President Trump denied the bombshell claim that acting ambassador to Ukraine Bill Taylor dropped during his public impeachment testimony earlier Wednesday.
In his public testimony, Taylor revealed details of a previously unknown phone conversation that President Trump had with EU Ambassador Gordon Sondland on July 26 that directly implicated the President in the Ukraine pressure campaign. One of Taylor’s staffers overheard Sondland’s conversation with Trump. The aide told Taylor that Trump had asked Sondland about the status of “the investigations,” which Taylor later affirmed that he understood to mean the investigations into the 2016 election, the Bidens and the natural gas company where Hunter Biden held a board seat.
When pressed by Fox News reporter John Roberts during a Wednesday joint press conference with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan about Taylor’s damning revelation, Trump flat-out denied it.
“There was one moment where Ambassador Bill Taylor recounted a conversation that an aide of his heard — it was the day after the phone call with Zelensky on July 26 in which the aide says, ‘Have you ever heard you say to Gordon Sondland, ‘How are things going with proceeding with the investigations?’ Sondland repeated back to you, according to this aide, that Ukraine was prepared to do everything that you wanted them to do,” Roberts said. “Is that correct? Can you fill in similar—”
“I know nothing about that — first time I’ve heard it,” Trump said. “The one thing that Sondland said was that he did speak with me with for a brief moment and I said ‘no quid pro quo under any circumstances’ and that’s true. The other — I’ve never heard this. In any event, it’s more secondhand information, but I’ve never heard it.”
After Roberts attempted to ask about whether the President recalled a conversation with Sondland, Trump abruptly cut him off.
“Not at all, not even a little bit,” Trump said. “The only thing — and I guess Sondland had stayed with his testimony that there was no quid pro quo. Pure and simple.”
Watch Trump’s remarks below:
Trump: "I know nothing about" the bombshell Taylor dropped during his public testimony pic.twitter.com/3WIoPaF81c
— TPM Livewire (@TPMLiveWire) November 13, 2019
