white house meeting has a benefit to russia? i think it could be looked that way, yes. looked at that way. i m going to speak briefly about code. when michael cohen was before the oversight committee, he was asked, you suggest the president sometimes communicates his wishes indirectly. for example, you say mr. trump did not directly tell me to lie to congress. that s not how he operates. it would be different, he said, he doesn t give you questions. he doesn t give you orders. he speaks in code and i understand the code because i ve been around him for a decade. do you think that the president was speaking in code when he would talk about wanting investigations? i don t, i can t characterize how the president was speaking. every conversation i ve had with the president has been fairly
it. but am pretty sure i have the call on that day. whether it was the ninth or the eighth, you had this call. it was extremely memorable, right? it was. you ve been honest, and we are not trying to give you a hard time for all of the times you can t recall. a lot of important events happened, the committee has asked you about. and you ve honestly said, i don t recall. but the call with president trump on september 9th or september 8th, you recall it vividly, right? i recall it vividly because it was keyed by the sort of frantic emails from ambassador taylor. again, prior to that call, i had all kinds of theories as to why things were moving. why there was no white house meeting, why there was no aid, why there was no this, why there was no that. i was getting tired of going around in circles, frankly. so i made the call, and asked, as i said, the open-ended question. what do you want from ukraine?
from ambassador volker where mr. giuliani was apparently telling the ukrainians something that frustrated ambassador volker. so who specifically? we know lieutenant company, the old prosecutor. do you think mr. lutsenko has any gravitas within the zelensky regime? i don t know. he was the old attorney general. ultimately got fired in august. >we know that mr. giuliani has met with yermak. do you know any other ukrainian official within the zelensky regime that mayor giuliani was meeting with? i don t know who mr. giuliani was meeting with. had you had any conversations with ukrainian officials within the zelensky regime that came to you and said hey, i just got off the phone with giuliani. what the hell is he talking about? i don t recall. would that be normal?
you don t recall hearing anything. you don t have firsthand knowledge. if i don t have records, schedules, right now i don t recall anything about such a meeting. ambassador. a meeting among the ukrainians? among the ukrainians involving then president-elect zelensky. this would have been early on in his presidency with several aides to discuss how to handle pressure from president trump and mr. giuliani about investigating the bidens. i don t recall. you don t remember. the may 23rd meeting, you talked about how the president categorized ukraine, when he thought about ukraine. i believe that meeting was on may 23. did you ever hear president president zelensky relay any concerns about you about how he felt about how the united states viewed him, whether he was being
for president zelensky to do investigations related to the bidens and the 2016 election, right? i do now know that, yes. you meet with president zelensky and his aides on the day after that phone call and then you had a conversation with president trump from your cell phone from a restaurant terrace and he asked you whether president zelensky will do the investigations. and you responded that he is going to do them or it, and that president zelensky will do anything you ask him to do. is that an accurate recitation of what happened there? it could have been words to that effect. i don t remember my exact response. but you don t have any reason to dispute mr. holmes recollection, correct? i won t dispute it but again i don t recall. after you hung up with the president, mr. holmes testified about a conversation that you and he had where he says that