thank you, mr. chairman. thank you both for your true heroic efforts, both today and also throughout your careers. i d like to start with you, mr. kent. in your testimony you said that you had a mid-august it became clear to me that giuliani s efforts to gin up politically motivated investigations were now infecting u.s. engagement with ukraine. ledge raving president zelensky s desire for a white house meeting. mr. kent, did you actually write a memo documenting your concerns that there was an effort under way to pressure ukraine to open an investigation to benefit president trump? yes, ma am. i wrote a memo to the file on august 16 bth. we don t have access to that? do we? i submitted it to the state department subject to the september 27th subpoena. we have not received one
conversation. there s a lot of talk about rudy giuliani and who he was and wasn t meeting. do we know or have and idea of the ukrainian officials he was meeting with over the last couple of years? i don t, sir. have you had any ukrainian officials call you after a meeting with rudy giuliani concerned about the nature or the context of that conversation? yes. mr. yermak has expressed concern about his interactions with mr. giuliani. i believe that meeting was somewhere in late august, is that correct? it was there were meetings and there were i think also phone calls. and y all talked many times since y all are concerned about corruption in ukraine. is that correct? yes, sir. have we seen whatever this
investigations. once we have a date they will announce the investigations in barisma meddling. mr. kent are these the same two investigations president trump asked the ukrainian president to initiate in the july 25th meeting, call? those appear to be the same issues mentioned in the call as well as the media campaign that started in march led by rudy giuliani. mr. kent, as the date-to-date state department point person in washington on ukraine policy, were you aware of this effort to persuade president zelensky to issue a statement in order to get a white house meeting while they were happening? when this exchange happened august 10th i was not. when did you learn about them? as ambassador taylor referenced earlier in his testimony in oral answering, he heard on august 16th he then called me and we had a conversation and at that point i memorialized my concerns in a note to the file. ambassador taylor, is the point person on the ground in ukraine were you aware of this effo
your profession you deal in words of understanding, words of beliefs and feelings, because in your profession that s what you work with to try to pull together policy and to go in and out of meetings to try to formulate opinions that affect other people s decision-making. ambassador taylor, have you ever prepared for a meeting for the president or prime minister of a country or told one thing before you went into the meeting what it was to be about? and the meeting be about another thing or you get in there and the beliefs of the prime minister or the president were other than you believed? mr. turner, you re asking if i ever learned something new ever walked in with a belief you thought about country you were serving in and find out they were wrong? i learned something in every meeting, mr. turner, but i, you know ambassador taylor, the reason why that the sixth amendment doesn t allow hear say it s unreliable because tweectly it s untruth. it. not factual. might be believ
about how the ukrainian government is dealing with american businesses trying to operate in ukraine. is that accurate? american businesses are very concerned about the judicial system in particular. yes, sir. i yield back time. thanks the gentleman. mr. castor? thank you, chairman and thank you gentlemen for your testimony today and service to our country. listening to all the evidence, everything i ve heard and read in this investigation, it seems to me the president of the united states either committed extortion and bribery of a foreign official or attempted extortion and bribery of a foreign official. when president trump got president zelensky on the phone on july 25th he was talking to a desperate man. wasn t he? president zelensky was desperate to protect his country and make sure he had foreign assistance from the united states. is that right? president zelensky is very interested in u.s. support. both assistance and political