talks about treason and bribery and be admitted for the record. be made part of the record. majority forward without objections. thank you, getting back to the facts surrounding the president s abuse of power using the white house meeting as leverage for helping his political campaign, president trump offered ukrainian president zelensky a meeting in the white house but first, he wanted an investigation into the bidens in a conspiracy theory about meddling in the election. you testified that the committees found evidence that president trump works to exchange official actions for personal benefit and i want to talk about that. on may 23rd, 2019, a delegation of officials returned from the inauguration and brief the president. in that briefing, president trump directed government officials to work with his personal lawyer, rudy giuliani, is in the correct?
now, i m a former judge. and you, mr. goldman, a former prosecutor. we know what direct evidence is. mr. goldman, my republican colleagues have suggested there is no direct evidence. is that true? no. there s there s a lot of direct evidence. and a o lot of the evidence tha they say is hearsay is actually not hearsay.at indeed, it is not true. now, iot don t want to relive a law school evidence class. instead, i d like to go over someer examples with you. and, please, tell me if they re direct or indirect evidence. ambassador sondland and mr. volker both testified that on may 23rd, 2019, president trump told him to, quote, talk to rudy aboutlk ukraine. is that direct evidence? yes, technically. well, not technically but yes. thank you. and then we have the memorandum of the 20 july 25th call between president 2 trump and president zelensky. is that direct evidence?um
delegations meeting with president zelensky. during the meeting, secretary perry passed president zelensky a list that perry described as, quote, people he trusts. secretary perry told president zelensky that he could seek advice from the people on this list on issues of energy associate reform which was the topic of subsequent meetings between secretary perry and key ukrainian energy sector contacts. embassy personnel were excluded from in of these later meetings by secretary perry s staff. on may 23rd, ambassador volker, ambassador sondland and secretary perry and senator ron johnson, who had also attended the inauguration, though not on the official delegation, returned to the united states and briefed president trump. on may 29th, president trump signed a congratulatory letter to president zelensky which included an invitation to visit the white house at an unspecified date. it is important to understand that a white house visit was critical to president zelensky.
investigations into burisma and biden and the 2016 crowd strike server and you in that conversation with mr. giuliani basically debunked all of that. now tattoo on at that breakfast, who else was with you at that breakfast? there was someone that mr. giuliani brought along. i later learned that this was lev parnas who we ve learned a lot about since then. so mr. lev parnas was at that breakfast that mr. giuliani had with you, and we now know that mr. parnas has since been indicted for campaign, foreign campaign contributions to president trump s political action committee, is that correct? i ve seen that. all right. on may 23rd you were in that discussion with the president and at one point he referred to
top line questions before passing it over to mr. goldman. in your deposition you testified you found yourself on a continuum that became more insidious over time. can you describe what you mean by this continuum of insidiousness? well, mr. chairman, when we left the oval office i believe on may 23rd, the request was very generic for an investigation of corruption in a very vanilla sense. and dealing with some of the oligarch problems in ukraine which were longstanding problems. as time went on, more specific items got added to the menu, including the burisma and 2016 election meddling specifically, the dnc server specifically,