clear. help ukraine fight internal corruption and resist external aggression. correct. this congress, i think with the support of everybody up here, republicans and democrats and a significant amount of republican leadership, authorized the release of military aid. right. you and others who were working, you believed it was very important to the new government, president zelensky, to have that white house meeting to show our support and send a signal to russia. that s correct. from hearing you and from hearing our other witnesses, ambassador yovanovitch, ambassador volker, ambassador taylor. there was a concerted team effort on your part to get that meeting and release the aid. there was always a concerted effort on my part to get the meeting. that was my singular, narrow
hold, the meeting, the aid? let s look at what the president has to say. let s look at what s undisputed about what the president has to say. you know how we know what the president has to say? not because of what you have represented or others but because we have a record of his conversation and with who? the one who really matters. with the other president, zelensky. this is what he says. he says rudy very much knows what s happening and he s a very capable guy. this was after he says he wants a favor and he goes into crowd strike in 2016. he says rudy very much knows what s happening and is very capable guy. if you could speak to him, that would be great. the former ambassador from the united states, the woman was bad news. the people she was dealing with the ukraine were bad news, so i just want to let you know that. the other thing, there s a lot of talk about biden s son, that
was a quid pro quo between the white house meeting and the investigations into burisma and the 2016 election that giuliani was publicly promoting, is that right? correct. and in fact you say that other senior officials in the state department and the chiefs of staffs office including mick mulvaney, secretary pompeo were aware of this quid pro quo that in order to get the white house meeting they were going to have to be these investigations the president wanted. correct. and those again are investigations into 2016 and burisma/bidens. 2016/burisma. the bidens did not come up. you would ultimately learn that burisma meant the bidens when you saw the call record. of course today i know exactly what it means. i didn t know at the time. then on july 26th you
expressed what i told what the president told me in that text and if i relayed anything other than what was in that text i don t recall. you don t recall i don t recall. you have no reason to question ambassador taylor or mr. morrison of what they wrote in their notes about your conversation with them. could you kindly repeat what they wrote? i ll have mr. goldman go through that with you. let me get to the top line here, ambassador sondland. you have testified that the white house meeting that president zelensky desperately wanted and that was very important to president zelensky, was it not? absolutely. you testified that that meeting was conditioned, was a quid pro quo, for what the president wanted these two investigations, is that right? correct. that everybody knew it? correct. now that white house meeting was going to be an official
deposed, is that right? that s correct. and one of the things that you now remember is the discussion that you had with president trump on july 26th in that restaurant in kiev, right? what triggered my memory was someone s reference to asap rocky, the primary purpose of the phone call. certainly. that s one way memory works, isn t it? and you were sitting in a restaurant with david holmes in kiev having lunch? i think i took the whole team out to lunch after the meeting, yeah. and it was a meeting one-on-one meeting you had with andre yermak? again, trying to reconstruct a very busy day without the benefit but if someone said i had a a meeting and i went to the meeting, then i won t dispute that. particularly if that person took notes at that meeting? correct. or sat outside the door when you didn t let them in?