bolton s office, ambassador sondland said, let s regroup for a quick huddle and next steps. to be honest, that s quite unusual. you don t usually huddle in a room and the white house, to discuss next steps with foreign delegations. we took it to be next steps on setting up the meeting, which already, as i ve said, ambassador bolton was not prepared to do. when ambassador bolton came back into the office, that s when he gave me the very strong instruction to go on downstairs, front it was going on, and come back and reported to him. as i came into the boardroom, alex vindman, colonel vindman, and ambassador sondland were in an exchange pair that s when i noticed colonel vindman looked quite alarmed. i know ambassador sondland was asked yesterday because i watched all of his testimony and i watched it very carefully that there were some questions about yelling and shouting. i certainly never said that, and there was no yelling and shouting. that s some embellishment that
of july 19th, they hadn t even engage with rudy giuliani yet. i don t believe that happened until a little bit later. so you believe that by july 19th they were already engaged in those types of activities can back we had already had a discussion with kurt volker, it was his assistant who indicated he had met with rudy giuliani at this point. in the vestry sondland made comments about meeting with giuliani. and as we know, in the may 23rd meeting, they have been instructed to meet with giuliani. they give us every impression that they were meeting with rudy giuliani at this point, and rudy giuliani said on the television, and has said subsequently, he was closely correlating with the state department. so it s my belief that they were meeting with him. okay. there is some ambiguity in the direction to recruit through giuliani. ambassador volker said the president dismissed ukraine and said, if you work don might want to talk on it, go to talk
he said the president specifically gave him that role, and he indicated that his authority was coming at least a little bit more from the secretary of state. at any point in time was that related to you? at different points you mention talking directly to the chief of staff mulvaney, and he also talked about secretary pompeo. in fact, there were other people in the room in the meeting in which he asserted this to me, that it was the president who had put him in charge of this. were you encouraged, as of your last day in the office, but u.s. policy toward the ukraine was headed in the right direction? i was not. and why was that? well, i was concerned about two things in particular. one was, again, the removal of our ambassador. again, i will say for the record that the president has a perfect right to remove any ambassador at any time for any reason. but i was very concerned about the circumstances in which her
projects, especially towards folks like russia? well, an oval office meeting is incredibly valuable for any foreign leader. let me just take that general principle. for a ukrainian president, it is indeed what you just said. it demonstrates that the bond between the united states and ukraine is strong. and that there is continuity in our policies and that we will continue to work together in our policy goals include encountering iran, russian aggression and intimidation of ukraine. thank you so much. i yield back. that concludes the member questioning. mr. nunez, do you have any concluding remarks? i think the gentleman. what we learn from democrats impeachment inquiry? they promised the country a fair hearing, what have they delivered? impeachment version of three card monte. a notorious short ton card trick where the market, in this case
the reference ambassador bolton made was after i return from the boardroom and related to him what i had heard. there was the sequencing of meetings, which i know there s been some concern about the sequencing here, discrepancies between various depositions. so, what happened immediately after the meeting, that ambassador bolton called a little short, was he told me to hold back in the room. he was escorting out the ukrainian visitors, along with secretary perry and ambassadors. i guess they want to take a quick photograph outside of his office. i know secretary perry and others have treated out that photograph, but good beautiful sunny day, and there s a picture of them standing to set to set aside ambassador sondland s office. he very quickly came back in, and at that point i guess they were already moving down to the boardroom. on the way out of ambassador