yovanovitch s removal is relevant to this portion of the inquiry because she was removed following this media campaign in which rudy giuliani and his associates were very prominent and criticizing her for not taking seriously some of the theories and issues that later came up and so when she was removed, you know, commentators in ukraine believed that lutsenko, working with giuliani, had succeeded in getting her removed. they were already aware of mr. giuliani and his influence, of the issues that he was promoting, and ultimately that he was able to get an ambassador removed partly because of that. he was someone to contend with. then in addition immediately after the inauguration he began reaching out to the zelensky administration, key figures in the zelensky administration, and continued to do that. let s focus on the inauguration for a minute. you escorted for lack of a
contact reported to us privately that mr. lutsenko was sending thesenk messages and had met wi an american journalist to try to get those messages out. what was the u.s. embassy in ukraine s view of prosecutor general lutsenko? he was not a good partner. he had failed to deliver on the promised reforms that he had committed to when he took office. and he was using his office to insulate andic protect politica allies while presumably enriching himself. anotheren way to describe th corrupt? yes. now i m going to take a look at a couple excerpts from this july 25th call with you and the first one occurs right after president zelensky thanked president trump for the united states support in the area of defense. president trump immediately then
resignation as if to indicate they had no choice. in short, everyone thought there was going to be an interview and that the ukrainians believed they had to do it. you re acknowledging, i think, mr. holmes, are you not, that ukraine very much felt pressured to undertake these investigations that the president or rudy giuliani and ambassador sondland and others were demanding? yes, sir. although the hold on the security assistance may have been lifted, there were still things they wanted that they weren t getting including a meeting with the president in the oval office. whether the hold, the security assistance hold continued or not, the ukrainians understood that s something the president wanted and they wanted important things from the president. i think that continues to this day. i think they re being careful. they still need us now going forward, in fact right now, president zelensky is trying to arrange a summit meeting with president putin in the coming weeks, his first face-t
with ambassador sondland, president trump did speak with president zelensky, as you referred, and certainly the president made it clear to president zelensky that he cared about the biden investigation. now, neither of you did listen to this call, but as you testified you both read it subsequent to its publication. dr. hill, you, during your time, two and a half years in the white house, listened to a number of presidential phone calls, is that right? that s right. can you estimate approximately how many? i can t, actually. i mean sometimes there would be multiple calls during the week. i was there for more than two years, so it s a fair number. have you ever heard a call like this one that you read? i don t want to comment on this call because this is in my view executive privilege. in terms of the testimony, yes i think that as a threshold matter, i think that there are issues of classification
parallel and separately here in the united states and those two things have over time started to fuse together. well, back in may of this year, do you recall that president trump had a phone conversation inha early may wit president putin? i do. and that he also then met in mid-may with prime minister orban who joined president putin at this pressed conference? es that s correct. now that happened in between the time when president zelensky was elected on april 21st and his inauguration on may 20th, is thatma right? correct. and in fact, president suspect it true that president trump had asked vice president pence to attend the inauguration after his phone call with president zelensky on april 21st? i m not sure that i can say that president trump asked the vice president pence. i was not in any meeting in