LAWRENCE O'DONNELL: We begin tonight with the first public release of deposition transcripts in the impeachment inquiry, the most important thing in the transcripts of the depositions. Most important thing in these depositions in the impeachment inquiry that were released today is that there is no defense of Donald Trump in those transcripts, not one word of defense. The Republican members of the investigating committees who love to play tough guy in the hallway in front of the microphones were timid little sheep in those depositions. Tough guy Jim Jordan was in the room. Trump worshiper Mark Meadows was in the room, and they couldn't come up with a single word to put in those transcripts released today that was helpful to Donald Trump. Donald Trump might not have brought Mark Meadows to a World Series game and to the ultimate fighting spectacle in Madison Square Garden this weekend if Donald Trump knew that Mark Meadows did and said absolutely nothing for him in those depositions, nothing. Jim Jordan and Mark Meadows are completely different people with the door closed and no cameras allowed. The real evidence, in this case, is the same, whether the testimony is public or private, but what we discover in private testimony is that there is absolutely no defense of Donald Trump being offered by Republicans or by the Republican committee staff council, who is allowed to ask as many questions as they wanted to in the two depositions released today. And those questions accomplished nothing, they accomplished nothing in their many questions. That is why Republicans did not issue their own set of highlights today from the depositions, no Republican highlights whatsoever. The Democrats released highlights of what they considered the highlights of the depositions. The Democrats issued nine pages of highlights of the testimony of former ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch. And five pages of highlights from Ambassador Michael McKinley, a former senior adviser to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

Jim Jordan had about a two-minute interlude with Ambassador McKinley in which Jim Jordan asked absolutely nothing relevant to the investigation, softball stuff that meant nothing. But when Jim Jordan made a reference to Ambassador McKinley's lawyer sitting there with him in the deposition, Ambassador Mckinley said, "I had to be talked into approaching a lawyer. I didn't want to deal with legal. My approach to coming to this was I saw the request, I answered it before I even talked to any legal counsel. And my approach was why should I need legal counsel to come here and talk about this, but that's not the way Washington works apparently." That's what we discovered in the transcripts.

...The cowardly lions Jim Jordan and Mark Meadows prove that in their very weak entries in the deposition transcript released today that there is absolutely no defense of Donald Trump.