member in the embassy in ukraine who s a note taker. he s been in countless meetings with the president of ukraine and the previous president of ukraine. detail man as it were and this is his clear and precise account of the gordon sondland phone call. indeed. he was in charge of the political section. he was the advisor about the politics of ukraine. not our politics but that of ukraine. and one thing your viewers and i hope the members of congress understand, even though he did not take contemporaneous notes, the foreign service trains its officers, politically political counselor to have complete recall because they find themselves in many situations where they cannot write a memo
out of my mind. look, the claim from the republican side has been that nobody knows nobody heard exactly what the president was saying. nobody was in direct contact. this is all hearsay here s somebody that heard the words of the president himself. and who heard the word from the president s mouth, the investigations, in the context of a conversation with gordon sondland about the call. it undercuts that to some degree. i don t think this will be the final word. but this is a step along the path that i think the democrats are going, which is probably the right thing to do, to try to get at people who spoke directly to the president about this whole mess. david holmes is described by colleagues, smart, confident, long-time officer. his main job was to determine what was going on in ukrainian politics. good luck. and he often accompanied top officials as a notetaker. okay. that would be helpful. he is trained to listen to top
10-page opening statement. it was read word for word to members of the committee a short while ago. that deposition is still ongoing but the statement is both detailed and it is damning. to set the context, david holmes, a political counselor at the u.s. embassy in ukraine is talking about coming out of a meeting with ukrainian president zelensky. as i was leaving the meeting i was told to join the meeting with ambassador sondland and mr. yermak a top official in zelensky s team as a note taker. i had not expected to join the meeting and was a flight of stairs behind ambassador sondland. when i reached the office ambassador sondland had already gone in. i explained to the assistant i was supposed to join the meeting as the embassy s representative but she told me ambassador sondland and mr. yermak insisted the meeting be one-on-one with no note taker. i wanted in the ante room along with a member of ambassador
i understand he s got the right to get heat but he shouldn t be impeached. that s your interpretation. that s what these hearings are all about. charlie, if the republicans go after the reputation or character of bill taylor or george kent, will that be effective? do you think they ll do that today? that would be the worst thing to do. go after bill taylor? i mean, decades worth of service in vietnam, west point, ambassador to ukraine. this guy has a distinguished resume. apparently a very good note taker. i think this guy is almost unimpeachable as a witness. they can argue while he never spoke to the president, therefore, why should we take everything he says as seriously as we are. okay. they can make that case. but good luck trying to impeach the integrity of these career people who, you know, who have distinguished service records. it would be a terrible mistake. republicans should simply acknowledge that they should acknowledge that this conduct was at the very least
he was apparently a compulsive notetaker in every meeting he had from the spring of this year until late september, after the release of the transcript of the phone call, that he had with a variety of aids in great detail, he discussed his growing realization that there was a condition, a link that aid to the ukraine, aid meeting with president trump and president zelensky depended upon zelensky making a public statement that there would be an investigation. an investigation of potential ukraine interference in the 2016 campaign and also the circumstances under which joe biden s son hunter biden had gotten his high-paying job at burisma and whether or not the vice president had exercised any undue influence. i don t think that during theuby