Trump news: President's Ukraine call was part of 'illicit and corrupt scheme', released testimonies say

Lt Col Vindman outlines the risk of threatening to withhold military aid unless Ukraine pursued an investigation into the Bidens:

"It had inherent risks in that, frankly, if Ukrainians took a partisan position, they would significantly undermine the possibility of future bipartisan support. Losing bipartisan support, they would then lose access to potentially, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars in security assistance funds. The amount of money that we’re talking about here, $400 million, might not mean much, you know, in terms of the U.S. budget. ... But for the Ukrainians, it amounts to about 10 percent of their military budget, roughly. And, you know, that is—that actually amounts to a significant portion of their GDP because the Ukrainians also spend about 5 to 6 percent of their GDP on defense because they’re fighting an active conflict against the Russians. So this is not a negligible amount and, you know, we’re basically trying to continue the relationship and advance the U.S. national security interests. And losing bipartisan support would have a significant cost."

Lt Col Vindman also prepared the talking points and memos for Trump's 25 July call.

He says he did not include anything in those notes about the Bidens or Burisma. He was also listening to that call, so he heard the president move away from his prepared outline.

Vindman says "there was no doubt" that what the president had arranged constituted a "deliverable."

Vindman: "The power disparity between the President of the United States and the President of Ukraine is vast, and, you know, in the President asking for something, it became—there was—in return for a White House meeting, because that’s what this was about. This was about getting a White House meeting. It was a demand for him to fulfill his—fulfill this particular prerequisite in order to get the meeting."

Lt Col Vindmand says the amended transcript of the 25 July phone call had removed President Zelensky specifically referencing Burisma, indicating that the Ukraine president “was prepped for this call” and “knew that the Biden reference was a reference to Burisma".

The White Houses's editing process did not go through a "normal" channel and his unincorporated edits were made on paper from a hard copy of the transcript.

Lt Col Vindman says the order to withhold aid to Ukraine came from the Chief of Staff.

Trump "did not act on" recommendations from Vindman and others to release that aid in a 16 August meeting, and a Ukraine official asked Vindman why the US was holding out.

He says that the US relationship with Ukraine "will continue to be damaged and undercut. It undercuts US resolve to support Ukraine and certainly puts a

question into their mind whether they in fact have US support."

Asked whether the 25 July phone call was supporting Trump's personal agenda or national security, Fiona Hill said she did not "see much national security interest in what I’ve just read there, and I do not see and I did not see at any point any national security interest in the things that Rudy Giuliani was saying on the television that I watched."

Ms Hill and the committee bring up Mr Giuliani several times in her testimony.

Ms Hill: "Ambassador Bolton made it very clear that nobody should be talking to Rudy Giuliani, on our team or anybody else."

More on Giulani's interference in Ukraine from Fiona Hill's testimony:

• Giuliani "is a hand grenade that is going to blow everybody up"

• "Rudy Giuliani has been saying an awful lot of things all the time, and he was pretty inescapable. And after a while, you know, kind of he was making it crystal clear what it was that he was pushing. And this is very much repeating things that Rudy Giuliani was saying in public on television."

• "We were concerned that—not at this particular juncture, again, not specifically about the Bidens per se, but that Ukraine was going to be played by Giuliani in some way as part of the campaign ... Because it was positing, you know, here that there was a great deal of, you know, illegal or whatever activity going on in Ukraine, according to Giuliani. You know, basically, the 2016 alternative theory of the election, the cyber issues—these were all getting put out through these articles in the newspaper. So it was kind of creating a kind of a story that was out there that was being packaged."

Fiona Hill goes off on Republicans' questioning about reports suggesting Ukraine had interfered with US elections.

Look, and I'm sorry to get testy about, you know, this back and forth, because I'm really worried about these conspiracy theories, and I'm worried that all of you are

going to go down a rabbit hole, you know, looking for things that are not going to be at all helpful to the American people or to our future election in 2020.

You just had the Senate report coming out informing us all yet again, a bipartisan, nonpartisan report from the Senate about the risk that there is to our elections. If we have people running around chasing rabbit holes because Rudy Giuliani or others have been feeding information to The Hill, Politico, we are not going to be prepared as a country to push back on this again. The Russians thrive on misinformation and disinformation.

Read Chris Riotta's break down of Lt Col Vindman's testimony:

Lt Col Vindman, who serves as the director for European affairs on the National Security Council, said there was "no doubt" what Mr Trump was asking for during the call with his Ukrainian counterpart. The official described a “power disparity” between Mr Trump and Mr Zelensky as being “vast”.

He also said there was an obligation for the Ukrainian president to “fulfil this particular requisite” of publicly announcing investigations into Mr Biden, a 2020 candidate, and the origins of the Russia probe, in order to receive a White House visit.

Meanwhile, on the third day of the the Roger Stone trial: Steve Bannon!

On the witness stand, Bannon says that Stone was "an access point" for the Trump campaign to WikiLeaks.

Meanwhile, here's the president speaking at a "Black Voices for Trump" crowd in Georgia.

"Call it whatever the hell you want. We like it. What do you prefer? Blacks for Trump or African-Americans for Trump?"