kurt: sally, what do you think?this is a lot of distraction in the press and on the surface, or do you think this could help behind the scenes? sally: i think it might affect the press, the coverage, and the media, but i don't think it will help the actual investigations. at this point, they are really in the hands of the antitrust worker bees, staff attorneys who are working diligently. the political decisions were already made. those were the decisions to investigate. now we are in the process of document requests, document review, depositions. all that stuff takes time, and i don't think the impeachment is going to distract from the work that the attorneys are doing on the ground level. kurt: you know, there's a bunch of different investigations. the attorneyously general, the doj, the fcc. are any of those impacted more by the impeachment than others? bely: i would say doj would the most impacted by the impeachment process, just because there have been some implications the attorney general, william barr, could

i know kurt volcker. i know from a source close to the investigation a bit of what happened today, a bit of the context, i guess. again, this is secondhand. at least. but essentially it seems that what volcker was trying to do, and i've known him a long time so i'm giving him a lot of benefit of the doubt, was to try to maneuver the situation so that he can get president trump to meet with president zelensky, the new ukrainian president. he thought that giuliani was feeding a bunch of garbage that he had heard from some ukrainians, one ukranian in particular, to president trump, and he needed to just get the truth from zelensky. the problem that is kurt volcker is the envoy, the president's envoy. the president should be listening to kurt volcker, who's a long-time -- never mind he was appointed by trump, he's a long-time foreign service officer for many years before he got out and started to work for the mccain institute. so president trump should have been listening to him, but he was listening to rudy

you know kurt volker. what do you make of his testimony today, and what more do you think we are going to be learning about it? >> right. so as you say, lawrence, i know ambassadori ambassadorave onovich. >> and i know kurt volker. and i happen to know from a source close to the investigation a bit of what happened today and a bit of the context i fess. this is second hand, at least. but essentially it seems that what volker was trying to do. and i've known him for a long time. so i am giving him a lot of the benefit of the doubt was to try to maneuver the situation so that he can get president trump to meet with president zelensky, the new ukrainian president. he thought that giuliani was feeding a bunch of garbage that he had heard from some ukrainians and one ukrainian in particular to president trump and that he just needed to get the truth from zelensky. the problem here is that kurt volker is the envoy, the president's envoy. the president should be listening to kurt volker who is a long-time never m

kurt: dan, i want to bring you in here. know that obviously there were some other elements of the ipo, there was some credit financing, for example, that was going to come when the ipo happened. can you give us a sense of where wework's financials are right now? i am sure the company needs some money. what is the business like? dan: right now, this has been a black eye obviously for wework, as well as the ipo market really putting up a white flag, showing investors aren't going to buy some of the business models with throughout the year evaluations but it really hits on cash burn profitability. they have to go back from a financing perspective to next steps here, it is the fork in the road situation. you talked about the first thing, they have to cut costs, invest some of the pieces and really put this car back in the body shop until it comes out maybe healthier for an ipo later this year into next year, you think about best case 2020. kurt: i know that softbank is obviously heavily involved in this company right now. dan,

kurt volker, former u.s. closed doors in front of three committees. we're learning that dozens of pages were delivered ahead of his deposition this morning. >> this was all sparked by president trump's

the cardigan represents a grunge era, it is kurt cobain and nirvana, it's ten to since kurt cobain was etc, that era, 25 years on, they have the money and disposable income and are hankering back, buying the memories from their youth. it is a tangible asset. there are cigarette burns, stains. it's amazing. but this cardigan fetched almost as much as kurt are the guitar. how often do garments like this sell the so much money? —— cockbain‘s. you can understand with instruments but not a cardigan in this state. the thing about marilyn monroe's dress she w0 re about marilyn monroe's dress she wore to sing happy birthday to president kennedy, we sold it for 4.1 million, michaeljackson‘s jacket, 1.8 million, this weekend we are getting ready to sell 0livia newtonjohn‘s are getting ready to sell 0livia newton john's jacket from greece. so, yes, people pull huge money into these items. if you are a musician, you love guitars. but a lot of people relate to items from grunge. that was such an amazing performance, that concert by kurt cobain, and then it was released six months after he passed aw

