‘The quid pro quo is clear as day in these texts’: Ambassador McFaul breaks down ‘extraordinary’ release

America's former ambassador to Russia said there was a clear quid pro quo in the 22-pages of text messages among Trump officials released by House Democrats on Thursday evening.

Michael McFaul was interviewed by MSNBC's Brian Williams on "The 11th Hour."

"We have a lot of information now that was just released about texts between Ambassador Volker, between our EU Ambassador," McFaul explained. "Goodness knows why he is involved in any of this, by the way."

"And it is not just this phone call. We now know that they were prepping the phone call, and the quid pro quo is clear as day in these texts," McFaul said.

"The quid pro quo is not only, you need to open an investigation, Mr. Zelensky, but you need to put it on the record that you are going to do this investigation," he explained. "Oh, and you need to also put it on the record that you are going to expose what Ukraine did in interfering in the 2016 elections."

"Extraordinary stuff that just dropped a few minutes ago, but it shows that it’s a much bigger story. It wasn’t just an off-the-cuff remark that the president, as he sometimes does, as you and I know, this was all calculated," McFaul concluded.

The two noted a tweet by Susan Glaser of The New Yorker:

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