departments and agencies and to the mission of u.s. national security, and i saw that in colonel vindman. juan, it s great to have you. lets listen back in to this hearing back underway. my colleagues in the minority, first if i could ask you ms. williams and colonel vindman, you were asked a series of questions by the ranking member at the outset. were you aware of the fact that and then there was a recitation of information about burisma, the bidens, is it fair to say you have no firsthand knowledge of any of the matters that were asked in those questions? that s right. that is correct. . ms. williams you were also asked a series of questions about the vice president s schedule and whether he could have made the inauguration or was the president traveling or the trip to canada. lets be clear about something, the president you were instructed that the president had told the vice president not to go before you even knew the
so at the big public meeting it didn t come up, and you can t speak to the private meeting that was held immediately thereafter? correct. the vice president moved on with his schedule immediately after his meeting with president zelensky. now colonel vindman, i want to go back to that july 10th meeting or meetings the one with ambassador bolton and then the one in the ward room that followed quickly on its heels. were you aware that ambassador bolton instructed your superior dr. hill to go talk to the lawyers after that meeting? i learned shortly after she was finished talking to ambassador bolton and after we wrapped up with the ward room that she did have a meeting with him, and that s what was expressed. now, you thought you should go talk to the lawyers on your own, correct? that is my recollection, yes. but bolton also thought that
reporting also that giuliani wanted to go to ukraine to, as he put it, not meddle in an election, but meddle in investigations? i did read that, yes. and that occurred prior to the president canceling the vice president s trip to the inauguration? it did. i believe it was around may 10th or so. colonel vindman, you were asked by the minority counsel about the president s words in the july 25th call, and whether the president s words were ambiguous. was there any ambiguity about the president s use of the word biden? there was not. it was pretty clear that the president wanted zelensky to commit to investigating the bidens, was it not? that is correct. that is one of the favors that you thought should be properly characterized as a demand? that is correct.
had already stopped the trip planning by that point. and when did that happen? stopping the trip planning? yeah. on may 13th. okay. and how did you hear about that? i was called by a colleague in the the vice president s chief of staff s office and told to stop the trip planning. okay. and as i understand it, it was the assistant to the chief of staff? that s correct. okay. and so you didn t hear about it from general kellogg or the chief of staff or the president or the vice president, you heard about it from mr. short s assistant? that s right. and did you have any knowledge of the reasoning for stopping the trip? i asked my colleague why we should stop trip planning and why the vice president would not be attending, and i was informed that the president had decided the vice president would not attend the inauguration. okay. and do you know why the president decided no, she did not have that information. okay. and ultimately the vice president went to
and there s no ambiguity about that? in my mind there was not. it s also true, is it not, that these two investigations that the president asked zelensky for into 2016 and into the bidens were precisely the two investigations that rudy giuliani was calling for publicly, were they not? that is correct. so when people suggest, well, maybe rudy giuliani was acting on his own and maybe he was a freelancer or whatever, the president referred to exactly the same two investigations rudy giuliani was out pushing on his behalf, is that correct. that is correct. now, ms. williams you were asked about the meeting the vice president had with zelensky in september, in which the ukrainians brought up their concern about the hold on the security assistance, is that