About fighting corruption, we should also say specifically, burisma in 2016. Mr. Yermak provided me a statement. 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 had observed with our may 23rd meeting with the president. The problem being that he is getting a bad set of information, a Statement Like this could potentially correct that. Was mr. Guiliani satisfied with the statement . No, he was not. He believed it needed to say burisma and 2016 specifically or else it would not be credible, would not mean anything. So in fact, mr. Guiliani wanted a statement that Referenced Burisma and the 2016 elections explicitly. One that would benefit, essentially, President Trump. It is to invest or come here is the text you sent to the ukrainian official on August August 13th. Lets put that up on the screen. You said, hi,
correct? very terse readout, yes. in this readout, was there any reference to withholding aid? there was none. any reference to bribery? there was none. any reference to quid pro quo? there was none. any reference to extortion? there was none. i assume you got feedback from your ukrainian counterparts? did they mention any withholding aid or quid pro quo? no, they did not. did they mention any bribery? no, they did not. speak of the day the call you met with president zelensky on e made no mention of a quid pro quo. he made no mention of withholding to aid or bribery. no. the fact is that ukrainians were not even aware of this hold on aid. end of the coming weeks, you were in touch with ukrainians as part of your official duties, and this included talking to
president. and i had met with president poroshenko, i had met with others in the opposition as well, and i wanted to call mr. yermak s attention to the potential problems of this. i m very familiar with other examples of countries in the region that have gone for prosecutions of the former government and these have created deep divisions in society. so i cited president zelensky s inauguration speech. i m sorry, his national day speech from august 24th that was all about unifying the country. and i cautioned mr. yermak to say that pursuing prosecution of president poroshenko risks deepening the divisions in the country, exactly the opposite of what president zelensky says he wants to do. so it is fair to describe it, you discourage them from such action? i discouraged them, i raised concerns about what the potential impact would be.
clear to the ukrainians, this is what the conversation was. mr. ambassador, if you believe the statement that mr. guiliani dictated in august was not a good idea, why were the ukrainian still considering giving an interview with the same themes in september? if i may, congressman, i conveyed this to the ukrainians in order to be clear so we knew what the conversation was about. it was following up on this prior conversation. the ukrainians then said they had reasons not to do that, they described those reasons, then they agreed to scrap the statement. from that point on i didn t have any further conversations about the statement. i don t know how it came up or why it came up, a possibility of president zelensky doing an interview with u.s. media later saying something like this and in the end, he didn t do that either. thank you, sir.
you didn t say, wow, the president is bribing the president of ukraine. that didn t cross your mind, or that he was extorting the president of ukraine. it did not, sir. or doing anything improper. correct, sir. have you read in the media where it president zelensky agrees with you and has said consistently that he didn t hear any demand or any commissions, he didn t feel any pressure, he didn t experience anything improper or corrupt on the call. at the u.s. general assembly, he made clear that he felt no pressure. did anyone on the national security council after this call express to you that some crime, bribery, extortion, quid pro quo can occur? yes, sir, i want to ask you, mr. morrison, about the whistle-blower complaint. i don t want to ask you to speculate as to the identity, but i want to ask you about the