New York - 21 November 2019
++SOUNDBITES SEPARATED BY BLACK++
1. SOUNDBITE (English) Eric Tucker, Associated Press:
"One of the witnesses is Fiona Hill, and she is a Russia expert who served for years on the National Security Council. She basically implored Republicans on the committee to stop what she said is a fictional narrative that somehow it was Ukraine and not Russia that interfered in the 2016 presidential election. And she used the bulk of her opening statement to basically say this is a fictional conspiracy theory and the time you spend propagating that is time that you waste in preventing a repeat of the interference we saw in the 2016 election in 2020. And that was a significant alarm bell that she was attempting to sound. The other witness also delivered pretty significant testimony. His name is David Holmes. He has a counselor who is based at the US embassy in Kyiv. He described in very, very vivid and colorful detail, overhearing a conversation on July 26 between President Trump and Gordon Sondland, who is the ambassador to the European Union. And during that conversation, according to Holmes, he could overhear Trump on the other end of the line saying, 'So is he going to do the investigation?' And that is, of course, a reference to the Ukraine president, President (Volodymyr) Zelinskiy. And Sondland replied, 'He is. Yes.' And that's a really significant account."
++SOUNDBITES SEPARATED BY BLACK++
2. SOUNDBITE (English) Eric Tucker, Associated Press:
"It tells you a couple of different things. One, it tells you how deeply interested and committed the president was, even after he has the call with President Zelinskiy, one day earlier, to making sure that President Zelinskiy is indeed going to follow through on his commitment or what the president thinks is his commitment to announce corruption investigations into Vice President Joe Biden. And one of the things that was also really interesting is that, according to David Holmes, after Gordon Sondland hangs up, Holmes says, 'is it really true that the president doesn't care, used an expletive, about about Ukraine?' and Sondland says he only cares about the big stuff. And the big stuff, according to Gordon Sondland, involved an investigation into the Bidens. And so that undercuts the idea that this was only about Burisma, the Ukraine energy company, and not somehow about the Bidens."
++SOUNDBITES SEPARATED BY BLACK++
3. SOUNDBITE (English) Eric Tucker, Associated Press:
" I would think that the lingering take away probably came yesterday, and that is in the form of testimony that there was indeed a quid pro quo or at least a version of a quid pro quo. On one side, you announce investigations that the president of the United States wanted, and in return you get a coveted White House visit. At minimum, according to Gordon Sondland, who is a current member of the Trump administration, he says, 'I was aware that there was a quid pro quo' and that language, the use of that term, I think is going to be powerful and will continue to resonate going forward."
++SOUNDBITES SEPARATED BY BLACK++
4. SOUNDBITE (English) Eric Tucker, Associated Press:
"No, we're not seeing any Republican cracks because what Gordon Sondland could not do is sort of undercut the Republican talking points, which is these investigations never happened. So whether or not the president won an announcement or investigations, nothing actually moved forward. And the aid, the aid that Ukraine believed it was owed and that the US was holding up until these investigations were announced, actually got released. And so if you're a Republican, you wind up sticking behind those points.
The other big things that we continue to hear time and again from Republicans is this idea that it is the Trump administration, more so than the Obama administration, that actually has been been helpful to Ukraine's interests. We've heard that a lot."
++SOUNDBITES SEPARATED BY BLACK++
5. SOUNDBITE (English) Eric Tucker, Associated Press:
"So I would say it is very hard to watch these five hearings and come away with the conclusion that they are collectively some sort of dud. And I think that that is... that's a notable shift from the July appearance of Special Counsel (Robert) Mueller, which I think by the end of the day struggled to captivate the American public or propel any sort of narrative towards impeachment further. I don't think that that did what Democrats hoped it would do. I think in this scenario, for these five hearings, they got the witnesses who they wanted. I think they've got the accounts that they wanted. And I think that the witnesses delivered testimony that mirrored what they said behind closed doors and basically does support this idea that the president wanted a politically charged investigation into a political rival and had in mind a quid pro quo. And I think that that is something that multiple witnesses are describing and there are certain facts that I think are hard, after hearing from nine witnesses, that are hard to kind of undercut."