hey kurt! movies? i'll get snacks!o, i can't believe how easy it was to save hundreds of dollars on our car insurance with geico. i got snacks! ohhh, i got popcorn, i got caramel corn, i got kettle corn. am i chewing too loud? believe it! geico could save you fifteen percent or more on car insurance. white ex police woman of murder in the shooting death of her black neighbor. there were stifled cheers and applause in the courtroom when the judge read the verdict. >> we the jury unanimously find the defendant amber guyger guilty of murder as charged in the indictment. no outbursts. >> now amber guyger said she walked into her neighbor's apartment by mistake and shot him to death in the dark without asking questions because she thought he was an intruder. cnn's ed lavandera is joining us from dallas where the case has drawn national attention. this was surprising and tell us about it. >> reporter: hi, brianna. it was a stunning verdict. even those people who had been calling for the murder charge in this case, admit that

and like kurt stroll kerr who d kurt volker did resign, so he would be free to speak to these congressional hearings.kerr who kurt volker did resign, so he would be free to speak to these congressional hearings. he has not chosen to do that sgln and wh. >> and this isn't the first example of shadow diplomacy. to the extend that president trump does what he does so it normalizes it, he has in fact created a world both on the defense front and on the diplomatic front where there is sort of the shadow activity going on, people who aren't officially in the process who ar advising the president and doing these things. is that typical, do you recall that in your experience? >> no, not at all. and what it does, it creates plausible deniability potentially for the president to say that these people that he is engaging with were operating off the books or that the policymakers who are engaged like kurt volker was and other, they are carrying one message, but he really behind the scenes is doing something else and they can say that they didn't have the authority. there is a lot of manipulation here t

for more, i go down to kurt wagner.joined by facebook's david marcus who is in washington, d.c. today. he is the head of libra inside of facebook and one of the cofounders of the libra cryptocurrency. thank you for being here. i know it has been a very busy week for you. i want to start with what happened yesterday. you were in geneva for the first official meeting of the libra association. walk me through what happened yesterday and what you guys were able to accomplish. david: that is right. yesterday, we have the inaugural council meeting in geneva. it was an awesome moment where 21 companies came together -- venture firms -- came together and started working on not only establishing a governance model for the association, but also distribute a different roles. a board was elected. i was lucky enough to also be elected on the board with four other amazing individuals that i am really looking forward to working with. the big change is fundamentally, yesterday, this product moved from being facebook led to being led by

this is to gordon sondland and kurt volker. this is from kurt volker's cache.'s what gordon sondland says. do we still want zelensky to give us an unequivocal draft meaning a statement that he will investigate 2016 and baresma? two weeks later, this is to bill taylor. are we saying security assistance and white house meeting are conditioned on these investigations? that's when the ambassador gordon sondland says call me. >> i love that. you see why prosecutors love this kind of evidence. it's a gold mine. because you see the actual words of the actual players at the time it's all happening. you can't spin it after the fact. it's in text. it's preserved. so talk about a quid pro quo. i mean, conditioned on the investigation? that's english for quid pro quo. you get this, conditioned on me getting that. and the best part is, call me. which is translating to, of course it is but don't put it in a text, genius. so these texts are really incredibly valuable, i think, to giving a sense of what's going on here. they understood it was this for that. >> preet bharara wr

the government, the state department has been blocking some handover of documents, if this is from kurt volker's own emails, from his computer system. we assume that would be quite telling. that's what we need to find out today. things are happening, as we discussed, at a breakneck pace. david axelrod, cnn senior political commentator and host of "the ax files." so, david, he knows the answer as to why the ukrainians were so determined to meet with rudy giuliani and vice versa and if he had these documents, it's so interesting that dozens of pages of documents have now been delivered to the house intel and oversight committees. >> critical in a number of respects. rudy giuliani keeps appearing on television with his tablet, showing text messages that he got from volker and suggesting that he was acting at the instance of the state department in meeting with these ukrainian officials, belying the fact that he had had contacts in ukraine for months before that, apparently. and volker can put those text messages into context and explain why it was that he tried to arrange some sort of disc

