finance violation. >> white house reporter for "the new york times" michael crowley joins us now. michael crowley, one of the reasons might be, and -- and i welcome anyone from the justice

department to disavow me of this thinking that whether it did or did not happen, donald trump we know sought a press conference from bill barr. donald trump has been looking for a roy cohn to lead his justice department basically since he won election. i mean, what do you make of how donald trump's influence is being felt all over the government with the -- the embassy, the eu, at the justice department. and we learned today from gordon sondland, at the highest levels of the state department. >> well, it's remarkable and that is one of the most useful things about sondland's testimony today is a picture of, you know, the people who are trying to figure out a way to make this president happy. and, you know, i think that possibly the most sympathetic argument you can make for the position that people like sondland and volker were in was, look, it's really important from their perspective that ukraine get this american aid. the president has these conditions attached to it. let's just find a way to make president trump happy because we've got to protect ukraine

from the russians. but what that is, is, you know, a sign of how people throughout the government may have a certain policy goal in mind but they're just contorting themselves to try to achieve that goal by some means that makes president trump happy through the sort of separate set of issues that he's interested in. which often are not something that any of these people subscribe to. and so they -- they execute these policies. they pursue them at great risk to their own integrity and reputation. and we're seeing one after another i think they're coming to deeply regret it. >> you know, you bring us to what is ahead of us still today. it's the testimony of laura cooper. she's deputy assistant secretary of defense for russia, ukraine, and eurasia. but one of the things that pentagon officials have testified to, and i believe laura cooper was the victim of that fake stampede down at the scif that at least a third of those members had regular access to. so it's still unclear to me why

they were storming the gates. but she testified to questions at the pentagon at least about the legality of holding up military aid. i mean, to your point about how everyone gets dirtied up by what trump wants them to do, there were questions in real time about whether or not it was legal to hold up aid that had been appropriated by congress and that had met the pentagon's anti-corruption checklist for its dispersement. >> absolutely. which puts people in a terrible position because so they are looking on the one hand, they're saying this is illegal. they're saying ukraine really needs the aid. the president wants this thing, you know, is there just -- is there some way we can make this work? we can make it go away. give the president what he wants. i think that some people in the bureaucracy, not all of them, kind of think they don't take the president that seriously on some level. they think he wants this ridiculous thing. if we can just tell him that we've sort of donehi