president zelensky and he disregards all of the talking points that were prepared for him on corruption by the national security council. second, investigations of the bidens and a debunked conspiracy theory about the 2016 election were not supported by official u.s. policy and, third, congress authorized military aid to ukraine, ukraine passed all of the checks that the united states established to ensure that it was taking appropriate actions to fight corruption and there was unanimous consensus among the state department, department of defense and national security council that the president should release the military aid that ukraine critically needed to fight russian aggression. so, mr. goldman, between the time that president trump put a hold on military aid to ukraine, and then released the aid, the president never conducted an actual review or corruption assessment on ukraine, did he? that is correct. there was no witness testified
the lack thereof there are four facts that will never change. both president trump and president zelensky say there was no pressure. second, the call transcript shows no conditionality between aid and an investigation, three, ukrainians were not aware that aid was withheld and when the president spoke. and fourth, ukraine didn t open an investigation but still received the aid and a meeting with president trump. i want to move on to the idea of hearsay and the fact that this report contains so much of it and relies on so much of it. mr. castor, did the democrats impeachment report reply on hearsay to support their assertions. yes, it did. how many times were you able to find assertions based on hearsay. we went through and counted over 50 instances of key facts. can you give us some of the examples of the hearsay being relied on by the majority to make their case.
one of the a lot of the information for example that ambassador taylor was communicating, he very diligently recorded notes about what some of the various officials told him but it was about one and two steps removed from the actual fact. and that is the problem with hearsay. is that it is a whisper down the lane situation. and if some of the people that are doing the whispering have a are predisposed to not like president trump, then then what they re whispering down the lane becomes more distorted. did you also find instances where the democrats report used witnesses speculation and presumptions. and the biggest one i suppose an this is the big daddy of the hearing is sondland presuming that the aid was tied to the investigations. because as he engaged in a back and forth with mr. turner, nobody on the planet nobody on the planet told him that was
draws inferences from the fact that there is no explanation for the aid, the fact that the white house meeting has already been held up because of the investigations, and determines that that is the reason why the security assistance is also held up, that is a national logical inference that every jury draws across the country. i agree with you. i m just disappointed rather than to respond to the serious factual direct and undisputed evidence before us, my colleagues continue to make unfounded arguments about the process. but what president trump did here is wrong and it is unconstitutional and if anyone else did this, they would be held accountable. i urge all of my colleagues to face this evidence and uphold the oaths each of us have taken to protect our constitution. our democracy depends on ensuring that no one, not even the president, is above the law. i yield back. gentle lady yields back. mr. neguse. thank you, mr. chairman. and as we approach the ninth hour of this hearin
prelented after months of trying to not get involved in what he called the domestic u.s. political process and ultimately recognizing that he had no choice but to break the stalemate as ambassador sondland told them that he ultimately agreed to go on television before the before president trump got caught and released the aid. i would like to direct your attention to the screen in front of you which displays again a washington post article from september 5th the headline said trump tries to force ukraine to meddle in the 2020 elections and the article reports that president trump is, and i quote, attempting to force zelensky to intervene in the 2020 u.s. presidential election by launching an investigation of the leading democratic candidate joe biden. mr. trump is not just soliciting ukraine s help with his presidential campaign, he s using united states military aid the country desperately needs in an attempt to extort it.