discussion to being with mr. yermak. and we did discuss with foreign minister poroshenko and his diplomatic adviser security assistance after it was raised august 29th. i discussed that with him. the primary person you worked with was mr. yermak? yes. and mr. yermak also had some meetings with ambassador sondland, did mr. yermak ever give you any feedback from his interactions with ambassador sondland? i cannot say whether he did or did not, we were in frequent contact and talked about the issues as we went along. the episode at warsaw where apparently ambassador sondland pulled mr. yermak aside, did mr. yermak give you any feedback on that meaning? i did not get anything specific after that. this was around, i believe september 1st or 2nd. and it was at that time that i
mr. giuliani and president trump to want to the burisma investigation was to further political benefits and digging up dirt or getting some information on vice president biden. that s what you learned subsequently, right? it is correct that i learned about the president s interest in investigating vice president biden from the phone call transcript gained much, much later. from giuliani i did not know that he was actively pursuing this. i did know that he raise this with me directly and i push back on it. well, you knew that ambassador sondland was pursuing this at the july 10th meeting when he raise the investigations himself prior again, he did not specify biden, he did not specify burisma as i recall either. i understand it as a generic comment, and something not appropriate for that meeting. i understand, but biden was not mention, but you do agree when investigations are referenced in this context, it
dr. hill. i want to pull up another excerpt from a recent wall street journal article that quotes an email from jul july 13th that ambassador sondland wrote to you. he wrote to you sole purpose is for zelensky to give potus assurances of new sheriff in town. corruption ending, unbundling moving forward and any hampered investigations will be allowed to move forward transparently. and you responded tracking. what did you understand ambassador sondland to mean when he wrote to you any hampered investigations will be allowed to move forward transparently? i don t know that i had any understanding. these are emails july 13 emails, i was not even in the seat yet. but i knew that among the head of state meetings we were attempting a schedule was one between the president and
i was thinking of burisma in 2016. you understood that that s what the ukrainians interpreted investigations to be about to burisma and the 2016 election? i don t know specifically at that time if we had talked that specifically, burisma and 2016, that was my assumption that they would be thinking that too. now, mr. morrison, when did you have that conversation with fiona hill about burisma and the parallel track, parallel process, rather involving ambassador sondland and giuliani, do you recall? a number of handoff discussions between one july and 15 july. so in that period of time, you were certainly aware of this effort to promote to this burisma investigation that ambassador sondland and rudy giuliani were going about? at least you had heard about it from dr. hill? i heard about it from
sort of did an accounting of your communications with mr. giuliani, and it wasn t, there were not that many. we sort of accounted for them all. then ambassador sondland, when he came in, he did not have any one-on-one meetings with mayor giuliani to your knowledge, is that correct? i don t believe he did. but i don t know. i think ambassador sondland testified that there were a couple of conference calls that he may have been on with you that is true. okay, just getting back to the regular channel that ambassador taylor coined in his deposition testimony, did you ever have an opportunity to sort of close the loop with him about any concerns whatsoever? or was it the specific instances