ukraine had a statement about fighting corruption and mr. yermak would say burr mace in 2016. mr. yermak provided me a draft statement, and i wanted to be assured that this statement would actually correct the perception that mr. giuliani had of ukraine and what they stand for now so that that would also be conveyed to president trump and solve this problem that i d observed with our may 23rd meeting with the president. the problem that he s getting a bad set of information, statement like this could potentially correct that. so was mr. giuliani satisfied with this statement? no, he was not. why not? he believed that it needed to say burisma and 2016 specifically or else it would not be credible, it would not mean anything new. so, in fact, mr. jewel yagiu wanted it to state burisma and
one specifically for president trump. mr. ambassador, here s the text you sent to the ukrainian official on august 13th, let s put that up on the screen. you said hi, andre. good talking. f
That trump believed that ukraine tried to take me down so that conspiracy sthe conspiracy theory about the 2016 election was central to the president s attitude toward ukraine. thank you very much. to fiona hill s point now gordon sondland said of course, burisma meant theed bience. out front now. chris coons sits on the judiciary committee in the senate. white house officials telling cnn tonight that at this point they don t believe there s enough evidence to convince senate republicans to remove trump from office, that is what you and the senate will have to vote whether to do or not. have you talked to any of your republican senate colleagues today? what have they told you? i have a number of friends in the republican caucus in the senate and when i try to bring up the subject of the testimony of this week the striking developments in the house, all of them have either changed the subject or simply said they d really rather not talk about it. it is a very difficult,
Ukrainians and this includes talking to ukrainians over the phone, in person, through text and the ukrainians never brought up an investigation into theed bience, is that correct? that s correct. they never brought up the withholding of the aid? that s correct. they never brought up quid pro quo or bribery? let me bring up the aid. they did bring up the aid after the politico article. i ll get to that, until the politico article they didn t bring it up. and outside in the closed-door deposition it never came up in conversation with them, and i believe they had trust in me that they would have asked if that was really what they were worried about. that s correct. that is correct. and as you pointed out the ukrainians never even knew their foreign aid was on pause until the article was published in politico in august. that s correct. so they didn t know during the call? that s correct. in fact, you had to correct chairman schiff on his timeline in the closed-doo
For a reason you couldn t explain, no one could explain, weren t they under even greater pressure to give the president what he asked for in the call and you answered, ambassador, volker, quote, to my knowledge the news about a hold on security assistance did not get into ukrainian government circles as indicated to me by the current foreign minister then diplomatic adviser until the end of august. is that your testimony? yes, it is. and chairman schiff also got the facts wrong again when he asked you this, quote, at the point they learned their aid was paused wouldn t that give them add add added urgency to meet the president s request on theed bience. i think the ukrainian felt they were going in the right direction and they had not done anything. they had not done anything on an investigation, end quote. isn t it the case, ambassador volker, at one point chairman schiff said to you, when you were truthfully testifying, quote, ambassador, you re making this much more complicated
Mapd that his statements were inappropriate, that the request to investigate biden and his son had nothing to do with the national security and his statements were inappropriate. he heard ambassador sondland tell the ukrainians that to get a white house meeting that they needed to deliver on investigations into vice president biden. that, anderson, is a this for that, in other words, a quid pro quo. but sondland offered investigators a different version of events. testifying, if ambassador bolton, dr. hill or others harbored any misgivings about the prop righty about what they were doing, they never shared those misgivings with me then or later. he also said he was not aware that burisma, the ukrainian energy company hunter biden served on the board of was connected to theed bience until much later. bolton encouraged hill what he had seen to the national security council lawyer. hill explained he wasn t going