December 2, 2019

Just Security released a story detailing the timeline of Ambassador Gordon Sondland's alleged "no quid pro quo" call with Trump, and law professor Ryan Goodman appeared on Morning Joe to talk about it.

"Can you walk us through exactly how it was determined the call was not made when it was claimed to have been made? But more than that, what does it mean? What sort of broader understanding can we reach if the call was not made when it was claimed to be made? And more importantly, what does it mean? What conclusions can we draw from that, what kind of broader understanding can we reach if the call was not placed when they said it was?" Jonathan Lamire asked.

"The Washington Post also simultaneously had come out with this report that said there's no White House log of the call, that Sondland would have had to call the president between 1:00 a.m. and 5:00 a.m. and they had a colleague of Sondland's saying he was never comfortable calling the president before 7:30 a.m. But on top of that, the way in which Sondland described the call, he said there was no quid pro quo but the president said that Zelensky had to do it and that Zelensky had to do what he campaigned on or words to that effect," Goodman said.

"And then you actually have Tim Morrison and Ambassador Taylor saying, no, when we got the readout from the call immediately after Sondland was on the call with the president for Tim Morrison, the readout said that he said no quid pro quo but -- and then, all the spelled-out demands for Biden, not Burisma, Biden -- and the 2016 investigation. That's kind of damning evidence of that was the call of where it all came up but it followed all the demands of a quid pro quo. What it actually does is it flips on its head the most helpful conversation potentially for the president, that's why he came out reading it almost verbatim from what Sondland had said and it's actually the most incriminating conversation.

"Because it's the very conversation that Tim Morrison and the GOP witness says he immediately told Bolton and both of them decided they must alert the lawyers. Bolton immediately called Ambassador Taylor in Ukraine on a Saturday and Taylor went into the embassy to have a conversation about what happened on that call. It's actually the most incriminating phone conversation in the entire episode."

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