President , correct . Its appropriate for the Justice Department and the Prosecutor General to cooperate and to exchange information, yes. But to the extent that the president has concerns and to the extent that the Attorney General is having u. S. Attorney durham look into it, isnt it entirely appropriate for the president to flag this for president zelensky and say that you should be in touch with our official channels . Mr. Castor, i dont know the precise appropriateness of these kind of relations. Now, were you involved, either of you involved with the preparation for the 7 25 call . I was not. I was not. And how do you account for that . I mean, you were the two of the key officials with responsibility for ukrainian policy. If the president of the United States is going to have a call with the leader of the ukraine, why wouldnt
you ordinarily be involved with preparation . Sir, we work for the Department Of State in an embassy overseas and in preparation for a president ial phone
example, the right to certain energy licenses. correct? that is one element. yes, sir. and the company burisma, its leader, he has a little bit of a storied history of corruption, doesn t he? mr. la krzyzewski was minister of energy in 2010-2012. he used his authority to award gas an act of corruption in my view, yes. certainly self-deal? certainly self-dealing and self-enriching. and how did the ukrainian government ultimately pursue that? in the spring of 2014 the ukrainian government, the new government after revolution of dignity returned to partners, particularly the u.s. and the u.k. to try to recover tens of billions of dollars of stolen assets. the first case that we tried to recover that money came
recall was a clean energy awareness campaign that part of the usaid worked on governance energy sponsored some kind of a contest young ukrainians to come up with a theme there was a prize. i believe it may have been a camera. they had co-sponsored with public-private sponsorship being a buzz word having a co-sponsorship with burisma. given the past history of our interest in recovering stolen assets from la krzyzewski, it was my view that it was inappropriate for the embassy to be co-sponsoring a contest with burisma. i raised that with the mission director at the embassy. she agreed. and the usaid mission kept the contest but dropped the public you-private partnership sponsorship.