president zelensky and he disregards all the talking points prepared for him on corruption by the national security council. second, investigations of the bidens and he debunked a 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 the checks that the united states established to ensure that it was taking appropriate actions to fight corruption and there was unanimous consent amongst the state department, national defense, national security council that the president should release the military aid ukraine critically needed to fight russian aggression. mr. goldman, between the time that president trump put a hold on military aid to ukraine and then release the aid, the president never conducted an actual review or assessment on ukraine, did he?
smith correct. ambassador sondland said that president trump himself brought up the words quid pro quo? that s right. ambassador sondland also said that too. mr. goldman, what did the committee make of this fact? it was quite odd the president would volunteer in response to nothing about a quid pro quo that there was no. quid pro quo. what was more important immediately after that was which is effectively conduct that amounts to the quid pro quo. there is no quid pro quo but you have to go to the microphone to make the announcement. what did the committee make about the fact that according to ambassador taylor and mr. morrison right after president trump said no quid pro quo, president trump then told ambassador sondland that ukrainian president zelensky would have to go to the microphone and announce the investigations of biden and the
quote, abundantly clear to them that if they wanted the aid, and i quote that they were going to have to make these statements. mr. goldman, beginning on and around the tent 25th of july call through december, would you agree that consistent with the testimony be revealed, ukraine was made aware that to receive our military aid and white house visit, they would have to make a statement announcing the investigations? not only where they made aware, they were made aware either by president trump s proxy rudy giuliani or from president trump himself through ambassador sondland who spoke to president zelensky and andre are yermak that the aide was conditioned o on the investigations. by the end, president zelensky committed to making that statement on cnn. was i correct?
we know that president trump as president zelensky to look into the investigations and for u.s. officials to talk to his personal attorney about the investigations, correct? yes. if i could jump in here, on the july 25th call because these four facts we keep hearing about that are not in dispute, three of them are completely wrong. one of them happens to be that there is no quid pro quo mentioned in the july 25th call. there is absolutely a quid pro quo when president zelensky says i want to thank you for your invitation. and on the other hand i want to ensure that we will be very serious about the case and work on the investigation. that s the quid pro quo that president zelensky was informed of before the call. that s wrong. it s also wrong that no ukrainians knew about the aide being withheld, even though that does not matter. finally, there was no
discuss the facts within our lack thereof, there will be arguments that will never change. both president trump and president zelensky says there s no pressure. plus there is no conditionality between aid and investigation. ukrainians were not aware that aid was withheld, and ukraine did not open investigation but still received a meeting with president trump. i want to mr. castor, did the democrats impeachment report rely on hearsay to support their assertions? yes, it did. how many times were you able to find assertions based on hearsay. we went through time over 50 instances. they had time to make their