it's a little ambiguous, is what kurt volker was saying.do know is there is a months-long orchestrated campaign to get ukraine to investigate biden, and this was after donald trump specifically blocked critical military aid to ukraine that congress had specifically appropriated. >> i want to ask because yesterday trump said he wasn't interested in political rivals. yesterday he said he should investigate joe and hunter biden. >> the president might want to watch the video of his remarks yesterday on the south lawn. i served in active duty in the military because i believe america is an exceptional country, and we are all americans. the american president should never, ever solicit a foreign government to target a political rival. that is unamerican, it's wrong, and it's abuse of power. >> congressman ted lieu, thank you so much. >> thank you, brianna. >>> republicans have remained mostly silent since the president asked the countries to investigate the bidens. they're starting to feel the heat on their own districts. >>> president trump is

no because of course brant this is happening behind closed doors but we do know that you know kurt folk are of course now the former u.s. special envoy to ukraine and you know he was mentioned specifically in this whistle blower complaint and it's claimed that just one day after that phone call between president trump and the ukrainian president selenski volcker alongside the u.s. ambassador to the european union met with the press president selenski in which it was believed that they gave him advice on how to navigate trump's request and that what's interesting is that folk are also handed over documents before his appearance and also included in that are text messages that he had with rudy giuliani never rudy giuliani of course is the president's own private attorney and you know this as i said the testimony is taking place behind closed doors and while old this was taking place today of course we had some rather extraordinary comments coming from president donald trump. this road to scandal with appears to be multiply nel says that both ukraine and showing should investigate joe bide

kurt: people still do not trust facebook.hat was the overarching theme from the questions we heard today. a lot of the feedback from members of congress was basically pointing out things that facebook has done wrong in the past and asking given your track record, why should we trust you with libra, with money, with a new cryptocurrency? at the end, it was representative mchenry after almost six hours of questions and testimony that said i'm not sure we learned anything new here. it was a little bit of an unfair blanket statement but at the same time, i think despite the fact that we had all this time to hear from mark zuckerberg, we did not walk away with a bunch of big questions answered. taylor: kurt, when pressed on why we should trust facebook, what was his response? kurt: well, a lot of the response is similar to the clip you just showed, which is the idea that facebook is just one of 21 different companies that libraw overseeing the cryptocurrency. facebook is putting out there that we are not the only people making a d

so i think kurt was thinking the ukrainians can set him straight. that's what i'm guessing. >> what do you know about the ambassador that the president keeps talking about, the former ambassador to ukraine who worked under a couple administrations. >> she's known as masha, her nickname. she like kurt volker, career ambassador, solid as a rock, tough, knows the region inside out. i worked with her when she was in government and afterwards i was going back and forth as a think tanker and consultant to ukraine. i know she was working very hard oppressing the government, the previous government in ukraine, the petro government to do better on corruption. it gets confusing because we're talking about three different governments. there was the russian aligned government, that's the guy that manafort helped put into power. the ukrainians went to the streets when it looked like he was not going to let them join the european union and turn west, right. >> yes. >> so he was basically moved out by the mob, more or less. the people went to the streets, he shot

>> well, kurt really finds himself in the middle of this.was, of course, named in the whistleblower complaint as somebody who was dealing with both rudy giuliani and giuliani's attempts to interact with the ukrainian government and at the same time he was, in fact, the face of the united states to the ukrainian government trying to figure out and help the ukrainians navigate some of the different kinds of demands and requests that were being put upon them by the trump administration. at the same time, of course, they're fighting for their lives trying to resolve this dispute with russia in eastern ukraine and crimea. >> sandra: that question is his work with trump's personal lawyer, rudy giuliani. what do you expect from the line of questioning from the lawmakers behind closed doors this morning? >> kurt has to explain what exactly was he trying to do in interfacing between giuliani and this new government in ukraine, the zelensky government trying to put these parties together. was he, in fact, operating at the request of giuliani and presi

they didn't go to the ambassador, they went to kurt.ut kurt knows facts, he knows what the truth is about this prosecutor general, this hero from the right-wing conspiracy mr. shoken knows that he was not fighting corruption. and it sounds like he's beginning to lay down some of those facts now today in this testimony. >> what damage, ambassador mcfaul, can kurt volker do to sort of the fragile web of lies that donald trump and rudy giuliani hold up to their own base? it would appear that mr. volker is anything but some sort of lefty deep-state actor. he was picked by a very, very conservative secretary of state mike pompeo with deep and vast political ambitions that may be going up in flames quicker than this ukrainian collusion scam. but what -- it would appear that someone, as you just described, ambassador volker was not getting paid. he was brought in because of his expertise. he knew the ukraine. he was willing to play along, it would appear, with empowering rudy to do something quasi-official. in the midst of it. he witnessed don

