National security official expected to back up Ukraine envoy's quid pro quo allegations against Trump: CNN

On Thursday, CNN correspondent Manu Raju reported that senior national security official Tim Morrison, who has advised the administration on Europe and Russia, is expected to corroborate claims by Ukrainian envoy William Taylor that President Donald Trump made assistance to Ukraine conditional on investigations into former Vice President Joe Biden and the Democratic National Committee.

"What we are told, our team is told from multiple sources that he is expected to corroborate a key elements of Bill Taylor's testimony from earlier this week when the top diplomat from Ukraine had testified that the president had withheld vital military aid in exchange for pushing for an investigation or for the Ukrainians to publicly announce an investigation into the Bidens," said Raju. "Morrison's name is important, because he is cited about 15 times throughout that opening statement from Bill Taylor. And Bill Taylor had referenced multiple conversations that they had about why the aid had been withheld, concerns that the diplomats had, that Taylor had about the aid being withheld."

"At one point in one of the conversation, Morrison told Taylor about a conversation that the president had with his top ambassador to the European Union, Gordon Sondland, in which the president had asked, said that the president of Ukraine needed to go publicly to the microphones and say that they were investigating the Bidens and also say they're investigating 2016 election interference," continued Raju. "And that's something, according to Taylor's testimony, that Morrison had some concerns about. So we do expect there to be some corroboration of Taylor's testimony."

"Now we're also told that he does not believe that the administration necessarily had done anything wrong with all of this and we don't — we believe that his testimony, from what we're told, will have some nuance, whereby there are any quid pro quo or not so he may not raise as many alarms as Taylor," added Raju. "We'll ultimately wait and have to see. We're told he has taken notes about his past conversations and those notes will also provide a basis of his testimony. But of course, Anderson, this comes at a key time as the impeachment investigators are trying to find out what happened here. Here is an individual who is a key person in the White House, currently serving in the White House, who will testify about all these matters."

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