Appeared before the committee for a closed door deposition pursuant to a subpoena i would like to take this opportunity to briefly summarize my my recollection of some of the events i expect the committee may ask me about on april 21st the lenski one the ukrainian president ial election on april 23rd the Vice President called to congratulate president elect selenski during the call which i participated in the Vice President accepted an invitation to attend president elect selenski upcoming inauguration providing that the scheduling worked out the Vice President had only a narrow window of availability at the end of may and the Ukrainian Parliament would not meet to set a date for the inauguration until after may 14th as a result we did not expect to know whether the Vice President would be could attend until may 14th at the earliest and we made only preliminary trip preparations in early may. On may 13th an assistant to the Vice President s chief of staff called and informed me that Pr
Zelensky. Colonel vindman in advance of this phone call did you prepare talking points as did you for the april 21st call . Yes, i did. What were those talking points based upon. This is not in the Public Record and i cant comment too deeply. In areas that we talked about in public was cooperation on supporting reform agenda. Anticorruption efforts and helping president zelensky implement his plans to end russias war against ukraine. In other words theyre based on official u. S. Policy . Correct. And is there a process to determine official u. S. Policy . Yes. That is my job is to coordinate u. S. Policy so throughout the preceding year that i had been on staff, i had undertaken an effort to make sure we had a cohesive, coherent and just policy. As you listened to the call, did you observe whether President Trump was following the talking points based on the official u. S. Policy . Counsel, the president could choose to use the talking points or not. Hes the president. But they were no
It under Whose Authority do you think mr giuliani was acting under congresswoman i dont know. Did the ukraine caney and fishes you spoke to understand that mr giuliani was telling them to investigate Vice President bidens son and debunk the 2016 conspiracy theories im sorry consider going to do you think that the ukrainian officials that you spoke to understood the underlining meaning of. Mr giulianis advances to be both investigating the bidens as well as debunking the 2016 conspiracy theories yes i think to be clear i think youre referring to. Debunking that it was a russian interference actually now was somehow implicating themselves or was ukraine interference or not exactly now was this official us Foreign Policy to push for investigation into the bind. It was not part of any process by participate or not miss williams do you agree that pressing these 2 investigations was inconsistent with official u. S. Ukraine policy obviously anticorruption reforms as a big part of our policy i
Colonel. Again just for the record when did you 1st learn this Security Assistance was being with home on or about july 3rd. And what exactly had you learned from the state department i believe that prompted you to draft the notice on july 3rd i so on or about july 3rd i became aware of inquiries into. Security assistance funding in general there are 2 typical parts state department and d. O. D. And i believe it was around that day that o. M. B. Put a hold on congressional notification and you had any earlier indications that this might be the case prior to that there were there were some general inquiries on how the funds were being spent things of that nature Nothing Specific but no no hold d certainly well where anyone in the National Security community who supported withholding the aid know no one from the nationals security none no one from the state department correct no one from the department of defense correct and anyone into your understanding raise the look galatea withholdi
Two Prison Guards, who were on duty the night the convicted sex offender, Jeffrey Epstein, took his own life have been charged with falsifying records. Plus, the anti Meth Campaign in south dakota that has raised a few eyebrows. Well explain why. Hello and welcome. Im Michelle Fleury in washington and Christian Fraser is in london. For the first time, we have heard publicly from two people who had direct knowledge of thatjuly 25th phone call between President Trump and the ukrainian president. The House Intelligence Committee has been hearing evidence from Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman an army officer on the National Security council and Jennifer Williams, a veteran Foreign Service officer, in the Vice President s office. In his evidence, lt col vindman revealed that he had twice raised concerns about how senior officials had been handling ukraine. He took his concerns to the nsc lawyer, john eisenberg, once onjuly 10th and again onjuly 25th. He told the committee he was so alar