kurt: it did sound a little bit threatening.you don't -- if you join, you will have a tougher road ahead. i am curious, have you been surprised i guess by the pushback you have received from regulators? david: again, i say there are two tracks here. i say that there is the engagement on the regulatory front where we have had very constructive conversations. there are questions, those are legitimate questions. we need to bring the right answers to those questions. now we have the ability to do so. since yesterday, we finally have a governance model, an association that was fully formed. it is hard for us to speak on behalf of all of these prospective members before they became members. now the association can take this on and really make progress on these questions. i'd say that for these types of letters to be circulated for a thing that is an idea, a project, and telling people you should not explore innovation and a project at a time where not only here in this country, the world, the core of our financial system has not evolv

we know that rudy giuliani is going to paint kurt volker as an accessory to the campaign. giuliani said repeatedly that he worked at the direction of the state department, and it was kurt volker that told him everybody he needed to know and everybody he needed to meet. but we expect that volker will tell the committees that giuliani has it all wrong. and that if giuliani was getting any help, he was just trying to table it as much as he effectively could. volker will say that he was not involved and that he told officials not to involve themselves at all in the 2020 election. he was never really a trump insider. in fact he was an ally to john mccain. he was doing it on a part-time voluntary basis. he has a full-time job as the executive director of the mccain institute. i'm told by people particular, when he gives his testimony, which is backed by documents, it could be very damaging to president trump, steph. >> is the president's administration going to do anything with the subpoenas. >> he said we will work together with shifty schiff. and house speaker nancy pelosi, an

sun lynn serfaty, what are you learning about kurt volker. >> reporter: wolf, kurt volker is behind closed doors, telling them about warning flags he was giving to president trump's personal lawyer, rudy giuliani. "the washington post" reporting this evening that volker said he told giuliani he was receiving untrustworthy information about joe biden and his son hunter, and he essentially said to giuliani, do not trust these sources, you should be careful about putting faith in those accounts. this keeps in line with what we're hearing from a source familiar with volker's thinking going into the deposition this morning when he said he was essentially trying to get the biden, giuliani issue off the table. this has been a very lengthy day on capitol hill. volker arrived here a little after 9:30 this morning. now it is entering in the eight hour mark of testimony. >> i know we're going to get more information coming out. thank you very much. meantime, bring in congressman jimmy gomez, democrat on the oversight committee. thank you for joining us. we certainly have a lot to discuss now. let me

washington post is now reporting that kurt volker told lawmakers that the president's personal lawyer, rudy giuliani, was warned that ukrainian claims of alleged misconduct by joe biden and his son were not credible. that didn't stop president trump from repeating his request for foreign interference in the upcoming 2020 election. the president is now urging china to investigate biden, despite the impeachment probe that rose from a similar request to ukraine. and there's a new report just up from "the washington post" saying that an irs whistle-blower complained that a treasury political appointee tried to interfere with an audit by either president trump or vice president pence. oversight armed services committees and our correspondents and analysts are also standing by. let's go to our chief white house correspondent jim acosta. first, jim, the president now urging ukraine and china to interfere in the 2020 election by investigating joe biden. >> that's right, wolf. despite all the day's developments it's hard to look past what was a remarkable moment, one for the history books as p

special envoy kurt volker about his orders from trump regarding a meeting in kiev just one day after trump's infamous july phone call with ukraine's leader bowker's name is mentioned in the complaint provided to congress by an anonymous whistleblower house speaker nancy pelosi says the impeachment inquiry is investigating whether trump implied he would withhold military aid to ukraine unless an investigation was launched against there is a quid pro quo if you're if you are already a couple days apart and granting or withholding and then asking for favors to create dirt on your political opponent but trump maintains there was nothing nefarious about his phone call with the ukrainian president the whistleblower never says there was a conversation he got his information i guess sex or desert has he wrote something that was subtle 6 just the former vice president argued there's no evidence that he or his son committed any wrongdoing. just know there are no true george against me no i'm sure every independent news organization. as you charge. has found to be flat out lie still the number

