No president, no official can demand
that an ally of the United States
do anything in particular to help
his or her political ambitions as a condition of receiving
help from our country.
So obviously we've been through several weeks, almost a month
of private hearings in the SCIF, the secure room of the Capitol,
where the Intelligence Committee has been
asking for hours and hours.
And some of these daylong hearings
have been 10, 12 hours behind closed doors.
Those have almost run their course.
We are starting to get people who
are appearing, testifying to the same thing over and over again.
So we have a pretty good sense of what
happened in two incidents.
One is the famous call between Zelensky,
the president of Ukraine, and Donald Trump,
and whether there was a quid pro quo there in terms of money,
military aid for assistance to dig up dirt
on Democrats inside Ukraine, but also, the broader scheme that
has been going on run largely by Rudy Giuliani, the president's
private attorney, and what that looked like.
So we basically have had testimony in private.
People begin to repeat the narrative so that the Democrats
have felt we've gone this far.
We have the vote on the Hill in the House
this week where they have now formally set
the rules for public hearings.
So I think we're actually going to get to a point
where we actually might have fireworks.
It has been all these hearings in the past.
When we talk about impeachment, and we talk about big scandals,
the big drama the big theatre happens in these big public
hearings.
And I think that's going to the next thing we're
going to watch for and to what extent
the Democrats can make hay of this one
and start winning over more of the public.
But also, more importantly, are there
Republicans, particularly in the Senate,
which would have to judge any impeachment hearing?
Are there Republicans in the Senate that will be peeled off
by some of these revelations?
Do you think it's ever appropriate for the president
to use his office to solicit investigations
into a domestic political opponent?
Soliciting investigations into a domestic political opponent.
I don't think that would be in accord with our values.
What we've learned from the hearings,
not only in the last week, but in the last two weeks,
really, is incidents that focus around that
call again, that famous call that Trump made
to the new president in Ukraine, demanding -
for lack of a better word - that they dig up
some dirt both on the Bidens but also this strange conspiracy
theory where a lot of Trump allies
think that the Ukrainians were somehow involved in hacking
the Democratic party.
That phone call, we've had people testifying who were
on that call, including Alexander Vindman,
who was a lieutenant-colonel in US army,
who basically has testified and said that there was...he was
disturbed by it enough to go to the lawyers at the NSC.
We've also heard testimony from the acting ambassador
to the Ukraine, William Taylor, who has said there was indeed
a quid pro quo that in his eyes, the president was withholding
military aid.
And remember, the Ukrainians are in a shooting war
with the Russians right now and Russian-backed separatists,
withheld that military aid in exchange for that digging
up of dirt on the Democrats.
So we have a lot of meat put on the bones of what we're
initially just a whistleblower complaint, which
include a lot of supposition, a lot of second-hand accounts.
We now have primary accounts of what the president and his men
did to basically push the Ukrainians to do
his own political dirty work inside Ukraine.
Today, the country just witnessed
the only bipartisan vote on that floor was against.
The question to the speaker are the same questions
I provided in a letter about the unfair process that we had.
What has changed since March?
In all the hearings, there's nothing compelling,
nothing overwhelming.
So the speaker should follow her own words
on what bipartisan vote on that floor
and in the sham that has been putting this country
through this nightmare.
There has been White House talking points
on the president's call being of no issue
and of being not particularly controversial.
You haven't heard the Republicans on the Hill
eat that line that much when you've heard them saying
is that they're attacking the process.
The other interesting thing on this
is to watch the Senate Republicans.
Again, when you talk about White House talking points,
what you've heard from a lot of Senate
Republicans now is I don't want to comment because I
could be a juror, right?
If the House impeaches, it is the Senate
that will hear the evidence and decide whether to eject
the president from office.
And the fact that Republicans in the Senate, many of them
now are saying, I'm not going to comment
because I want to be a juror means they're
keeping their powder dry.
They're not instinctively falling into line.
Now, the vote in the House this week
was a strict party-line vote.
We had the Democrats almost unanimously voting
to set up the procedure to have a public hearing on impeachment
- yet almost every Republican on the other side
- but it's been interesting to watch the Senate Republicans.
Mitt Romney has been the most prominent one
to break from the president on this.
But even ones who we suspect to be more loyal and more partisan
are keeping their powder dry.
They're not commenting.
They're not coming out in favour of the president.
And they're using this phrase - I am a juror.
I don't want to comment - which I think is very telling.