Trump did not watch the televised impeachment hearing: White House

A White House Spokesman said on November 13 that US President Donald Trump did not watch the televised impeachment hearings as he was busy with Presidential duties. Wednesday's impeachment hearings were aired on television for the very first time, in which the witnesses gave their testimonies publicly. Both Acting Ambassador to Ukraine, William Taylor Jr. And Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, George Kent produced their testimonies at the inquiry. Taylor made new revelations of the phone call on July 25. Committee Chief, Schiff pointed out that Trump had indeed abused his power in the case of Ukraine.

Stephanie Grisham said more than an hour into the public hearing in Congress, "He's in the Oval (Office) in meetings. Not watching. He's working," referring Trump.

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What was revealed in the televised testimonies?

Bill Taylor revealed for the first time that his staff members overheard the President speaking on the phone to another diplomat about investigations. He explained that some of his staff members were at a restaurant with Gordon Sondland, Ambassador to the European Union, on the day after the July 25 call between President Donald Trump and Ukraine’s newly-elected President, Volodymyr Zelensky. On the very day, Sondland used his cellphone to call Trump from the restaurant and the staff members could hear Trump on the phone asking about “the investigations". The diplomat said that he learned of the call the previous Friday and didn’t know about it when he appeared for a closed-door deposition with House committee. George Kent, on the other hand, testified that the President's personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, was hurting US-Ukrainian relations with "politically-motivated investigations". He told lawmakers Giuliani's campaign was not part of official US foreign policy but instead a personal mission to get the President damaging information on a political rival ahead of the elections. 

Read: Donald Trump To Release Transcript Of April Call With Ukraine President

In other developments, Adam Schiff introduced the notion of bribery into the debate when he criticized acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney for saying that people concerned about Trump’s requests that Ukraine does political investigations should “get over it,” and that there is political influence in all foreign policy. There were also talks of possible “extortion and bribery" by Democratic staff lawyer, Daniel Goldman. “If we find that the President of the United States abused his power ... or if he sought to condition, coerce, extort, or bribe an ally into conducting investigations to aid his reelection campaign and did so by withholding official acts — a White House meeting or hundreds of millions of dollars of needed military aid — must we simply “get over it?”, Schiff asked in his opening statement.

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(With inputs from Associated Press)