kurt: they don't break that out historically.ed political ads is a very small part of the business. usually after the election or midterm, they will come out and there will be a report. a couple hundred million dollars of ad revenue. that is a drop in the bucket. there is a lot of discussion around their policies which are probably a lot more important and interesting to most people than the money they make. i don't think we will hear a lot from them from that as a business. we may hear a little bit around the policies, but political advertisements for twitter and facebook have been historically small. taylor: we talk a lot about facebook. some of the user growth slowing. the shift to instagram has been a key driver of growth for them. what do we need to see on instagram? kurt: facebook has not broken out instagram revenue, but their estimates that others come out with that shows instagram is the biggest driver of growth for the company. that could be something incredibly interesting if facebook were to actually put that as its o

kurt: also not good. one partner of many, so i will say as far as we know, paypal is the only one of the original 28 libra association members that are leaving. paypal was one of the most well-known and they are a payments company. they understand a little bit about what facebook and the rest of the crew is getting into. they understand the regulatory environment. they understand how products like this exist and work. for someone like that to say, hey, we see too many regulatory hurdles, this is not where we want to spend our time and energy, that is not a great sign for the group. taylor: analysts who cover paypal say ditching libra makes sense, the political attention had really hurt the opportunity. that was according to morgan stanley. anytime an analyst or group comes out and says good you didn't make that move, what pressure does that put on visa, mastercard, the other 28 members debating whether to go in or out? kurt: it puts more pressure on them than facebook. facebook is one of those companies l

special envoy to ukraine, kurt volker. he resigned one day after being named in the whistle-blower complaint. that report alleges a cover-up by the white house of a call in which president trump pressures the president of ukraine to investigate a conspiracy theory about joe biden and his son. >> vohe also set up a meeting between trump attorney rudy giuliani and an adviser to the ukrainian president, part of an effort to move the biden matter away from official channels. now the justice department is telling the white house to preserve records of all of the president's calls with foreign leaders. democrats have warned they could be coming for those documents. cnn's sunlen serfaty is on capitol hill. >> reporter: good morning, david and christine. potentially a huge moment up here on capitol hill. the president's former special envoy to ukraine, kurt volker, is set to appear behind closed doors later today. volker was named in the whistle-blower complaint, the whistle-blower alleging that he had an involvement in the conver

kurt: i thing so.u have someone just raise their hand and say, "sure, i'm in," you leave open the possibility that that is not going to happen. i think there has been a lot of talk about the original partners who have kind of been rethinking this. at the same time, i do not feel bad for these partners. they wanted to be involved from the beginning because everyone wants to be involved in something that is revolutionary. i think that, you know, we will see who ultimately follows through with this, but i think facebook is optimistic a lot of them will stick around. taylor: is this just a sign that the regulatory threats are real? kurt: any time you're trying to do something at this scale and ambition, there will be questions. to facebook's credit, they said we won't launch this until they appease regulators. we will see if they stand by that. i'm sure i will be back to talk to you if they decide to go against that promise, but for now, i think the regulatory concerns are real, but these are the types of

kurt: i don't think so.use the whole thing has just been a concept up until now anyway, so it is not as if they launched something and no one is using it which i think would be much worse situation than what we are in now, which is they have an idea for something and people have a lot of thoughts about that idea. it is not so much that they will never get this off the ground, although i think that is certainly a possibility. i think the bigger issue is more they are not getting a lot of public support right now from anybody. it is hard to take something from the idea phase to the actual product rollout phase when everyone you talk to about it is trying to keep you from getting there. i think that is the biggest issue facebook has right now. they just cannot get a lot of support. if they can come out of this week and if mark zuckerberg can leave that hearing tomorrow and feel like maybe he changed a few months that this might be a good idea, that would be a massive win for facebook. taylor: they are not getti

kurt wagner had this interview with david marcus.day, we had our inaugural council meeting in geneva and it was an awesome moment. 21 companies came together and started working on not only establishing a governance model for the association, but also distributed different roles. a board was elected. i was lucky enough to be elected to the board with four other amazing individuals that i am looking forward to working with. the big change is that fundamentally, yesterday, this project moved from being facebook led to being led by this association of which we are one of 21 members -- and in the future, one of 100. really looking forward to the next stage. it is here and it was great to feel the passion and the energy in the room and the commitment from all of these parties that are now going to work on trying to change the status quo for people around the world when it comes to cost of financial services. kurt: when you first out of this meeting, -- when you first thought of this meeting, there were other companies you thought might be

