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
from mr. la krzyzewski, serious crimes office in the ukraine had opened up an investigation. they opened up with us and ukrainian authorities developed more information. the $23 million was frozen until until somebody in the general prosecutor s office of ukraine shut the case, issued a letter to his lawyer and that money pentagon poof. essentially pay to bribe to make the case go away. that is our strong assumption, yes, sir. okay. at any point in time, is anyone in the ukrainian government tried to reinvestigate that? or did those crimes go unpunished and was he free to go? mr. la krzyzewski spent time, as far as i understand, in moscow and monaco after he fled ukraine. we continued to raise as a point of order that because u.s. taxpayer dollars had been used to try to recover frozen assets that we have a fiduciary responsibility and we have continued to press ukrainian officials to for why d corrupt prosecutors had closed a case and we have
the time of the gentleman has expired. i will now move to five-minute member rounds. i recognize myself for five minutes. mr. kent, i want to follow up on my colleague s questions regarding burisma. you testified about a time when an oligarch named la krzyzewski, i think it was was self-dealing awarding himself contracts when was that, to my knowledge, he was minister of ecology 2010 to 2012. at the time licenses to have exploration of gas were awarded by subdivision of the ministry of ecology. so this corrupt self-dealing then was approximately seven years, at least seven years before the events that bring us here today, the phone call on the 25th and the events around it? correct. his time as minister was 2010 to 2012. hunter biden joined the
board of burisma in 2014. and you have read the call transcript. have you not? i have. and i have it in front of me but i haven t read it for about a month. is there any mention of the discussion with president trump and president zelensky oligarch la krzyzewski who seven years earlier had been self-dealing. to my knowledge, no. is there a discussion of awarding contracts to oneself or the corrupt acts in the 2012 to 2014 time frame. to the best of my knowledge, no. the president brings up crowdstrike, the server, and bidens; is that right? i see that here, yes. there was no discussion on that call of setting up an anti corruption court or looking into corruption among oligarchs or companies in general. the president s comments were focused on two things, 2016 and the bidens. am i right?