because kurt volker tomorrow is going to be deposed on capitol hill.ruptly as the special envoy to ukraine. he is mentioned repeatedly in the whistle-blower complaint and that phone call between the president of ukraine and president trump. he is the person who connected rudy giuliani with zelensky's adviser. and he's the executive director at asu of the mccain institute. so is there anything wrong with him connecting president zelensky's adviser with rudy giuliani since we heard president zelensky on the phone call with president trump say that's what he wanted to do, what he wanted to have happen? >> so there's a lot there, alisyn. we don't know how much pressure he felt by the white house. and whether he did it begrudgingly. maybe he was ordered to do it. we don't know how much context volker had about these connections and what giuliani was trying to do. i'm sure he understood the element he was trying to dig up dirt on biden. how much did volker really know? it's troubling when i see a career foreign service officer, a man like him known for integ

hey kurt! movies? i'll get snacks! can't believe how easy it was to save hundreds of dollars on our car insurance with geico. i got snacks! ohhh, i got popcorn, i got caramel corn, i got kettle corn. am i chewing too loud? believe it! geico could save you fifteen percent or more on car insurance. leave no man behind. or child. or other child. or their new friend. or your giant nephews and their giant dad. or a horse. or a horse's brother, for that matter. the room for eight, 9,000 lb towing ford expedition. >>> as we absorb all the breaking news tonight about how extensive the trump administration's effort was to solicit foreign interference in the 2020 elections, vice president pence included, i want to quickly play something that the vice president said on the subject during the 2016 campaign. >> now y'all need to know out there, this is basic stuff. foreign donors and certainly foreign governments cannot participate in the american political process. >> well, seems pretty obvious. back with us jeffrey toobin, jennif

kurt: i imagine not.ecause this policy is so starkly different than the one that facebook as, it was a pretty opportune time for them to not only make a splash and announce this but do it at the time when everyone was paying attention to what facebook was going to be doing with their earnings. i don't think this was necessarily coincidental. taylor: i want to talk about twitter's business a little bit. said --d that facebook that twitter said it was not a big portion of their business. do we have any indication of how much political ads contribute to twitter's revenue? kurt: we do. we just heard from twitter executives on their own earnings call a week ago. they said during the 2018 midterms, they brought in about $3 million in revenue from political ads. that is a very small percentage. a pretty much nonexistent part of twitter's business. so, it is kind of an easy thing for them to do. not only are they taking a stand. jack dorsey believes this is a moral or symbolic stand about free speech but it will

it's kurt volker. he was the u.s.nvoy to ukraine until last week when he resigned his post. the whistleblower complaint says that one day after the president's call with ukraine in july, volker and another u.s. official met with president zelensky, ukraine's president in the what's in the complaint. based upon multiple readouts from these mettings were meant to mean by various u.s. officials, ambassadors reportedly provided advice to the ukrainian leadership about how to navigate the demands that the president had made of mr. zelensky. those demands of course include pushing ukraine to investigate joe biden and his son. according to the complaint, volker had been working to quote unquote contain the damage caused by rudy giuliani's involvement and giuliani is trying to put this all on volker releasing the text messages between the two of them. giuliani says it shows he was working at the direction of volker and the state department. now kurt volker is having his say. joining me now is a former nato ambassador to nicho

kurt volker's name is all over this. what does he know about president trump and rudy giuliani leaning on ukraine to dig up dirt on joe biden? if the white house doesn't hand over documents, democrats are warning in and of itself that could end up as an article of impeachment as it was with richard nixon. >> the president has not taken all of this calmly. he raged and cursed on twitter. he also expressed anger while standing beside a foreign leader. he lashed out at a journalist trying to ask a seemingly simple question. >> the question, sir, was what did you want president zelensky to do about vice president biden and his son hunter? >> are you talking to me? >> yeah, it was a follow-up of what i was asking. >> listen? are you ready? we have the president of finland. ask him a question. >> i have one. i wanted to follow up on the one i asked you -- >> did you hear me? ask him a question. >> i will. >> i've given you a long question. ask this gentleman a question. don't be rude. >> are you talking to me? that sounds fami

then you have ambassador kurt volker who was the u.s. ambassador to nato during the bush administration. so you have this cast of characters, one political, the other two career, but kurt volker being brought in in more of an advisory, special envoy troubleshooting role. you look at the text exchange and who actually stands up and says this is wrong and that's ambassador taylor, the career diplomat who's serving in the ukraine. and kurt volker seems to be in a very ten with us position in the text. my analysis that he's trying to placate rudy giuliani and the crazy over here while helping the ukrainians manage the situation but actually get the aid and the arms that they need by placating donald trump and hitting some fine balance, negotiating some fine balance about what would be acceptable. >> we should remind our viewers that ukraine is not part of the eu so it raises the question, as andrea mitchell has been raising, why gordon sondland was involved in this conversation as the u.s. ambassador to the eu. josh, what people will be comb

kurt: people still do not trust facebook. i think that was the overarching theme from a lot of the questions we've heard and feedback from members of congress was basically pointing out things that facebook has done wrong in the past and asking given your track record, why should we trust you with a money, withpeople's a new cryptocurrency? at the end, it was representative mchenry, after almost six hours of questions and testimony, said i'm not sure we learned anything new here. it was a little bit of an unfair blanket statement but at the same time, i think despite the fact that we had all this time to hear from mark zuckerberg, we did not really walk away with a bunch of big questions answered. taylor: when pressed on why we should trust facebook, what was his response? kurt: facebook is just one of 21 different companies that are now overseeing the libra cryptocurrency. facebook is putting out there that, hey, we are not the only people making a decision here. we want to work with regulators. we want you to tell us how th

let's start with the hour, let's focus on kurt volker.e wake of the controversy and yesterday testified before three house committees. and so we now know some of what he told these lawmakers behind closed doors. cnn politics congressional reporter lauren fox is on capitol hill for us. volker testified that he gave a warning, specifically to the president's personal attorney, rudy giuliani. what did he say? >> well, we have his opening statement now, brooke, and what we are learning is that essentially he argued against any of this information on the bidens saying that it probably was not credibility. but we also know that the administration had a negative view of ukraine and that's what he was working against. in his opening statement yesterday he said, quote, in the course of that conversation, he referenced conversations with mayor giuliani. it was clear to me that despite the positive knew and is the recommendations being conveyed by this delegation about the new president. president trump had deeply rooted negative view on ukraine roo

his staff were among those that interviewed the source of those texts, kurt volcker. to the texts in a minute. your take on rachael bade's reporting that volker testified a meeting between ukraine's president and trump was contingent on the ukrainian president agreeing to make a statement regarding the bidens. >> i want to make clear i have read the text multiple times now. i was not there for mr. volker's testimony. but i can confirm that the u.s. held up -- used the power of the president to coerce ukraine to investigate biden and to also create something of an alternative universe as it relates to the 2016 election. and i think the big concern that the ukrainians had was having a white house meeting. i think that came before talk about military assistance as well. >> so -- excuse me -- the timing of this, is this before the president's phone conversation with ukrainian president in july -- the end of july? >> look, this is all happening just before and just after. i think the bottom line when you read these texts is it basically substantiates every aspect of the wh

it was provided by special envoy to ukraine kurt volker who testified behind closed doors yesterday. >> on july 25th volker texted a top zelensky convinces trump he will investigate get to the bottom of what happened in 2016. we will nail down date for visit to washington. point man here rudy giuliani. giuliani said it did not go far enough and suggested adding references that would imply investigations of joe biden and his son, hunter, and the 2016 election. >> a u.s. top diplomat was concerned president trump withholding hundreds of millions of military aid would result in a quid pro quo. bill taylor texted the u.n. ambassador. taylor wrote this, are we now saying security assistance and a white house meeting are conditioned on investigations? suthland responded, call me. >> on september 9th, as i said on the phone, i think it's crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign. 4 1/2 hours later sondland said i believe you are incorrect. the president has been crystal clear. no quid pro quos of any kind. >> he urged ukraine not to interfere in u.s. politics.